How to Use Email Marketing for Customer Relations?

Talk to them

Do you talk to your customers? Or do you just send them the same stuff every time? This is the very first and most important thing you have to take into account before, you send your next email campaign.

What will John or Joanna feel when they open your email? Think about that for a minute before you push the send or even the publish button on your blog. Will your message be relevant to your audience? If not, you have to step back and start again. You have to have your customer in your mind when you craft any kind of content for them.

If you have different customer types no problem at all. Go and segment your email list, and only send relevant content to them. Never forget: You want to make them love you!

Personalize as much as you can

Personalization rulez. Not just in email marketing, but all over the web. In email everything starts with the subject line, so this is where you should start personalization as well. Including the name is the first step, but why not include their special need, or an offer which is relevant for the given person?

The subject line is only the top of the iceberg, but a really important part of the big picture. You should personalize the email content as well, depending on the depth of data you have about your customers. Here’s a great example from Shutterfly. They use the recently uploaded images of the user to sell their photobooks, and other merchandise to their customers. I’m quite sure that this is a super efficient way of upselling!

Studies show that personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates but 70% of brands still fail to do it right! Do you belong to the 70%? No problem, it’s time to improve and dig deeper into personalization and marketing automation – two hot topics nowadays!

Always add value

I know it’s hard to produce value added all the time, especially when you are selling, but it’s not impossible. A relevant sales message, can be especially valuable for your customer.

If your sending out a newsletter – just like we do every week – you always have to go back and think about your audience. Will they be interested in the topic you are addressing? If not, or not really… your next newsletter won’t be so successful. No problem. Not every article is equal in value – but you have to keep it in mind and always thrive to maximize value added. No matter how hard or time consuming it is!

Ask them personal questions time to time

You know their email address, maybe you know what are they doing in your system or how are they purchasing your products. Why don’t you ask about their feelings? Impressions? Opinion? Opportunity to improve? Some of them will never reply. But others may come back to you with really relevant feedback which will help you to improve your email marketing and business as a whole.

The most successful marketing channel is still word-of-mouth. Don’t neglect it. You are building a brand, even if you don’t care about your brand enough. People will have an opinion about you and your business anyways. Why don’t you build your band consciously and shape it based on the feedback of your most loyal customers? In the meantime you may even convert them to brand ambassadors!

Do your best to make them happy

Support… yes, it takes tremendous amounts of time an money likewise, but this is the essence of every successful business nowadays. If you provide excellent support, sharp, fast response, they will all love you. No matter if it was your fault or the their fault. You have to admit it, and give a solution as fast as you can.

This is one of the reasons why we’re planning to launch live phone support, where trained personnel will help our users to create beautiful responsive email templates. What do you think, would you use it? Does it make sense for us to deal with it?

Did we miss anything from this article? Maybe. Feel free to add your tips in the comments section!