When B2B marketers think about using email campaigns, they often think about using them for lead gen. We all know that email marketing is one of the best mediums in terms of ROI for acquiring new customers; however, customer acquisition can be more costly than retaining and nurturing existing customers.
Businesses always need a new supply of leads, but in this blog, we look at how email marketing can help to retain customers and keep them spending regularly and give you some ideas for your own campaigns.
Onboarding & Education
Email marketing can be used to help customers learn how to use and get the most from your services or products.
When customers get the full experience and understand how to get the most benefits from what you offer, your product or service becomes an invaluable and ingrained part of their business, which leads to repeat spending or contract renewals.
Campaign Idea:
Signed up a new customer or won a new contract? Set up a drip campaign to welcome them and tell them what they can expect. In a series of emails over a designated time period you can set expectations for your working relationship and signpost clients and customers to help resources that they might find useful.
This is also a great opportunity to digitally introduce them to their account manager or key members of the team they will interact with.
Already have a newsletter? Use these onboarding emails as a way to get more people to set their email preferences which should have a positive effect on your email open and click through rates.
Customer Training
By reminding customers regularly of any benefits they get, or refreshing their memory with tips on how to use products through email you can also help customers to better help themselves which can save you money and time.
By using email marketing automation you can also make sure relevant product or service information is delivered at just the right time.
Campaign idea:
Use date milestones or if you can, base automated emails on set customer activity triggers to send helpful tips or handy hints.
This could be reminding them that they are entitled to an account review or check up, that they have access to a priority level of support, or simply direct them to any free collateral or support material that you have available.
Constant Communication
Emails are an easy way to quickly share important information. They are no substitute for account manager communication, but if you need to share information to a wide audience, within less than 30 mins you can have a campaign on its way to inboxes with Edge.
Emails are also a handy way to prompt re-engagement and remind previous customers that you are still around.
Campaign idea:
Email newsletters are still a popular way to broadcast updates to your customer base. With so many people using their mobile device to view emails, make sure your email newsletter is optimised for mobile.
With Marketscan Edge this is effortless as our email templates are responsive as standard. You can also use a clever feature that allows you to control which content is shown on a mobile device verses desktop.
Surveys & testimonials
Email campaigns are also useful for obtaining customer insight and feedback. Emails can be a great vehicle for sending surveys, or for asking for feedback and reviews.
Again, by using automation you can ensure that your survey or request for a review gets routed to the right segments of your database and that follow up reminders can be sent with ease.
Campaign idea:
Get regular customer insights by sending short polls or pulse surveys to segments of your database. Ask them to tell you about their challenges, or how they are finding sales/lead gen in their industry. You can then use the results to tailor your services, support or marketing campaigns to speak to these insights, helping to keep your customers happy.
Customer appreciation
Last but by no means least, email marketing can help you to make sure your customers feel appreciated.
Happy customers tend to be loyal customers, and by setting up a seasonal email campaign or nurture drip campaign you can make sure to let your clients and customers know that you value their custom.
Campaign idea:
With Marketscan Edge you could create an appreciation email drip campaign that celebrates customer milestones such as the number of orders/order value, or length of loyalty.
Again using automation you could send out rewards or discounts to promote continued loyalty for different customer groups.
Hopefully this blog has given you some food for thought about how you could use email marketing to support your customer retention goals.
Want to give any of these ideas a try? Get in touch to talk through how we can help you bring your email marketing campaigns to life with Marketscan Edge.
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