When I saw this email pop into my inbox last night I thought to myself, now there is a company who are doing customer retention via email right!
So what’s all the big excitement around this particular email example?
Each day companies across the global send out promotional, sales and remarketing emails to their existing and new customer databases. This specific example email is a classic customer retention email designed to encourage customers who haven’t purchased over a set number of months to buy once again. It is a rare sight, that few businesses rarely implement on a consistent basis.
I had previously been regularly buying products from ebuyer.com last year, however I haven’t purchased anything in the last 6 months from their website. I was sent this.
Specific Langauge Used
Note the language in the copy which shows that ebuyer.com care, they really want my business more than the other hundreds of online retailers, where I could be buying my technology and computing products from. In the copy, they also encourage me about the benefits of the improvements to their website, that they’ve added more product lines and reduced prices too.
The final line is a gem ‘we’d love to see you again soon, and your friends are more than welcome too!’ Ebuyer.com understand the value of a customer who has a good experience with them, who will probably go on to tell 10 of their close friends about the website (I know I have!)
Emotive Imagery
The imagery used in this email design is subtle, just enough to evoke the sentiment that they miss my repeat business. Note the don’t try to sell to me, there are no product images in this email and for good reason.
Most Companies Fail with Retention Strategies
A lot of business have got complacent (even lazy!) with email over the last 10 years. It has become such a widely accepted channel we use to communicate on a daily basis with each other, it has almost been taken for granted. The rapid rise of social media has also contributed to some companies switching their attention too keenly without considering the power email still has as a marketing channel.
In the BIA/Kelsey Local Commerce Monitor study for the U.K, it revealed that email marketing delivered a robust ROI. From the 308 small and medium-sized businesses that were surveyed, 16 percent reported an ROI of 10 to 19 times the money spent on the campaign, with 12 percent reporting an ROI of 20 times or more the initial spend.
Email outperforms social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, for those businesses that understand the ROI they receive from these channels.
Read the full report from Omar Kattan.
Remarketing and Retention
If you have ever bought something online it’s safe to say that you will have probably received an email from the company you bought from. These emails will be selling you more products or encouraging you to come back and purchase again via the use of discounts, sales or offers. Those types of email are called remarketing emails, designed to encourage repeat purchases. A customer retention email however, is designed to retain existing customers.
An example of a remarketing email might be;
- A purchase confirmation email
- Post-purchase remarketing emails – for example; to sell you new items similar to your last purchases. Amazon do this very well.
- Reactivation email campaign – for example; customers who haven’t completed registration or haven’t purchased anything yet.
- abandoned shopping basket emails or uncompleted order e-mails
An example of a specific customer retention email might be;
- a sincere thank you email appreciating their custom
- days since last purchase email
- customer loyalty email – a specific unique offer to reward loyal (high value) customers
You might also want to take a look at these 3 Awesome Emails to Increase Customer Retention.
Both are important tactics of email marketing, a lot of companies should re-evaluate their email marketing strategy to ensure they are maximising the revenue available from this channel. You can learn a lot from the companies that get email marketing right, like Zappos.
In Dave Chaffey’s blog post Email Remarketing – why aren’t more people using it? you can see that the percentage of companies employing the more advanced strategies of email marketing is relatively low, even though this technique has been available for 10+ years, it’s still surprisingly uncommon with only just over a third of companies using it in the UK, according to the research from the Email Marketing Census report by Econsultancy.
Tips to Remember about E-mail Marketing
Here are my key tips to remember about the benefits of using e-mail marketing.
- Email is not dead, it still outperforms social media to those companies who understand it as a marketing channel
- It offers a robust ROI
- It is relatively cheap and cost effective to implement compared to other digital channels
- Timely remarketing can increase customer long term value or repeat purchases
- Retention emails can increase customers loyalty and affinity with the brand
- Segment your email lists to allow for more advanced targeting, remarketing and personalised content
