Did you know you can build customer loyalty with email?
As a brand, customer loyalty is extremely important.
That’s probably no big news.
But building loyalty and gaining a customer’s trust is not an easy task.
It requires constant nurturing, consistent interaction, and genuine conversations.
The first step to building customer loyalty is obviously getting in touch with them, and one of the most common ways brands stay in touch with their customers is through email.
But getting the clients to open the marketing emails only covers half of the task. The other half involves you getting them engaged in the email for a sustained period. There are a few steps that you can follow to build loyalty, and in this post, I’ll be sharing 12 ways to build customer loyalty with email.
build customer loyalty with email STEP 1: Collect Data
To market through email, and to build customer loyalty with email, you need data. Setting up a customer database is the first thing that you’ll need to do. To make this happen, you need to ask for the email address from the clients and to keep the data current. Without the email address, you have no one to advertise your brand products to and create awareness. Without current data, your work will be in vain.
2. Create Incentives
Incentives are very important when it comes to keeping customers. It is crucial for the client to have a valid reason that will make them engage and consume more. Offers that are monetary or otherwise often come in handy. They may include a competition to win a prize, a discount on certain products or even coupons.
3. Leverage Influencers
Having influencers who share your brand ideas and products will help you achieve customer loyalty. Influencers are excellent sources of social proof. They promote the business. They convince customers to engage and convert to your brand content using their power of influence. Influencers can be piggybacked, or you can opt to work with them.
Best of all, the statistics of influencer marketing speak so clearly about its power.
4. Use Your Customers As Advocates
Turning customers into social advocates is useful for social proof. It helps to enhance the brand reputation. One of the downsides of online marketing is that everyone is a critic. It is, therefore, vital to keep the current customers happy and encourage them to tell their friends about the brand. To get this done efficiently, you need to turn your customers into advocates.
5. Have a Loyalty Scheme
Loyalty schemes and reward points initiatives have a significant impact on email marketing. Through emails, you can tell customers how they can earn the loyalty points, how the points can be used and updates on their current number of points. You can even tell them on how they can earn more points. This will help to create awareness of the loyalty schemes, and it will help to encourage engagement and loyalty.
6. Offer Free Downloadable Content
Customers should feel that the company values them if they are to be loyal. The email content should not have calls of action that constantly push customers to buy products. This will make the email feel like sales pitches. Instead, focus more on downloads, slide shares, info-graphics and other content that brings brand awareness. The content should make the client see the email as a source of useful information and not just a marketing machine.
7. Incorporate Videos
The content should not always involve long paragraphs or text-heavy attachments. The email should reflect the diversity of the company’s digital landscape. Include video snippets and links to videos in your email.
8. Storytelling Marketing
Through email marketing, you can tell your story to customers showing them why your brand is relevant and worth being a part. Storytelling helps to break down the brand-customer barrier. It also helps give the brand a face and shows the company as a person and not just a building. Without forgetting, storytelling helps to bring the customers closer to the action.
9.Client Testimonials
To convince a prospective customer, testimonials come in handy. Hearing about the benefits and the positives of the company from a fellow client is more convincing than from an employee of the company. Testimonials help to add value to the company. They could include taglines, video testimonials, case studies or in-depth quotes. Sound bites from a high profile individual also help to add kudos to your brand and improve sales.
10. Back Stage Pass to the Company
Giving customers VIP treatment makes them feel valued, thus, increasing their loyalty. Occasionally give customers an exclusive behind the scenes pass to your brand. This will help in humanizing the company and softening the tome of the brand messages. Offering treatment that other companies do not provide also improves the company’s reputation amongst its clients.
11. Have an Appropriate Email Software
To make your email marketing endeavors fruitful, you require a great tool. There are several options to choose from. You just have to single out the one that suits you the most. For example, Mail Chimp, CRM tool, Zoho CRM, and Salesforce, among others. The software tool will help you keep track of all the emails, add custom fields to track important information, maintain different lists and create email templates. Each software tool is different and offers unique properties, but they all perform the same basic duties.
12. Keep In Touch With Your Customers
The email can also be used to say happy birthday, thank you, or even happy anniversary dates and on any other special occasions. This helps make them feel connected to the company. Ensure that you send emails on a regular basis. You could choose to send on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis – just make sure to stick to the schedule that you decide on and be consistent. Frequent emails will always keep your business fresh in your customers’ minds.
Conclusion
Email marketing has been ranked as one of the best tools for nurturing engagement with the customer. Email marketers are constantly moving with the times and are making their templates dynamic.
For most brands, building customer loyalty is one of the top priorities, and for a good reason.
Because studies have found that acquiring new customers is much more expensive than getting the existing customers to spend more, plus, returning customers have also been found to spend more.
One popular way among brands is therefore to build customer loyalty with email.
Using these techniques will help keep your customers loyal, and it will also boost your customer lifetime value. However, it is important not to anger your clients and run into compliance issues. If a customer unsubscribes from your emails, you will be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, which can result in serious issues. Do not overdo email marketing. Sending too many emails at once will make you become a bother, instead of helping you pass the message to the consumers.
About the Author
Richard Nolan is a professional educator and team building coach, sharing his experience in spheres of writing, blogging, entrepreneurship, and psychology. Currently, Richard works as an editor-in-chief for EliteEssayWriters
