I found an interesting post on the Email Institute blog with tips to drive customer retention with email.
It contains some interesting insights that I would like to share with you, of course with permission of the Email Institute.
In these challenging economic times all marketers are under pressure to deliver smarter, more effective and accountable campaigns.
Acquiring new customers will always be important for long-term growth, but the demands of the economic slowdown leads to a greater emphasis on retaining existing customers and fortifying customer loyalty.
Email, in part because of its proven high levels of ROI, can and should play a part in your retention tool box.
Across the globe marketing teams are being asked to deliver more with less, and as a result are reviewing long and short term strategies so that more channels deliver on their promise of accountability.
For some time now, smart marketers have been investing more time and resources on projects that deepen their knowledge of their customer base allowing them to deliver highly targeted and therefore more cost effective campaigns; while others are playing catch up.
Here is a checklist for effective email retention campaigns
1. One size does not fit all – analyze customer data so that you can segment based on interests, previous interactions and spending patterns. By focusing on delivering relevant content to each group, you can improve response and retention rates.
2. Trusted sender address – customers are more likely to read emails from people and companies they trust, therefore your sender address must remain consistent, be branded and easily recognizable.
3. Deliver value, every time – If you are unable to clearly demonstrate the value of your email communication to either the consumer or your organisation you should not be sending it – ever.
4. Benefit-driven Subject Line – promote the direct value of your message up front so that your customers clearly know what is in it for them.
5. Key message displays in the auto-preview pane – optimize your email creative so that the benefits and main points are displayed at the top of the email, and even if your HTML creative does not render because of image blocking your message and call to action should still be clearly visible.
6. Delivery Basics – customers cannot respond to your marketing messages if they do not receive them. Make sure you are up to date with deliverability best practices to ensure your messages are not blocked by ISPs, reported as spam or delivered to the customer’s Junk folder.
Source: www.emailinstitute.com
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