Effectively Using Email Marketing to Grow Customer Relationships
Marketers must be continuously on their feet in order to have the best tactic for reaching new customers. As consumer behavior shifts, it’s up to marketing experts to help their clients keep up.
One of the most steadfast customer channels remains email. Both older and younger generations still use their email on a daily basis, and more brands are getting onboard the email marketing train.
But email marketing is more than just sales notifications and product guides. In fact, only sending out these types of emails can alienate recipients. Remember, customers, don’t want to just be sold to. They want to feel connected to brands, to feel valued, and to feel heard.
With that in mind, let’s address each of these three areas of opportunity to reach customers using email marketing.
Customers Want to Feel Connected to Brands
Email marketing can be used to build and cultivate trust and loyalty with customers. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways.
Using email, brands can reach their customers by using customer testimonials, running contests or giveaways, or sharing stories that will touch the emotions of the reader.
Yes, even brands can accomplish this with a solid content marketing strategy. Let’s use the example of an event planning firm. The firm is struggling to see a rise in returning customers, so they’re turning to emails to try to make some headway.
The event planning firm could send out email content that adds value for the customer. Perhaps customers who have previously used the firm would like to have resources for planning events at home, planning showers, or planning business events. Content that is useful and evergreen can be sent to email via marketing newsletters, building more connections with the customer.
Customers Want to Feel Valued
Another important part of the customer and business relationship is the feeling that the customer is valued. With smaller businesses, this can be a bit easier to achieve — or at least, it should be.
Showing appreciation for a customer’s business is as simple as sending a thank you email after the customer makes a purchase or books a reservation.
Businesses wanting to go the extra mile to show appreciation for customers can consider sending a discount code that’s exclusive to existing customers. The business could also start a referral program, aiming to have customers mention their experience to friends with the hope that those friends will also be converted into customers.
Customers Want to Be Heard
As a customer, there is not much worse than feeling like a company could not care less about their opinion. While it’s true that companies won’t always be able to satisfy every customer’s needs, the ultimate goal should be to try to be as receptive to feedback as possible.
Email marketing can be used for this purpose. Soliciting feedback, especially in the more private channels of email, can often lead to genuine conversations with customers and insight into how they operate.
Consider creating a survey of existing customers asking for their thoughts on recent experiences with the business. Customers can also be invited to write into the company using the email function, which allows for more free-flowing thoughts to be given.
Customer relationships must be carefully grown and managed by a business who wishes to have a strong loyal customer base. Implementing email marketing can be yet another way to reach these customers and work on growing the relationships over time.
