DMA Email Customer Lifecycle: Engagement and Retention Published June 23, 2010 Last Tuesday, the Pure360 gang attended part three of the DMA series of email lifecycle marketing seminars, which this time was on Engagement and Customer Retention Strategies. The sun was shining as we all piled into The Wallace Space in Euston to discover a fantastic turn out, with the venue and accompanying breakfast matching the weather – glorious! We’ve covered previous DMA events on our blog before, so for those of you who missed out this time round, we thought it would be useful to share some of the main email marketing solution takeaways from the day. ‘Beyond Opens and Clicks’ Dela Quist, CEO at Alchemy Worx kicked off the morning with ‘Beyond Opens and Clicks: Redefining the Rules of Engagement in Email Marketing’. What we learnt: • Open rates aren’t everything – just because your email hasn’t been opened, doesn’t mean the recipient hasn’t seen your subject line/brand message. You are still building brand recognition. • People have the power to end the relationship whenever they want – if they don’t want to hear from you they will opt out. As long as they don’t, take it as they do want to hear from you and keep mailing them! • Don’t be scared to experiment with frequency – an increase in frequency doesn’t make you a spammer. ‘Dating Tips for Digital Marketers’ Then it was our very own Marc Munier’s chance to get personal with the boldly titled ‘Dating Tips for Digital Marketers’. Marc likened successful email marketing campaigns and customer retention marketing to the world of internet dating and drew upon the similarities… • Start as you mean to go on – send them a welcome email. A good welcome email should be quick, relevant, include a call to action and demonstrate value. • Adapt to your partner/customer depending on their behaviour. • Mix it up – change your email designs every so often to keep people interested. • Treat them to offers as often as you can, we all like to be treated from time to time. ‘A Two-Way Relationship is Key for Retention’ Kath Pay, founder of The Email Academy, rounded up the morning with her presentation on customer retention strategies ‘A Two-Way Relationship is Key for Retention’. Kath’s top tips: • Relationships take time and effort, let things grow over a period of time, don’t expect immediate results. • Respect the relationship. • Remember you’re talking to a person – when writing content for your emails, imagine you are having a conversation with that person face to face. • Put some thought into the message – the ideal email will make people think ‘how nice of them to think of me’. • Be relevant and timely. How email marketing solutions and social media can work together As an added bonus, the lovely Rowan Stanfield from online PR agency Content & Motion joined Marc for a breakout session on how email marketing solutions can work with social media. • Every single email could be shorter – don’t forget that twitter gets the message across in just 140 characters! • Pure web browsing is dead – the best referral your company can get is from someone you know. This is why social media is such a strong tool. • Include links on emails to allow your recipients to share on their social networks and join/follow you on your networks. • Promote the sign up page for your newsletter/email communications through your social networks.