Attracting new customers is one of the most challenging parts of running a business. Even when you win a few customers, retaining them isn’t as easy as it may seem. Why? Because there are several other companies providing goods or services similar to yours.
There’s stiff competition, especially for startups and small businesses. The good news is that you can take advantage of email marketing to build a loyal customer base and enhance the growth of your business.
This article walks you through all you may want to know about email marketing. You’ll learn what it is and how you can utilize it to improve customer loyalty. Read on to get enlightened.
Email Marketing Defined
Email marketing is quickly becoming one of the most effective methods of promoting a business. It’s a practice of sending and delivering updates and adverts to customers on your email list.
You can use email marketing to send personalized promotional messages to customers and educate them about your products or services. It’s one of the cost-effective marketing strategies to reach a large audience in no time.
How To Boost Customer Loyalty With Email Marketing.
Many large companies have proven that improving customer loyalty is the way to go if you want to run a successful business long-term. It can lead to increased sales, drive repeat business, build brand ambassadors, enhance customer lifetime value, and allow you to outshine other firms in the market. Therefore, promoting customer loyalty lets your firm remain competitive for the foreseeable future.
That said, email marketing can help you improve customer loyalty by:
1. Get to Know Your Customers
Knowing the characteristics of your customers is one of the best strategies for developing a loyal customer base. This is a group or class of people who might be interested in your products or services.
Research to understand the problems, interests, and motivations of your customers. From there, you can create personalized email messages explicitly tailored to them. When messages are customized, customers feel valued and appreciated. For that reason, they’re likely to remain connected to your brand. Conversely, no customer will want to read a general email that doesn’t address their needs and preferences.
It might seem almost impossible to send personalized messages, especially when dealing with a huge email list. That shouldn’t be the case.
You can segment your email subscribers or contacts based on their location, age, gender, purchase trends, etc. After segmenting your customers, send customized email messages designed specifically for each group. Sending personalized messages is the easiest way to build robust customer loyalty.
2. Re-Engage Inactive Customers
Do you have customers who have ceased purchasing from you for one reason or another? If yes, you can re-engage them through email marketing. Re-engaging old customers might be cheaper than finding new customers.
One of the reasons why such customers might have become inactive is maybe because they no longer find your products or services valuable. For that reason, you may consider turning your emails into helpful assets for these clients. You can achieve this by sending email messages offering them special discounts and gifts if they start shopping with you again.
This shows your customers that you still remember them.
Remembering a customer is the first step to regaining their trust.
3. Ask For Feedback to Improve Products
Getting customer feedback is a fantastic way to boost the growth and expansion of your business. It allows you to understand their concerns or issues. You can only know whether your business adds value by collecting customer feedback. Moreover, you can improve or make changes to your products or services based on customers’ feedback. Asking for opinions also enables customers to feel valued and might remain loyal to you.
Sometimes seeking feedback might not be easy, especially when dealing with several customers. However, you can simplify the process through email marketing.
With email marketing, you can send messages to thousands or even millions of customers at once. It allows you to save time and energy. And if you want to encourage most customers to respond to your emails, you can give them incentives in exchange for their time and opinions.
4. Share Business Updates to Strengthen Customer Relationship
You might think that email marketing is designed only for promotions and offers. However, that’s not the case. If you keep sending promotional messages to your email lists, they’re likely to mark you as spam. Minimize your promotions messages and replace them with brand updates.
Updating your customers about the company’s progress shows that you care about them and not just their money. It sends the message that your company is there to solve their problems which your business can try to rectify. Moreover, it makes the customer feel that they belong to your community. When customers establish this connection, they are more likely to engage with your brand.
You can use email to update customers about many things. For instance, you can tell them about how your company’s shares are doing in the stock market, your firm’s position financially and profitability, what you intend to achieve in the next trading year, or new store locations and services that are more accessible to them.
5. Allow Subscribers Control Over Preferences
You might be sending valuable content to email subscribers daily or weekly. However, some consumers may not want to receive them that way. In other words, they might have their preferred schedules.
In some other scenario, a particular customer may want fewer email messages in their inbox. If you send many messages to such a customer, they might unsubscribe from your email list. You could have avoided this problem by giving subscribers control over preferences. This involves allowing them to receive only what they want in terms of content and receiving them at their preferred time.
Giving customers control over preferences shows respect for their privacy but at the same time tells them that your company wants to engage with them for a long time.
6. Surprise Customers On Special Occasion
Delighting customers by doing something extra good is another best way to improve customer loyalty. Doing something extra could mean rolling-out programs or activities beyond the four walls of your brick-and-mortar store or e-commerce site.
For instance, you can send them a birthday wish or anniversary message coupled with a special discount. Such a customer will feel remembered and remain connected to your business.
Apart from that, you can send an email to thank any customer who has made a purchase. This shows that you appreciate their support for your brand. For that reason, such a customer is likely to return to your store for more business in the future.
7. Increased Brand Visibility through Optimized Mobile Email Content
Today, mobile phones are essential tools for human beings. People utilize mobile phones to engage and keep in touch with relatives and friends. At the same time, most customers prefer to use these devices to find helpful information and shop online.
Customers prefer shopping using mobile phones over desktop laptops because they’re flexible and portable. They can use them from anywhere and at any time. It, therefore, makes sense to optimize your email content for mobile phones.
Optimizing your content for mobile devices allows customers to interact with your emails regularly. This lets them remain connected to you, thus becoming loyal to your business.
Why Improve Customer Loyalty Strategy
A customer loyalty strategy is an approach that encourages customers to remain connected to your company. It may be impossible to take your business to greater heights without improving customer loyalty.
That said, here are the reasons why you need to enhance customer loyalty.
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Boost Positive Brand’s Image Reputation
Building and maintaining a positive brand image and reputation can be costly as this involves all customer touchpoints. However, this wouldn’t be a problem when you gain your customer’s trust.
When customers become loyal, they are most likely to say positive things about your company or brand. This may be through word of mouth or sharing positive reviews on various online platforms.
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Increase Sales
Whether you are a small or large company, increasing sales is one of your primary goals. However, this may not be a walk in the park, especially if you have a limited time.
If within short time frames, you can rely on your loyal customers instead of investing heavily to convince new ones. Remember, amongst all your customer segments, the loyal ones have a higher possibility of increasing their spending on your products and services.
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Gather Customer Information and Data
Your loyal customers are an excellent source of business data. When you have customer information, such as their buying habits, demographics, and motivations, it will be easier for you to continuously personalize experiences and improve products and services to have a more significant impact.
Takeaway
Customer loyalty plays a significant role in the growth of your business. In reality, you can adopt many ways and methods to drive trust and loyalty from your customers.
Email marketing has proven to be one of the cost-efficient ways to do so. The purpose of this communication channel is more than just a promotional outlet – instead, an innovative tool to boost engagement and strengthen your relationship with your customers.