So many brands put their energy into filling up the top of the funnel and attracting new customers.
Yet, retaining a new customer can cost up to 5x more than an existing one.
So it seems pretty obvious to us that more strategy, resource, and energy needs to go into keeping your current customers happy.
After all, happy customers cost less to retain, are a great source of recommendations and user-generated content, and are already familiar with your brand and your offering.
To help you out, in this blog post we will introduce 5 email marketing nurture programmes that you can use to keep your customers happy, and increase your retention rates.
The welcome series
When a new customer makes their very first purchase with you, they are highly engaged with your brand and your offering.
Therefore, this is the ideal time to get in touch with them and welcome them to your community.
Welcome emails are one of the most effective forms of email marketing you can send. Generating 50-60% higher open rates and boasting 9x more purchasing potential than regular emails.
Creating a welcome series is also ideal for customer nurturing and retention purposes. It sets the tone for the rest of your relationship with a customer. And offers you the ability to control that first interaction; making it a positive one.
To achieve this, you should include a warm welcome, offer positive quotes and testimonials, key information such as delivery times and support details, and maybe a discount code for their next purchase.
You can even make the most out of their high engagement at this time by splitting your welcome email out into a series. Allowing you to cover more in-depth information in each email, and increase your engagement over a longer period of time.
The personalised recommendations
Once a customer has made a purchase with you, you will have access to key data that enables you to practice email personalisation.
This includes behavioural data, such as the pages they regularly browse. And purchase data, such as the products they have bought from you. You can also throw any demographic data you have into the mix, such as age and location.
All of this data can be utilised alongside dynamic content to offer product and service recommendations that really grab the recipient’s attention.
Furthermore, personalised emails deliver 6x higher transactional rates. But that’s not the only reason we love them. Today, consumers expect a personalised experience from brands. And sending out one-size-fits-all promotions and recommendations no longer cuts it.
Personalised recommendations can come in many forms. You can create an entire series around regular product recommendations that are relevant to your recipient. Such as new items added to your store, or items in a sale.
Or, you can trigger emails based on actions, such as items regularly browsed but not purchased. Or similar items to past purchases.
The VIP exclusives
Making your customers feel special is key to retaining them.
After all, if they spend their hard-earned cash with you regularly. They will want something in return.
You can segment your customers based on those who spend most regularly, and those who spend the most, and create a VIP email programme especially for them.
And these emails can contain whatever you think will pique their interest. Such as pre-launch exclusives, VIP-only discount codes, or online events and webinars.
Whatever you offer, be sure to make it clear that this is exclusive to the recipient because they are a special customer to you.
The replenishment reminders
Some of your customers may regularly purchase the same items from you. For instance, vitamins and medicine, beauty products, or food and groceries.
As a brand, you can offer them a hand by reminding them when it’s time to make their purchase again. This is ideal to ensure they don’t run out of their product before it’s too late. But it also ensures that you are at the top of their inbox when they’re looking to repurchase this product. Discouraging them from turning to a competitor.
Again, dynamic content is ideal for these types of nurture programmes. They ensure that your emails are automatically populated with the correct product and price. With little manual intervention.
Easy.
The re-engagement emails
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to keep your customers, they just go quiet on you.
Maybe they no longer need your products or services. Maybe they went to a competitor. Or maybe they simply lost interest in your brand.
But all is not lost, and we think it’s always worth taking one last shot at retaining your customers.
So create a re-engagement email with the purpose of winning your lost customers back.
These emails can be open and honest, stating that you miss your customers, asking if there is anything you can do to help, and offering an incentive for them to return. This could be a discount code or a freebie, for instance.
These emails should always offer support contact details in case there is a specific reason they are holding back from making a purchase. And also your social media pages, offering them the opportunity to engage via another channel.
And if all else fails, it’s simply time to ask them if they no longer want to hear from you. Losing email contacts is a shame, but if they are disengaged it can damage your email list health. So instead, offer them their preference centre so that they can manage how often they are contacted by you.
Do you need to improve your customer retention?
Then as well as nurturing programmes, we have lots of tried and tested strategies and tactics to help keep your customers happy and your business flourishing.
Get in touch with one of our helpful experts to learn more and find out what we can do for you.