Tag Archives: customer retention

Marketing is all about continuously drawing in new leads and convincing them to make the conversion to customer and ultimately brand advocate. Although moving each new lead through the customer lifecycle isn’t all that difficult, not every new lead is going to make a purchase and keep coming back for more.

Furthermore, not every email subscriber is going to stick around for the long term. Customer retention is vital throughout the customer lifecycle. When it comes to your email marketing efforts, there are several types of customer retention emails that can help you reduce churn.

Why customer retention is crucial

Take a minute and think about the customer lifecycle. You begin the cycle by bringing brand awareness to a new lead, start engaging with them until they begin to consider making a conversion (either to subscriber or customer).

The traditional marketing funnel ended right there, right after the conversion was made. However, it’s vital to point out that the customer lifecycle doesn’t have an end.

These days, the customer lifecycle is continuous. The customer lifecycle goes on to include a post-purchase phase and a brand advocacy stage before the cycle begins anew.

To move from the purchase phase through to the post-purchase and advocacy stages, you need to pay particular attention to your customer retention.

Customer retention is the act of creating return customers. However, contrary to popular belief, customer retention isn’t a singular action. It’s a collection of different marketing tactics that are used to:

  • Bring previous customers back to your brand
  • Re-engage your inactive subscribers
  • Prevent customer churn

Since customer retention affects every aspect of your marketing strategy, it can be a bit confusing to keep all the terms straight. When it comes to your email marketing efforts, there are two terms in particular that you’ll want to know: customer retention and customer churn.

Customer retention vs. customer churn: What’s the difference?

We bring up these two terms because, oftentimes, people use them interchangeably. Now, the experienced marketer already understands that customer retention and customer churn are two very different things. That’s why we think a quick recap is in order:

  • Customer retention in email marketing: this term is a part of retention email marketing, which utilizes various email campaigns to either reintroduce your brand to customers past or re-engage with those who have gone inactive.
  • Customer churn in email marketing: churn in email marketing is often referred to as subscriber churn. This refers to the percentage of email subscribers who choose to opt out of your email list.

What gets many confused is the fact that both terms fall under the umbrella term of customer retention. Each of these methods is intended to help with your email subscriber retention rates by decreasing overall subscriber churn rates.

You work hard to build your email list, and subscriber churn is more than frustrating. Unfortunately, nearly 25% of your subscriber list will churn each year. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t utilize your retention emails to help reduce those churn numbers.

4 customer retention emails to help reduce churn

Customer retention is a process that needs to be practiced throughout the customer lifecycle. While it’s especially crucial after a purchase has been made when it comes to email marketing, it needs to be practiced as soon as your new lead makes the conversion from viewer to a subscriber.

The key to utilizing customer retention emails to help reduce churn is keeping your subscribers engaged with your content, and that starts from the very beginning. That said, here are 4 customer retention emails that your marketing team should utilize to help reduce subscriber churn.

1. The welcome email

When you think of customer retention from a sales standpoint, the process begins as soon as your lead makes the conversion to customer. With email marketing, that conversion is a little bit different. Instead of the action being the purchase, the action is signing up for your email list.

Now, if you’re referencing the customer lifecycle chart above, the next step is the post-purchase stage. In this case, the post-subscribe stage is the action that you take to engage with your new email subscriber. Email marketing best practices will tell you that your next step needs to be sending your new subscriber a welcome email.

Welcome email example

Source: Really Good Emails

Sending a welcome email to your new subscribers is more than email marketing best practice; it’s a courtesy that’s now expected from consumers. On average, 74% of new subscribers say they expect a welcome message from brands they subscribe to.

Lush does a wonderful job with their welcome email by keeping it playful and easy to digest. Instead of bogging down the email with a bunch of information, they give their new subscribers plenty of CTAs to follow for more information about the brand, sneak peeks, and more.

2. Thank you emails

Frequently, thank you emails get crammed in with welcome emails. While a welcome email can be used to thank your new subscribers for joining your list, they also make wonderful customer retention emails. Think about it: When you do something for someone, you expect to be shown some gratitude. The same goes for your email subscribers.

The customer experience is vital to customer retention and reducing churn. In fact, 66% of adults state that the brands they believe provide the best customer experience are those that value the customer’s time.

Show your customers that you value them with a simple thank you email. These emails can be used in several different email campaigns, including:

  • Welcome/Thank you campaign
  • Post-purchase email
  • For providing feedback
  • For referring a friend
  • General customer appreciation

Thank you email example

Source: Really Good Emails

Tinker Watches does a wonderful job of utilizing their “Happy New Year” email to thank their customers for their continued support throughout the year. This email is purely for customer appreciation, something that consumers appreciate receiving after doing business with a brand.

3. Customer re-engagement emails

Now, what happens when you’ve built your email list, and you start to notice that your overall engagement numbers have started to decline? While you might not have noticed a significant change in your overall churn rate, that dip in subscriber engagement is a sign that you need to revisit your email list and check for inactive subscribers.

Inactive subscribers are those who haven’t interacted with your brand over a period of time. Before you go through and start purging these subscribers in the name of email list hygiene, you need to take adequate time to try and re-engage them. After all, it costs your team approximately five times more to acquire a new subscriber than it would to try and re-engage them.

This type of customer retention email is extremely versatile because you can use several tactics to try and get your inactive subscribers to re-engage with your brand, including:

  • Sending a survey/feedback email
  • Sending an updated email list opt-in email
  • Sending a special incentive
  • Sending a “what you’ve missed” email newsletter
  • Sending a simple “we miss you” campaign

Re-engagement email example

Source: Campaign Monitor

This example by Teespring is wonderful because it not only sends a “we miss you” message, but it shows the receiver that you’ve been paying attention to them and their activities. Not only do your customers want to be appreciated, but research also shows that 9 out of 10 customers highly value businesses who know their account history and their current activities with that company.

4. Birthday/Anniversary/Activity emails

You already know that customer appreciation goes a long way in customer retention. When your customers take the time to give you information such as their birthday, a great customer retention email concept to send is a simple happy birthday message. These messages are wonderful for celebrating your subscribers/customers and allows you a chance to thank them for their time and loyalty, while also giving you a chance to share special incentives to encourage activity on their end.

Birthday email example

Source: Really Good Emails

We fell in love with this email from Outdoor Voices because not only are they celebrating their subscriber’s birthday, but they’re taking it to another level by celebrating their half birthday. This shows their consumers that they’re paying attention to their big day and that the brand cares enough to do the math and celebrate them multiple times throughout the year.

A few other ways you can celebrate your subscribers is by celebrating their achievements/activities or even celebrating their signup anniversary.

Wrap up

When it comes to customer retention emails that help to reduce churn, one of the biggest factors you need to consider is the customer experience. That means catering to your subscriber’s needs throughout the customer lifecycle, not just after they’ve made a purchase. Remember, the idea is to keep them coming back for more. That said, we covered four of the most popular customer retention emails that every marketing team should be using, including:

  • Welcome emails
  • Thank you emails
  • Customer re-engagement emails
  • Birthday/Anniversary/Activity emails

Once you’ve started planning out your customer retention emails, you want to take it a step further with personalization. Learn why personalized email marketing is essential to customer retention today.

Article first published in August 2017, updated June 2019

Marketers understand that people rarely purchase after their first touch with a website or brand. Consumers need nurturing at multiple stages throughout the purchase funnel.

Lifecycle marketing allows companies to send multiple emails with the goal of educating prospects so they understand what the company offers and how it can help them succeed. In other words, companies use lifecycle marketing to increase the likelihood of purchase, increase retention, and lifetime value.

But, as Anthony Nygren, from EMI Strategic Marketing, says, “Lifecycle Marketing isn’t just about sending messages customers might like—it’s about positively influencing their behavior.”

Lifecycle marketing campaigns aren’t one-size-fits-all tactics that you can just plug and play. You must adapt each campaign to your industry, your personas, and your specific goals. With that said, let’s take a moment to touch on the basics of lifecycle marketing and what it means for your brand and your prospects.

What is lifecycle marketing

We touched on what lifecycle marketing is; however, there’s so much more to it. Lifecycle marketing helps marketers guide potential customers through specific milestones in their sales funnel or brand relationship.

What is the marketing lifecycle?

In short, the marketing life cycle is designed to help marketers address their audience’s specific needs as they go from a prospect to a subscriber through to a loyal customer. Of course, the cycle isn’t that simple—while we wish it went that smoothly, the marketing life cycle also must include the indecisive customer, lapsed customers, repeat customers, and more.

This lifecycle marketing model shows us just how complicated the cycle can be, especially once you’ve aligned it to your many marketing channels.

This lifecycle marketing model shows us just how complicated the cycle can be, especially once you’ve aligned it to your many marketing channels. Source: Smart Insights

What are the stages of the customer lifecycle journey?

Now, as intimidating as that model may look, that’s the reality of having a business with multiple channels to it. For those starting small, you’ll want to begin by addressing the most common stages of the customer lifecycle journey, and then align it to your brand’s marketing goals.

The typical stages of the customer lifecycle journey look a little something like this.

The typical stages of the customer lifecycle journey look a little something like this.

Source: Alexa

Each stage is an essential piece of the lifecycle marketing process, so having a basic understanding of each is crucial.

  • Brand awareness – your prospect first learns of your brand and products/services
  • Brand engagement – your prospect begins interacting with your brand, possibly through subscribing to your email list
  • Customer evaluation of the brand – Prospects will evaluate what you have to offer them and decide if it’s worth making the conversion.
  • Customer purchase – After the evaluation process, they’ll hopefully choose to make a purchase.
  • Post-purchase experience – The brand will want to reach out to the consumer to ensure their expectations have been met.
  • Customer advocacy – If all goes well and your brand has a happy customer, then they’ll begin to spread the word of their experience to those around them.

In this post, you’ll learn ten examples of companies that use lifecycle marketing to communicate with their subscribers and customers.

Software

Campaign Monitor

A great way to learn about lifecycle marketing is from Campaign Monitor. I’ve been using it to promote my personal blog for some time and, recently, I decided to use it to launch a new email-based personal project of mine.

After I signed up, I immediately received a welcome email. It starts with a warm thank you that includes some social proof.  Then it recommends three clear ways to get started. Since it’s common for people to have questions before getting started with any tool, Campaign Monitor also offers customer support help, in case you need it.

After I sent my first campaign, I was reminded to analyze the results, which was both helpful and useful.

A day after I sent my campaign (which had been scheduled), I received a second email with a direct link to the analytics reporting, and a link to Worldview and the iOS app.

 

E-Commerce

Allbirds

Allbirds is a shoe company from New Zealand that sells wool shoes that are all the rage with tech folks, millennials, and nearly everyone else.

The first email I received was a brief explanation of what they do and what they stand for. The email shared the company’s values rather than just talking about the product itself. They talk about their shoes, but from a value perspective (environmental sustainability, benefits of their shoes) and not about specific features. What I love about Allbirds is their values, so it makes sense they talk about them before they talk about their shoes.

After I submitted my order, I received a standard order confirmation email. Simple and effective.

After my order shipped, I received another email providing me the tracking number.

What I didn’t receive is a product review email or education about the importance of wool and sustainability. It would’ve been great if I had but, so far, they’re a small company and their lifecycle marketing campaign is simple and effective.

Bodybuilding.com

Bodybuilding.com is an online retailer specializing in dietary supplements, sports supplements, and bodybuilding supplements.

After I signed up for their newsletter, the first email I received was a thank you, with simple 1-2-3 steps: Browse their most popular products, see what new content they have, and find a training plan.

A few days later, I received an extensive news update with information about training, nutrition, and motivational content. Lastly, it contained a promotion.

The last email I received was purely sales-focused. It contained a large array of products available with a discount, mostly focused on pre-workout products.

All the subsequent emails I received were either news-focused or sales-focused.

Just Eat

Just Eat is one of the largest online food delivery companies in the world, with a market valuation of over $5 billion.

After signing up for their service, I received a welcome email with my login credentials. This email could be even more effective if it recommended places close to my location, steps to order for the first time, and FAQs, among other things.

After I placed my first order, I received an email order confirmation with the details of the order, including the time of delivery, the food ordered, and the shipping destination.

A few hours after I received the order, I received an email with an offer for my next order to incentivize a repeat purchase.

A day after my order, I received an email asking for a review. This is a smart move, as reviews are one of the most effective content types people use to make a purchase.

Nonprofit

Note: The example emails were sourced from Really Good EmailsPinterest, and Charity Email Gallery.

Charity Water

Charity Water is a nonprofit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries.

The first email they send after signup says “Welcome, world changer.” It touches on one of Charity Water’s user goals: helping to change the world for the better. The image is quite emotional and shows the results of a potential donation, which motivates potential donors. It also uses the typical 1-2-3 steps we’ve seen, with three recommended actions to take: learning more about how they fund the projects, how they prove their donations, and how they rely on local experts.

The second email is simple and specific: Donate water today and help someone in need. It’s simple but works well, given they know their subscribers care about the cause and it’s tied to Giving Tuesday, a specific nonprofit holiday.

The third email focuses on stories of children who’ve done the impossible to donate to the charity. It’s inspiring and emotional, which works great for nonprofits like Charity Water. By focusing on the importance of their cause, they persuade people to donate.

American Red Cross

American Red Cross is an important nonprofit organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and education in the United States.

The first email engages new subscribers with the values of the organization. They also set the expectations for what you can expect by being a subscriber, which is a great email marketing best practice. Surprisingly, they offer a discount for their online store, in which they sell emergency and first aid kits, among other related products. They close the first email with links to follow them on their social media channels, to donate, and volunteer.

The following two emails sent are focused on donation campaigns. Both emails mention other donation and volunteering opportunities and news about their organization. Both emails are good, as they’re true to their organization’s goals (i.e., to get donations and volunteers).

WWF

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is one of the largest nonprofits in the field of wilderness preservation and environmental protection.

The first email is a perfect example of a well-thought-out welcome email. It starts with a powerful message about protecting elephants and how you can help achieve the goal. Then WWF suggests a specific action: talking about why you want to help them protect the earth. Thanks to the power of commitment and consistency, this small action makes people more likely to continue volunteering and donating. It closes with the signature of an executive of the organization, which makes it even more compelling and powerful.

The second email is focused on making a donation to an important cause. Once again, they start with a visual picture. Triggering imagination and emotions help move people towards action. If they focused on the rational side (e.g., “You should donate because there are 1,000 turtles left), people may have a harder time doing something about the problem. They focus on the why (the purpose), not the what (the problem).

The third email focused on selling merchandise. What makes it effective is that they package up the merchandise in the form of a donation and focus it around a holiday.

Travel and Hospitality

Agoda

Agoda is travel fare aggregator selling destinations around the world.

After signing up, I didn’t receive a welcome email. But, after booked my first trip for a hostel in Singapore, I received a booking confirmation email. Besides the standard booking information, Agoda also suggests tasks for managing my booking details, customer service, and their site’s mobile apps.

A few days after my stay in the hostel, I received a second email asking for a review. This email is very simple and focused on encouraging me to write a review. They also explain how to write a review, which made it easier for me to do so.

Booking

Booking.com is one of the world’s largest travel fare aggregator websites and travel metasearch engines for the travel industry.

The first email I received wasn’t a welcome email, but a booking confirmation I made after opening an account with them. The email is long and detailed; most of the email is a mix of booking information and suggestions for changes in the booking. They mention everything about the reservation, including details of the hotel and its reservation rules and their own rules for changes, cancellations, and returns.

Later that day, I received a discount offer for other trips close to Kuala Lumpur, the location of the hotel I booked. This was one of the many offers I’ve received since then. That same day, I received a referral link to give out to my friends, which would help them both get a discount on a reservation. In this last email, they mention how the referral process works and why it matters, which makes it easier for me to use the referral link.

A day later, I received yet another offer and a reminder of the booking details, which was a few days away. They also suggested attractions in the city, which is useful for most tourists.

One day after my booking ended, they sent me an email asking for a review. After I gave a review, I received a thank you email. Both emails were simple and focused on the review.

AirAsia

AirAsia is one of the largest low-cost airlines in the Southeast Asia market.

The first email I received was a welcome email, which, like most of these emails, focused on giving help to new subscribers. In this case, they explain a few simple ways to accumulate points and how to redeem them, as well as how to make it easier to book and log in. Overall, it’s a useful email that helps a potential customer be more efficient in their bookings.

After I had booked a flight, I received a booking confirmation email. It’s simple and focused on the most basic links to manage my booking and check in. A few days before the flight, I received another email with the travel itinerary and the things I needed to bring to the airport.

Once I made the flight, I received a customer satisfaction survey with the option of loyalty points. The reward ended up being enough incentive for me to take the survey.

Wrap up

The companies you’ve seen in this post come from entirely different industries and all benefit from lifecycle marketing using email and automation. What they share is that they follow through on the basics of lifecycle marketing, meaning they consider and address each of the stages included in the customer lifecycle journey:

  • Brand awareness
  • Brand engagement
  • Customer evaluation of the brand
  • Customer purchase
  • Post-purchase experience
  • Customer advocacy

Now that you’ve gotten a chance to learn about lifecycle marketing, it’s time to focus your attention on creating customer journeys to help move them through the lifecycle marketing stages. Start by reading our guide on getting started with customer journeys and learn not only the basics, but how to set up customer journeys with the help of Campaign Monitor’s helpful tools.

Article first published in June 2017, updated June 2019

Do you want to know the key to having a long-term profitable business? It’s not having more customers. It’s not having more traffic either. It’s repeat customers.

The reason why repeat customers matter is simple: they’re worth more than one-time customers. To increase the number of repeat customers, you need to focus on retention.

How do I encourage customers to return?

Email marketing offers an especially effective way to increase customer retention: post-purchase email automation.

Post-purchase email automation represents customer journeys sent after a customer has made a purchase with the goal of increasing engagement and loyalty.

Read on to see how you can use post-purchase email automation to increase your customer retention and grow the profitability of your e-commerce store.

Segment your customer list.

Not all customers are alike. Even if all of them have one thing in common—the fact they bought from you—that doesn’t mean you should treat them the same way. If you treat all your customers the same way, you’re likely to send them irrelevant emails, making them less interested in becoming loyal customers.

In order to improve your customer relationships, you need to segment your customer list based on their different demographic, behavioral, and geographic attributes. Segmentation will allow you to send better-targeted and more relevant emails.

Unless the geography or demographics of your customers affect your e-commerce sales, one of the best ways to segment your customer list is by using engagement and transactional attributes based on their past behavior.

Engagement segmentation

The goal of segmenting your customer list by engagement is to separate the customers who are still active on your list (i.e., opening and clicking on your emails) with those who haven’t clicked on any recent marketing messages. Engaged customers have shown a positive behavior towards your brand, which makes them more likely to purchase from you. As a result, you can send purchase-focused emails to your engaged customers. Unengaged customers, on the other hand, need better nurturing and less purchase-focused emails so you can win them back before you can ask for a purchase.

There are four main attributes you can use to segment your email list based on their engagement, whether a customer has:

  • Received an email
  • Opened an email or series of emails
  • Opened and clicked an email or series of emails
  • Converted from one of your emails

Transactional segmentation

While engagement lets you see how people react to your emails, transactional behavior helps you see how people shop in your store.

There are many ways you can slice your customer list based on their transactional behavior:

  • Recent purchases (that can be a week, a month, a quarter, or even a full year)
  • Number of purchases
  • Amount of dollars spent
  • Average number of products added to cart
  • Category purchased
  • Price range of the purchases made
  • Time range between purchases

Transactional segmentation can help you find products or categories that your customers are most likely to find interesting so you can upsell or cross-sell them relevant products. You can also send your customers emails with more relevant prices; a customer with a lower average order value may prefer to receive emails with more affordable products.

A simple segmentation tactic: warm vs. cold customers

A basic way to segment your list is to separate “warm” customers from the “cold” ones. Warm customers are those who engage with your email marketing messages and have visited your site recently. Cold customers, on the contrary, are those who aren’t engaging with your emails and haven’t visited or purchased in a long time.

To segment your cold customers from the warm ones, you are going to take the list of the previously mentioned attributes and pick one or two. Pick a specific threshold, like customers who’ve clicked an email in the past 30 days and who’ve purchased more than $30 in the past 90 days. Then create one segment for the cold customers (i.e., those whose behavior match either of the two selected attributes), and another one for the warm ones (i.e., those who match both behaviors).

Create campaigns for each segment.

Once you’ve created your segments, you can create campaigns for each segment based on the attributes used.

There’s no one-size-fits-all post-purchase email automation campaign; it depends on your company and its needs. However, there are still two strategic ways you can look at your post-purchase email campaigns:

Follow-up campaigns

A campaign consisting of emails aimed at nurturing the next purchase. Common emails sent in this kind of campaigns include:

  • Asking for feedback about the shopping experience.
  • Checking in with customers to see if there’s anything your customer needs or has a problem with.
  • Recommendations of helpful resources to learn how to use the product bought, among other helpful topics.
  • Links to your return policy, contact form, etc.

Reactivation campaigns

A campaign focused on turning unengaged or inactive customers back into active customers. This campaign is also known as a “win back” campaign. This is where you can use the “warm vs. cold” segmentation explained before. The emails usually sent in these campaigns include:

  • Sharing relevant information about the product bought.
  • Sending entertaining and inspiring content, like user-generated content, blog posts, etc.
  • Recommendations of best-selling or related products from the one bought before.

When sending a post-purchase email campaign, you need to be careful about offering discounts to active customers who are willing to pay full price. Offers like free shipping, better return terms, and loyalty rewards can work better than offering full-blown discounts.

However, if you’re going to send discounts to your customers, analyze how much profit you’re going to lose by offering the discount and how many purchases you’d need to get your money back. You can then test it on a small sample.

Also, remember to focus on your “hero customers;” those that represent the 20% that make 80% of your revenue. Instead of losing money on discounting to lower-value customers, focus on driving the most revenue from customers who are more likely to make a purchase from you.

 

Crate and Barrel, the furniture and home decor online retailer, sends a follow-up email a few days after a customer makes a purchase, incentivizing the next one.

Ulta, the cosmetics retailer, sends an email asking for feedback a few days after a customer makes a purchase.

Post-purchase emails that perform

Having a returning customers campaign is a great time to send out post-purchase emails. However, that doesn’t mean it has to be limited to right after a purchase. Take a look at these post-purchase emails and start gathering ideas for your next returning customer campaign.

1. Purchase anniversary – Dorothy Perkins

An excellent way to encourage a customer to return is to remind them of recent purchases they’ve made. However, instead of simply sending them an email with old products, turn their purchase into an “anniversary.” It’s a great way to show that you care about them and the fact that they chose you for their purchase.

Dorothy Perkins does a beautiful job of turning this customer’s purchase into a celebration with this post-purchase email that was sent six months after the purchase was made.

Dorothy Perkins does a beautiful job of turning this customer’s purchase into a celebration with this post-purchase email that was sent six months after the purchase was made.

Source: Pinterest

Takeaway: Turn your customer’s purchase into a celebration.

2. Asking for a review – Beauty Insider/Sephora

After a subscriber makes the conversion to customer, ask them to leave an honest review of their purchase. By encouraging your customers to let their voice be heard, it’ll make them feel as if they matter to you and that you care about what they think.

Sephora does this wonderfully by encouraging their customers to not only rate their product, but by mentioning that their thoughts will automatically be added to their purchase list and, from there, they can share their opinions with their social media followers as they see fit.

Sephora does this wonderfully by encouraging their customers to not only rate their product, but by mentioning that their thoughts will automatically be added to their purchase list and, from there, they can share their opinions with their social media followers as they see fit.

Source: Pinterest

Takeaway: Let your customer’s voice be heard and ask them to leave the product/service a review.

3. Additional savings – Photobox

Once your customer has made that conversion and made a purchase, another way to encourage their return is to offer them an additional savings opportunity for being a repeat customer.

In this example by Photobox, the brand offers return customers 50% off of their second photobook. Who doesn’t enjoy half off products, especially if they were pleased with their initial purchase?

In this example by Photobox, the brand offers return customers 50% off of their second photobook.

Source: Pinterest

Takeaway: Show your customers you care, and encourage them to return with additional savings/a discount.

4. Ask for feedback – Nokia

Customers are more likely to return for further purchases if they feel like they matter, so ask them to take a short survey following their initial purchase.

Nokia does an exceptional job here by asking their customers to share feedback in order to help improve the overall customer experience.

Nokia does an exceptional job here by asking their customers to share feedback in order to help improve the overall customer experience.

Source: Really Good Emails

Takeaway: Show your customers that you care what they think and ask them for feedback on their experience.

5. Encourage referrals – LivingSocial

Everything is more fun with friends and family, so why not encourage your customers to bring their friends and family along for the ride? Offering special discounts and promotions to encourage referrals is an excellent way to bring back returning customers.

LivingSocial does a great job by offering a full refund of the customer’s purchase if they can get three additional friends to sign up for the same deal.

LivingSocial does a great job by offering a full refund of the customer’s purchase if they can get three additional friends to sign up for the same deal.

Source: Pinterest

Takeaway: Encourage your customers to bring their friends and family along for the ride by offering up a special promotion.

Analyze the results

There’s no email marketing without analyzing the results of your campaigns.
Start by comparing your engagement metrics (such as open rate and CTR) and your revenue metrics (such as AOV, the number of sales, and ROI) with the average numbers from the non-post-purchase email campaigns, as well as with the previous campaigns you have sent. Also, compare the results of each post-purchase campaign you currently send.

Then analyze which segments bring the best results. Compare both engagement and transactional metrics and see which segment converts best.

Finally, test new post-purchase email automation campaigns. This can include:

  • Making the campaigns longer or shorter.
  • Using different copy in each of the emails sent or on those that have the lower performance.
  • Using different images.
  • Changing the timing, like sending more emails in less time or less in more time.

Wrap up

Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and legendary investor, said once:

Any business that has delighted customers has a sales force out there that you don’t have to pay. You don’t see them, but they are talking to people all the time.

Keeping your current customers happy and interested in your content is the sales force your company needs to grow without spending any money on customer acquisition.

The strategies in this post have demonstrated how you can discover happy customers, how you can make them more likely to buy from you, and how you can analyze the results from your campaigns.

Want to know why customer retention is the new marketing? Check out Campaign Monitor’s blog for more.

Most business owners know that keeping an existing customer is far more cost-effective than trying to rope in a new one. Existing customers are the lifeblood of every business. So much so, that businesses go out of their way to keep them coming back, and for good reason.

Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers. Furthermore, it costs five times more to attract a new customer than to retarget an existing one.

Surprising? Not really.

Retention emails that work

Human nature is to stick with what we know. Familiarity is key, and brand loyalty is much akin to the loyalty we have for an old friend. Much like that old friend, our loyalty and relationship with a brand are based on the efforts they put into staying in touch with us.

That’s why sending the right customer retention emails is so important for your bottom line.

It’s crucial that you keep contact with your former customers via email marketing and that you adjust the messaging in those emails accordingly in order to keep them coming back.

So here are five emails you absolutely must make part of your customer retention campaign.

1. Welcome emails

The first step to keeping your customer is greeting them.

The first step to keeping your customer is to greet them. Whether they’ve just placed their first order or simply signed up for your newsletter, your customer has shown you that they’re interested in establishing a relationship.

Now, it’s your turn to make a move.

Use welcome emails as a way to incentivize prospects to purchase or offer a recurring customer discount to previous buyers. It’s tempting to make welcome emails generic, but adding some sort of call-to-action or personalized offer is important in order for your welcome email to make an impression and inspire action.

Welcome emails also provide an opportunity for you to learn more about your customers. You can use them to ask their shopping preferences so that you can further personalize future email campaigns.

They also allow you to invite your customer to connect with you in other ways. You can plug your social media accounts or invite them to follow your blog, giving you even more ways to interact with them.

Welcome emails generate 320% more revenue than generic promotional emails. Much like a firm handshake, your welcome campaign is the first step to forming a positive first impression—and a lifelong relationship.

2. Abandoned cart emails

Set up an abandoned cart campaign through your email service provider by creating a trigger for people that add to their cart without completing the purchase.

On average, approximately 70% of shoppers abandon their cart. No matter how big your customer base is, that’s a huge number of people. However, those customers and their carts aren’t a lost cause.

Set up an abandoned cart campaign through your email service provider by creating a trigger for people who add products to their cart without completing the purchase. It’s best to send two emails and space them out, sending the first one three hours after abandonment and the second 24 hours after.

Don’t wait too long or people could decide not to purchase at all. Instead, strike while the iron is hot.

When composing your abandoned cart campaign, make sure to keep the messaging conversational and light-hearted. Phrases like, “Wait, you forgot something!” or “Are you sure you want to leave this behind?” are tried and true.

Indicating a little bit of urgency in your second email (i.e. “Your cart is about to expire!”) is effective, but make sure not to sound too over-eager. Today’s prospects don’t appreciate the hard sell.

Include an image of the product(s) in their cart, along with a link to return to it. That way, they can pick up where they left off and move straight to the checkout.

If you have time to create only one customer retention email, let this be the one.

3. Thank you emails

Reminding your customers that you appreciate their patronage and dedication to remaining on your email list (because let’s face it, unsubscribing can be tempting sometimes) is all they need to keep coming back for more.

Just a simple thanks is all it takes sometimes.

Reminding your customers that you appreciate their patronage and dedication to remaining on your email list (because let’s face it, unsubscribing can be tempting sometimes) is all they need to keep coming back for more.

And they work: Thank you emails generate double the CTR and triple the open rate of regular emails, meaning the best part about these emails is that the opportunities for engagement are endless.

In fact, there are three kinds of thank you emails that are sure to generate results.

A simple note

Try an email with no fancy design aesthetics, no shameless plug, just a plain-text “thank you” note to everyone that has been a long-time subscriber and buyer. Your customers will appreciate a personalized letter that has no ulterior motives and will be sure to remember it when the time comes for their next purchase.

Or maybe just maybe, they’ll realize they want to buy something now.

Thank you discount

Freebies and loyalty discounts are always a welcome way of saying thank you.

Make it clear that this is an exclusive offer to only your most loyal customers, and make sure your appreciation shines through.

Plug a media mention

Thank you emails are a great way to plug a recent mention in the media, be it a TV spot or news article. Tell your customers how your success wouldn’t be possible without them and make sure to include a link to the mention.

Showing them your brand is recognizable will affirm their loyalty and will make them feel pretty good for helping you get there.

Forbes says that 68% of customers leave a business because they feel neglected and they feel like the company is indifferent to them. Don’t let your customers fall into this statistic.

4. Happy birthday emails

Birthday emails make your customers feel special and remind them that this is an offer only available to them.

Birthday emails are one of the best email marketing campaigns you can implement. They generate 342% higher revenue than regular promotional emails and 481% higher transaction rate.

Why? Personalization.

Birthday emails make your customers feel special and remind them this is an offer only available to them. It gives the transaction a different connotation than their usual purchase or the usual promotional email. Even though they’re giving you their business, it feels like they are the ones being given a gift.

And everyone likes to get gifts on their birthday.

Don’t underestimate the efficacy of birthday emails. Throw in a special coupon or even a freebie. To maximize the impact, send the offer on their actual birthday. They’ll be keeping an eye out for goodies, and it’ll show that you know them well.

If the customer doesn’t act, don’t be afraid to send a reminder.

It’ll improve your odds of making the sale, while also keeping the celebration alive for your subscribers.

5. Customer re-engagement emails

The customer win-back email, also known as a re-engagement email, is your last chance to retain those long lost customers, so make it poignant and worthwhile.

It happens to everyone. Your customers lose touch, undergo a major life change, or decide they want to budget their money differently. No matter what your customer’s reason for slipping away from your brand, you should always try to win them back.

The re-engagement email is your last chance to retain those long lost customers, so make it poignant and worthwhile. This should be a pull-out-all-the-stops campaign.

Set up a two-part flow for maximum effectiveness. In order to do this, you’ll want to figure out what your buying cycle is. In other words, determine how long the average customer takes between purchases. The first win-back email should go out shortly (though not immediately) after the end of the average buying cycle.

So, if most customers take 120 days between orders, send your win-back email 150 days after no purchases or email opens have been made. A simple “Let’s reconnect” or similar message that features your most current items is all you need. You don’t want the message in this one to be too aggressive.

If no purchase has yet been made, or if the email has not even been opened, trigger a follow-up approximately 60-90 days after the initial win-back email. With this one, you’ll want to use more personalized messaging. Phrases like “We miss you” or “We want you back” are sure to tug on the heartstrings.

Pro tip: Cute visuals like the one in this example email are always a plus.

At this point, offer an incentive. Offering free shipping or 10% off on their next order will usually be enough to spark your subscriber’s curiosity. If there’s still no response, it may be time to let them go.

Use these outcomes to re-evaluate your customer retention email campaigns and see just where people might be losing interest.

No matter the results with this campaign, remember to exercise patience. In fact, 45% of win-back email recipients open a subsequent email. Of those, 75% read the subsequent message within 89 days. This means that you should always give inactive subscribers a 90-day grace period (if not longer) before purging them from your subscriber list.

Wrap up

Customer retention should be a primary goal of every business’ email marketing campaigns. Without a doubt, existing customers are your most valuable patrons, so keeping them engaged and at attention is essential to your brand’s success.

 

Ellie Batchiyska is a PR Coordinator for Conversion Giant, where she is in charge of email marketing, link building outreach, and blog management for a number of e-commerce clients across the U.S.