The Power of (Email) Love <3
Creating loyal, brand loving customers requires the same level of commitment that it takes to establish any other worthwhile relationship.
On our first date, my now-husband took me for a drink in a popular bar, then to the cinema.
A pretty solid wooing effort, right? I agree. However, he continually talked about his beloved football team, and the film was Hannibal Rising. Uh-huh.
Luckily, he threw in enough witty anecdotes between football stories to win me around for a second date. Because on that second date there was a shift.
He did the thing he hates most… he cooked! Spicy vegetarian fajitas. It was something that was totally outside of his comfort zone as a lifelong meat lover, and as someone from a family where the fire alarm is the long accepted signal that dinner is ready. In that one gesture he showed me (albeit subconsciously) that he was invested in building a relationship.
You see relationships don't simply manifest themselves out of thin air. They are the byproduct of our investment of time and energy in growing and nurturing them.
The good news is that building healthy relationships with your customers is more achievable than ever. Despite vicious rumours, the number of daily email users is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025, with 99% of these users checking their inbox every day (some up to 20 times a day!). Making it one of the oldest, yet most effective of messaging channels.
Create relationships through email with purposeful, personalised content to leverage a 4400% Return on Investment
Put another way, that’s a massive $44 for every dollar spent on an email marketing campaign.
But this ROI doesn't happen magically. It comes from a connection with your customer, built upon these three foundations;
Consistency. Imagine that you won over a potential love interest with flowers, fancy meals, and exciting dates. But then, once you’re in a committed relationship, you stop trying to please them. You start phoning it in and acting neglectful. The odds that the relationship survives are slim. Well, the same thing is true with your customers; the more you communicate with them and show them you appreciate them, the more likely you are to keep the love alive. In business, when customers are neglected it’s not a case of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, but of “out of sight, out of mind”. You need to be visible often enough in order for clients to notice you, and then to remember you.
Writing to the ONE you love. Email marketing works much better when it’s specific and you’re only talking to one person. So when you sit down to write your copy, have your avatar firmly in your mind. Write as if you were sitting opposite each other having a coffee, otherwise your emails will be general and less impactful. Just because you see that big audience number on your platform dashboard, don’t be fooled into addressing them as one big group. They are a set of individuals, and your email will only ever be read by one person at a time.
Adding value. Actual value. How do you find out what’s valuable to your customers? Be attentive, ask them questions. Genuinely listen to what they want and use this as the basis of everything you create for them. One of the biggest mistakes I see is when brands just assume that a discount is all that their customers want. Sure, we all love a deal, but if you rely on this, you risk becoming the discount brand and lose your initial allure.
Build relationships through email with automated campaigns to increase revenue by much as a 760%
The Abandoned cart
You caught them looking! They like you, but not enough to commit. Yet.
You’re going to have to make the first move.
Now, we can all acknowledge the creepiness of a badly executed abandoned cart email. But when done right, abandoned cart emails can achieve a stunning 10% purchase rate. Put this figure into perspective by considering the number of people visiting your site each week. Browsing, deliberating and then leaving. By simply reminding these shoppers of what they left behind and encouraging them to return and complete the purchase you could retain ONE IN TEN! Multiply that by possibly thousands of abandoned carts over a year and it’s clear that abandoned cart emails can earn you serious revenue.
So put on your best smile and… Play. It. Cool. A simple layout and a few clever lines of copy is all it takes to grab your admirer's attention.
The Post Purchase
Whoop! You got the date! Now is not the time to become lackadaisical.
Show that you’re excited, be attentive. Use email to surpass their expectations, because the last thing we want now is for them to get buyer’s remorse.
The Milestones
Celebrating milestones provides a genuine reason to show appreciation and recognition for your customer.
Most of the time, there is nothing truly clever or sentimental about milestone emails. Take the humble birthday email, for example. It's simply a triggered email, sent automatically to a recipient on the DOB they submitted during the sign-up process (or later on, if your brand has a ‘personal info’ section).
But they provide a significant, positive impact on your relationship because we all love it when someone else notices our achievements and acknowledges them! On the surface it may not seem like a big deal, but thoughtful recognition is actually a powerful tool as it triggers the release of dopamine. A neurotransmitter that helps control the reward and pleasure centres of the brain, and makes us feel good.
The Winback
You’ve been hanging out for a while, but things are going off the boil.
Don’t pretend it isn’t happening. We forge good relationships through hard conversations. Reach out and ask your subscriber what’s holding them back. What can you do to rekindle that flame?
Bring flowers!
When you’re building a relationship, it’s often the seemingly insignificant gestures which create that warm, fuzzy feeling. If you want to win over hearts, you need to be paying attention to the details in every email.
Personalisation
Personalised emails deliver six times higher transaction rates. Why? Because people love being noticed. It shows they are not just one of many, but an appreciated individual.
Basic email personalisation includes tactics like using a subscriber’s name in the subject line.
Whilst more advanced tactics can include changing the content of the email based on a subscriber’s gender, location, or other things you know about them.
Socials
It seems to have become the norm to drop in a row of social media icons at the bottom of an email, just above the footer content. However, in 95% of the email reports I analyse, the reader overlooks these icons. They get very few clicks.
If social media icons aren’t converting for you either, it’s because:
The format is boring (ouch, sorry)
Your reader isn’t making it to the bottom of your emails (yeah, this one may be even worse)
Your subscribers came to you via social media, so they do not need to click on them (let’s just pretend it’s this one, hey?)
If you want to make an impression, shake things up. Move your icons to a different section of the email, introduce a more visual element..
Or scrap them altogether in favour of one of these grand gestures;
Polling
Research shows that interactive elements in email content increase click-through rates seventeen times! Email polling is a fun way to include an interactive message whilst simultaneously helping you to improve your relevance by providing valuable and insightful information for personalised email campaigns in the future.
Profile-building combined with segmentation opportunities enables you to really take your campaigns to the next level!
CTA Buttons
You could be the best catch in the world, but it won’t matter if you don’t ask for the date.
How do you create a call-to-action that’s sure to get a “yes!”?
1. Use action words.
2. Write from the first-person viewpoint (‘Start my free trial’).
3. Keep it short and sweet, the recommended length for a CTA is between 2 to 4 words.
4. Highlight what’s in it for them. (‘Give me exclusive access’)
5. Use numbers wherever possible (Instead of ‘Shop our sale now,’ use ‘I want 50% off now!’)
But remember! The best CTA’s are more than just a bright button with catchy text. They won’t work if the email copy and design are lacking. You need to bring the whole package.
Unsubscribe
Not everyone you meet is a good match. They need to be selective and so do you. When it’s time to let them go… do it gracefully. Your unsubscribe process should only take one click. Swift and painless. Anything more than that and your subscribers have one more reason to walk away from you.
When you view yourself in a long-term relationship with your customers, all kinds of positive results follow. The customer knows they’re being seen as more than just an avenue to profits. This approach may be an investment in time and effort, but you’re likely to see that reward back as revenue.
*Stats sourced here.
**Email examples are ones I found in my own inbox, or via reallygoodemails.com
