In our first post in the Navigating the inbox series, we looked at the value of a welcome series for your email marketing efforts. Once you’ve welcomed a consumer to your brand, it’s time to both earn and sustain their loyalty leveraging email.
Loyalty goes beyond points, it is an entire experience between a brand and a customer and email is a big driver of that relationship. The ability to recognise the customer and their needs and wants from the brand at any moment in time is an expectation that consumers have today. Brands see all activity, across channels and over time and bringing that knowledge into the conversation with any customer is critical but even truer for your loyal customers.
So how can you leverage email to drive and support customer loyalty? Following are some tips, tricks and considerations:
These are your best, most loyal and most engaged customers – loyalty doesn’t have to start and stop with a loyalty program so be sure to recognise them through your email efforts. Also look at email engagement and purchase behaviour as a way to identify other loyal customers to woo.
Loyal customers have a deep expectation that you know them, sometimes even better than they know themselves. Content cannot be generic. Messaging needs to be hyper-personalised and relevant to the individual.
Get predictive. Based on what you know about the customer you may be able to determine what (or when) their next logical purchase or engagement may occur. Help lead them there.
Everyone loves a surprise – periodically show your gratitude for loyal customers with special treats or offers – just for them – and not just on their birthday.
Loyalty information needs to be accurate – points are like currency and no one wants to see their balance wrong. Leverage live content to serve both a timely and accurate experience through email.
Every relationship has its special days to celebrate – anniversaries, birthdays the first time you met – acknowledge them and celebrate together.
Hearing the customer doesn’t end with the welcome series, you need to continue and learn about the customer over time, hearing their feedback and incorporating it at every stage of the relationship. But the most loyal customers don’t feel talked at – they feel heard.
