4 tips to build customer loyalty with email

Sales is anything but a numbers game. Sending templated emails in bulk might get you a bigger reach, but you’re antagonizing most, if not all, recipients. To achieve real customer loyalty, it’s important to stop referring to leads as “prospects” and start treating them like real people. 

1. Warm it up

The first rule of cold emailing? Avoid it if you can. By creating signup overlays and double opt-ins instead, you’ll be speaking to a willing audience already interested in what you have to say. Best of all, you won’t waste time chasing after leads who may be more annoyed than anything else when they see your emails.

In essence, connecting with willing subscribers creates relationships you can build on. It’s the difference between handing out flyers and putting up a stall: one wastes everyone’s time, while the other invites people to find out more. 

Remember, having a customer provide you with their email address is a huge privilege, and it’s one that many marketers tend to undervalue. Customers are essentially saying, “OK, tell me more,” and that’s your cue to show value. It’s too great an opportunity to miss or mess up, so you best be ready to shine.  

Dig deeper: 6 ways email marketing can elevate customer engagement and loyalty

2. Say ‘thank you’

You wouldn’t show up to a dinner party empty-handed, would you? Exactly. The first thing you do when a customer welcomes you into their inbox is thank them. Start off on the right foot by giving them a special discount or free gift as a token of appreciation. This sets the tone for great things to come (and helps with sales) and enforces a crucial message: that they made the best choice by signing up. 

This crucial first welcome email (statistically, it has the highest open rate) is also a great opportunity to give a customer a brief overview of your business’s products and services. Sprinkle in a few five-star reviews, and you’re all set for a very fruitful journey.

3. Remember their name

Nothing turns a warm lead into a stone-cold face of indifference faster than treating them like a number. Customers can spot a bulk email from a mile away. There are numerous telltale signs that an email was written for no one in particular, and the biggest culprit is a lack of personalized content. 

Here’s how you can fix your generic email today:

• Start addressing a customer by their name. You don’t have to do this with every email, but knowing someone’s name immediately raises their opinion of your brand.
• Remember that you’re only talking to one customer at a time. Great orators speak to one member of the audience at a time, and it’s no different in email marketing. These words you’re reading right now weren’t written for a larger audience. They were written for YOU and you alone (or at least, they should feel that way).
• Similarly, you’ll want to make sure the customer is the hero in your journey. Subscribers don’t care what you’ve been up to this week. They care what’s in it for them. Ditch wording like, “We now have a wide range of…”, and start using, “You can now enjoy a wide range of these.” Some reframing will make the customer feel truly valued.
• Double down on segmentation. This is perhaps the most important thing any email marketer can do for a client. By dividing your audience into segments, you ensure that each recipient receives relevant information based on their age, previous purchases, location, where they are in the sales process, etc., all of which make your content more relevant to them.

Try these simple tips and watch those engagement rates hit the roof. 

Dig deeper: 4 ways to add personalization to your emails right now

4. Stay in touch

Building customer loyalty stretches far beyond purchasing. This is when the real work starts if you want to stay in business and increase your CLV.

Once a customer makes a purchase, you (like any well-mannered member of society) thank them for supporting you and give them some time to enjoy their purchase. 

Next, you’ll want to ask them if they’re satisfied with their purchase and, if they are, if they’d be willing to leave a review. This is also a great opportunity to make subtle suggestions for other products they might like (remember segmentation?). Then, it’s rinse and repeat, and pretty soon, you’ve got customers for life.

Dig deeper: Optimizing your email program: Finding sweet spots and tipping points