As a direct channel of communication that is chosen by customers and highly customizable, email plays a central role in any loyalty strategy. But it’s not enough to just send emails in bulk and at regular intervals to ensure effectiveness. A well-considered email strategy that reflects best practices in CRM and with high-value content is essential for generating positive interactions and strengthening loyalty.
In this article, we’ll take a look at why email marketing remains an essential channel for companies. We’ll also analyze the reasons some programs fail and the key factors for success, and we’ll describe how to design personalized experiences that promote positive engagement by applying best practices.
Summary
● Email: A privileged channel for strengthening customer loyalty
● Why do some email programs fail?
● The five elements of a successful email marketing program
● How to create personalized experiences to generate positive engagement
● Creating winning email strategies and tactics
● Best practices for creating positive engagement
Email: A privileged channel for improving customer loyalty
Email is a personalized communication channel that lets companies stay in close contact with their customers. It offers excellent return on investment (ROI) and is considered by consumers to be less invasive than online advertising.
By automating emailing campaigns, companies can not only personalize their messages based on the data they have collected through consumer consent, but also adapt messages to each customer to offer a personalized experience that is more likely to lead to conversion.
A recent study by Marigold (a leading solution in omnichannel marketing) also indicated that consumers find personalized emails to be useful for their experience with a brand:
- 50% of consumers made a purchase from an email during the past year
- 78% state they are likely to engage with personalized emails containing offers that are adapted to their interests
- 68% appreciate receiving an email reminder that they still have products waiting in their shopping carts
Although email has largely been replaced by social media for interactions with friends and family, it remains very important for marketing performance and constitutes an indispensable element of the marketing mix. Its opportunities are even greater given that this channel is too often under-optimized.
Why do some email programs fail?
Email marketing programs have many advantages for companies and are highly favourable to automation. However, if they are not well coordinated, they may fail for a number of reasons.
The lack of a strategic approach based on customer insights and campaigns as well as flawed omnichannel coordination are very often the cause of a program that doesn’t produce the desired results.
“Spray and pray” targeting should also be avoided. Overly general content addressed at an entire email list is likely to miss the target and fail to arouse any interest amongst customers… or even worse, generate unsubscribes.
This is often the case when another factor comes into the picture: very little use of customer insights. By this we mean scarce use of information on customer behaviour (purchase, browsing), their profile (socio-demographic), and preferences. Basically, by not taking advantage of these data to personalize the experience, companies risk being irrelevant and missing out on a big opportunity to effectively engage their audience. To captivate subscribers’ attention, it’s crucial to personalize messaging based on the preferences and specific needs of each customer segment, as well as their stage in the customer journey (product and solution discovery, purchase and post-purchase phase, etc.).
A lack of specialized resources as well as intra- and inter-departmental collaboration can limit a company’s ability to develop highly personalized email campaigns that perform well.
Limitations related to the collection and integration of data, as well as the technical hurdles associated with their use, can also compromise the quality and relevance of emailing campaigns, thereby reducing their effectiveness.
The five elements of a successful email marketing program
To ensure the success of an emailing program, you need the right ingredients. Here are the elements we usually find at companies that have successfully implemented emailing strategies.
A marketing team with a data-driven culture
It’s essential for teams to take a positive view of emailing and to measure its impact on business results and customer retention. An approach focused on marketing automation lets companies easily evolve within this changeable environment without monopolizing resources for campaign management. In addition, not being afraid to experiment and adopting an approach focused on added value for customers are key elements for becoming and remaining effective.
Collection and use of marketing data
The collection and use of primary data is indispensable to the success of an emailing program, given that email relies mainly on the data you collect and use in your emailing platform, as opposed to digital advertising, which mostly relies on data from third-party platforms.
Continual acquisition of email audiences and data throughout the journey is essential for enriching a 360 view of the customer and personalizing their experience during every interaction.
While access to data has long been an obstacle to the success of emailing programs, current technologies make using data for campaigns a lot easier.
High-value messages for customers
A program producing high-value content for subscribers is necessary to create engagement. Messages must be relevant, personalized, and sent at the right time (based on the customer’s context) to maximize impact. An overly generic message sent to an entire list will generate little engagement amongst customers.
Omnichannel coordination
To maximize the effectiveness of emailing campaigns, you need to understand email as an integral component of a strategic marketing campaign and customer experience.
When used to complement other communication channels, email performs much better than when used alone. For example, an email can be accompanied by a text message to ensure the message reaches the customer. Similarly, a retargeting media campaign can be strengthened by emailing, or a push notification can be followed by an email to maintain engagement.
This complementarity lets you multiply your points of contact and increase your chances that the message will be seen and considered by the customer. For example, if a customer doesn’t notice an email, a text message may attract their attention or even serve as a reminder. By coordinating these various channels, you can create a more cohesive and engaging customer experience.
Putting together a team
A dedicated, specialized team, composed of people with CRM, UX, content, and IT backgrounds, is often indispensable to succeed, since operationalizing and maintaining an emailing strategy involves technological, analytics, experiential, and marketing components. Luckily for SMEs, once the fundamentals have been put in place, these programs can be maintained and optimized by people with more generalist profiles during the growth phase.
As with many areas of marketing, what’s essential is guaranteeing an effective synergy between your marketing, customer service, product, IT, and legal departments in order to coordinate the main components of your strategy.
How to create personalized experiences to generate positive engagement
To achieve company objectives, emailing strategies must generate positive engagement amongst the target. As previously mentioned, a lack of personalization is too often a factor contributing to failure. Before you can create a personalized experience, you first have to collect and analyze customer transaction and browsing data as well as preferences in order to be able to adapt the messages you send.
Once you have obtained solid insights, you need to consider three essential elements to generate positive engagement.
Targeting
Audience segmentation is essential to a successful emailing program. By creating segments with different needs and preferences, you can adapt the messages and content you offer to provide a tailored experience to each segment and promote positive engagement. It’s also important to avoid overloading recipients with emails. Sending too many messages will produce an inverse effect, with targeted people becoming disengaged given that content is being sent too frequently.
The content experience
To hit the mark, content must offer the customer high added value. Whether it’s a generous offer, inspiring content, exclusivity, or even a useful service, the most important element when crafting messages is the value proposition—what you are offering recipients.
To enhance this offer, it’s also important to ensure you use a design and tone that are adapted to those customers and which are coherent with both the brand’s positioning and other channels (especially the web). In the same vein, applying best practices in accessibility is another important element that should guide your design of the email in order to provide an optimal customer experience for all audiences. For example, you need to consider the size of the various elements (titles, paragraphs, and images), how buttons are constructed, and the technical elements relating to accessibility—in short, everything that will help targeted audiences easily consume the content. If you would like further information on this topic, we’ve put together a summary of the main principles and best practices in accessibility for emailing in an article.
Finally, to offer relevant content, personalization must be integrated while taking the segmentation of your markets into account (for example, customers for products A, B, and C), what information belongs to which customer (member or non-member of a loyalty program, customer value), their purchase history with the brand, and their recent behaviour (site visit, in-store purchase, contest participation, etc.), and even seasonality.
Time of sending
In order to maximize the relevancy of your message, it’s crucial to send it at the right time so the message will be relevant when the target receives it. This can be accomplished by programming when you send emails based on a calendar, which is often aligned with content strategies and promotions, either at regular intervals or based on events, or even by sending messages when specific events occur in the customer life cycle.
By combining your knowledge of your clientele with these three elements, you’ll be able to establish a well-coordinated emailing program that will maximize customer loyalty.
Creating winning email strategies and tactics
There are several relationship strategy tactics that you can use in your emailing program. Some emerging trends and established practices are essential for promoting engagement amongst your target. Among them, loyalty programs, the use of customer data platforms, automated emails, and personalization are tactics that have proven their worth.
● Loyalty programs: A loyalty program offers exclusive advantages that encourage customers to make a purchase. Customers earn points or advantages every time they purchase, which drives them to return in order to earn even more rewards. A well-designed loyalty program creates an emotional connection between the customer and the brand, which strengthens satisfaction and loyalty in the long term. This is why it’s important to integrate your emailing program with specific content and points of contact to attract new members to the loyalty program, integrate them effectively (notably through an automated sequence of emails), and encourage them to use their points and advantages.
● Automated emails: These are a key part of your strategy to strengthen customer experience and loyalty. Although they are often neglected because they contain few marketing elements, such as with purchase confirmation emails, they do solidify the recipient’s connection to the brand.
To learn more about automated email sequencing, I recommend taking a look at our article Design a Series of Welcome Emails to Maximize Subscriber Engagement and Retention. It covers a number of essential strategic elements when implementing an automated emailing program.
● Customer data platform (CDP, or also known as a single customer repository (SCR)): This is an essential tool for understanding consumers and effectively exploiting data for emailing. CDPs enable the centralization of all information relating to a customer to personalize their experience. While most emailing platforms offer features that are similar to a CDP, such as customer profile attributes, they are often limited in terms of data analysis, processing, and native integration with other technologies like data warehouses and advertising platforms.
● Personalization: With the help of the data that have been collected, you can personalize your emails based on a customer’s stage in the buyer’s journey, sociodemographic attributes, and preferences.
In the example below, you will see two versions of a personalized email from the SAQ that uses data collected from its Inspire program to recommend content adapted for various buyer profiles.
Best practices for creating positive engagement
Whatever strategies and tactics you plan to implement, always keep these basic principles in mind when creating emails to build trust, trigger an action, and promote loyalty.
Pay attention to the email envelope
An email subject line must attract attention and incite interest in order to generate a good open rate. This means you need to:
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Personalize the sender name depending on the email type. Example: H&M uses “H&M Fashion News” as the sender name for its marketing emails.
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Have an enticing offer. Example: Up to 30% off your favourites this summer.
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Add emojis. Example: 💝 A gift to pamper your better half
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Add personalization with a first name, purchase history, or visit history. Example: Lucie, that HOOKÉ jacket is still here if you want it!
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Use a question in the subject line. Example: Ready for an adventure, Lucie?
Optimize the body of the email to promote engagement
Be simple and clear in your communications. Create a desire and incite the reader to take an action by using proven persuasion techniques, such as FOMO (fear of missing out), which encourages customers to not miss out on an enticing offer. Sharing customer reviews also strengthens trust and has a positive influence on purchase decisions. Ensure that the email design and its message are impeccable.
Design page footers to satisfy your readers to the very end of the message
You need to satisfy your readers to the very end of the message by offering alternative content and facilitating access to browsing the site, as well as unsubscribing or updating their email preferences.
More best practices in email
To help you with creating your campaigns, we’ve provided a summary and some illustrations of best practices in email campaign strategy in this article: Optimize Your Email Campaigns by Applying Best Practices.
Adviso assists with optimizing your email marketing strategy
In a world in which consumers are more and more demanding and less and less faithful, exploiting the full potential of your emailing program is indispensable for effectively promoting customer loyalty. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with our loyalty and email experts to get advice on defining and implementing your strategies.
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