Email remains one of the best ways to reach your customers and maintain your sales relationship. When done right, your email marketing can strengthen the bond with customers and build trust so that they want to open your messages and click on those big sales buttons.
A positive relationship helps your emails stand out, too. Because we’re all competing for inboxes that are sorting more messages and filled with more spam, having a relationship helps significantly. Let’s look at seven emails that are designed to help foster this relationship and improve overall customer lifetime values with those smiling shoppers.
1. An Honest Welcome
Welcome emails are the default for new email campaigns and new customers. They should always be there to greet the latest shopper and create a first impression of your customer service capabilities. According to studies, welcome emails generate up to 5x more clicks than other email marketing items and a majority of your audience expects them.
That high level of expectation and engagement gives you a smart opportunity to set the tone for your relationship as one of support and strength.
Like most emails, you want to keep things short and sweet, with a helpful tone. Consider including a brief statement on your company and direct steps people can take to get immediate help if they have an issue.
If you plan on providing a lot of discounts and freebies during your marketing campaigns, start with something here and make it good for their next order.
2. A Helpful Thank- You
When a customer or a customer base does something that helps your company, tell them “thanks!”
Make these emails relevant to the audience and useful, but it’s okay to gush a little if that’s your brand voice. Thank-you emails are simple but effective and ensure that your relationship has a foundation in gratitude.
For eCommerce brands, the best thank-you is the order confirmation email. Tell the customer that you appreciate their purchase, provide shipping and tracking details, and link to your customer service channels.
At the end of a marketing campaign, send another note to all these shoppers to say thanks for buying that specific product and send over a discount or share what’s coming next.
Recommended Reading: 10 Email Marketing Strategies to Improve Your Audience Engagement
Thank-you emails should feel like a friend dropping by with ice cream or someone bringing donuts and coffee to the breakroom before an early meeting.
3. The Visual Review
Seeing is believing, and trust is a cornerstone of a good relationship with your customers. So, brands looking to maintain a strong bond with their customers should include visual content with most of their emails.
However, there’s one tactic that stands out in terms of creating that positive connection. Highlight customer reviews and testimonials, either as images or embedded video, to show how and why others love your products.
Frame the link content- or education-focused emails where you’re celebrating a customer and the reason why they love what you do. You can think of it as a mini newsletter around one specific topic where a small bit of copy introduces the person and the reason they like you.
Then, get right into the user testimonial or review
Images or videos from the user themselves are perfect for these types of emails, and that allows you to leverage any social media marketing you’re doing.
4. Send a Gentle Reminder
One of the few direct sales items in our list is the cart abandonment email, which is one of the gentle reminders that you should send customers. Cart abandon emails have a lot of research and tools available to help you master timing, frequency, and other elements. What we want to look at here in terms of your relationship with your customers is your ability to be helpful.
Make your mantra for these reminders to be useful and have a light touch so that you don’t come off as overbearing or annoying. Being helpful means a short email reminder with a clear subject line and inclusion of the product. Show them what is still in their cart and offer a single link/button to click in the email to go to that cart.
Use emails and tools to provide a little nudge and move them past just window shopping. A simple, quick email with a clear image is there to remind people without getting in their face. If you want to encourage the sale more rigorously but not come off as pushy, include a coupon or discount.
Even just offering free shipping can get people moving and make this email feel like a gift, not a nag.
5. The Early Access Exclusive
Your customers want to feel special. Your company wants to sell a lot of its new products during that first week. Combine these two goals with email campaigns that provide early access to those loyal shoppers.
Recommended Reading: How to Create The Perfect Transactional Email for Your Business
Exclusive deals can keep people in the buyer’s journey and allow you to personalize with subject lines or initial text such as “An exclusive deal just for you, Jessica.”
Warm, welcoming messaging brings them in and reaffirms the positivity of the relationship, while the deal further cements that feeling that you’re on this customer’s side.
Give them the feeling of “you made the list!” so they feel like a true insider and want to learn what deal is exclusive to them. Pairing that messaging with early access to the latest product re-emphasizes that connection. Give the sales page a countdown to when the product is officially announced and you’ll build in a little positive scarcity, too.
6. Their Special Days
Customers have many extraordinary events in their own lives, some related to your company and some not. With the right data, you might be able to help them out with both.
Order management and CRM tools should track dates for purchases and any special requests or options you provide. The standard customer life event to track is a birthday. This is a perfect chance for a discount and additional sale when the customer wants to treat themselves.
Keep birthday emails fun and celebratory and use personalisation tools to include the customer’s name and keep the offer relevant.
After that one of the best things to track is when someone purchases a gift or buys from you around a specific holiday. While the tactic can feel a little personal — and you want to ensure you stay away from coming off as “creepy” — you can maintain a positive relationship by keeping the emails generic.
If someone bought jewelry as a gift last September, consider an August email that simply says, “It’s almost that time of year again” and features a picture of jewelry and a discount code.
Brands can also track when a customer makes their first purchase and provide discounts on each anniversary after. In your email marketing tools, you can even segment customers based on their activity, so if someone goes to an inactive list or a win-back campaign, you also move them to a win-back anniversary campaign.
These emails can be a low-effort way for you to raise your head up and try to renew the connection. If the relationship was strong, it could be the right reminder for the company and reason why they were a customer in the first place.
Tool tip: Hubspot marketing
7. Your Company’s Milestones
When it’s your big day and you want to celebrate, invite your customers to the party. Company milestones, such as anniversaries or a certain number of products sold or even getting retweeted by a celebrity are all big events.
They’re a perfect reason to have a little fun and say “thanks” to the customer who helped make it happen.
These emails are the perfect place to share a quick update and discount, plus a photo or two of your team. It’ll humanize your brand and invite people to be excited with you. A good coupon never hurts but be sure to specifically say why you’re sending the email to these customers.
Celebrating your milestone with a discount is a version of a “thank you” email, but without requiring anyone to have taken a recent action. They can bring customers back after an absence, too, so consider sending it out to a broad list.
Final Thoughts
Unbreakable relationships are positive ones. They’re built on mutual respect, truth, and some give-and-take.
Keep that as your focus during these emails and other campaigns. Send the emails you would want to receive from your favorite eCommerce company and let that guide you into creating a positive space for your customers.