Churn rate is REAL!

And it is a pressing issue for every business that is trying to thrive in the bottleneck competition.

More often than not, you acquire customers and drive business by making them buy from you. But wouldn’t it be more rewarding if you can retain these customers and entice them to purchase from you yet again?

Retention email marketing comes into picture here. Sales efforts have 60-70 percent success rate when you are selling to existing customers. On the other hand, success rate dwindles to less than 20 percent in case of new customers.

So, what is retention email marketing?

Retention email marketing is the strategy through which businesses can re-engage the customers and strengthen their relationship with the brand by offering them the best value from the product.

Customer retention emails triggered by particular events and customer behaviors can help to amp up sales and scale your business effectively. However, most businesses fail to make the most of this opportunity.

Even if they do, they might come off as impersonal and robotic. Customers will refrain from opening emails that seem automated.

That said, let’s explore the world of retention email marketing and how you can use it to the maximum potential.

1.Send useful content to educate the customers

Repeat sales from existing customers is the key to scaling up a business. The best way to do so is educating them and making sure that they can yield the maximum benefit from your product or services. Send them relevant content that would enlighten the customers about the awesome features about your services that they might be missing out on.

2. Invite the customers to free webinars or training sessions

If you are a company dealing with complex software products, you can organize webinars and training sessions to your subscribers. By doing so, it will build trust with the subscribers and create your impression as a credible brand.

Here’s a webinar invitation email from Oracle Netsuite that would keep the subscribers engaged with the brand.

3. Build a suitable cart recovery program to bring back the cart abandoners

Cart abandonment is one of the biggest blasphemies for ecommerce industry. To overcome this challenge, you can build a cart recovery program to revive the cart abandoners and encourage them to complete the purchase.

We strongly recommend that you send a series of cart abandonment emails within the first 48 hours of the cart abandonment.

Remind the customer of their abandoned cart and entice them to finish the checkout process. In addition, you can also offer a limited-time discount to the customers. However, do not offer too many discounts lest the customers end up gamifying the system and you butt into the company’s profit margins by attracting the discount shoppers.

ASICS sends a series of two cart abandonment emails to recover their lost sales.

See how they do it.

4. Send periodic emails that inform the customers about their activity

Letting the customers know how they have been using your products and services is a great way of garnering their attention and compel them to engage with you or make another purchase. Brands like Grammarly track your activity over a period of time to help you remember their brand and inspire you to use it.

Take a look at the example below.

Such emails help in brand recall and remind the customer about availing their services.

5. Use the power of milestone emails

Send emails that celebrate the customer’s success and acknowledge their collaboration with your brand. It will make the customer feel that you care and enhance the reputation of your brand.

Take a look at the email by Uber that celebrates the third anniversary of the customer with the brand.

6. Re-engage the inactive users

Over time, it is quite likely that your customers get dormant and stop engaging with the brand. You should try to activate these idle customers by sending a re-engagement email. Create a sense of exclusivity and make the customer feel special with these emails. These emails go a long way in retaining the customers as they reflect an effort by the brand and work as a gentle reminder. Inform the customers what they are missing out on and draw their attention to making a purchase from you.

Here’s an example by QuickBooks. They send a re-engagement email according to the product behavior data. It is a winning email as it creates a strong visual appeal and sets the right expectations for the product.

7. Leverage referral email marketing

Word of mouth is one of the best ways of getting customers as well as retaining them. Offer referral bonus to the referees and referrals to drive business growth. You can promote this offer through emails and tempt the existing customers to avail the referral incentives and purchase again. It will help you achieve two objectives all at once.

DigitalOcean sends an interesting email with a GIF that would inspire the recipient to refer friends and get the referral bonus.

8. Introduce a new feature through emails

It often happens that the customer has extensively used your products and eventually stopped using them because there’s nothing new to offer. To all these bored customers, you can send an email that talks about a product launch or a new feature. It will not only arouse the customer’s curiosity but also delight them with a pleasant surprise.

See how webflow does it to announce their new feature of responsive images.

Wrapping Up

Retaining customers is a lot about the efforts you put in engaging with your existing customers. If you want your business to get more lucrative, retention email marketing is the thing for you.

Entice your existing customers to stay loyal to you – that’s the bottom line of retention emails.

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