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Email Marketing

How to Use Email for Improved Customer Retention

Despite the quantity of spam sent by companies attempting to sell their products and services direct to consumers, the marketing technique still proves beneficial to B2B organizations seeking not only to acquire new customers, but to retain their existing ones. Your existing customers are proven customers; they have completed purchases at some point in the future and possess the potential to repeat purchase.

To improve your customer retention through email, consider the following:

  • Gain Permission– Don’t send your current customer base a ton of marketing emails without first gaining their permission to contact them using this format. To do this, include an opt-in box either on your printed order forms or as customers place orders online. You can always gain permission the old fashioned way as well- just ask

 

  • Target your Email Mailings– Don’t send the same marketing messages and emails to every customer. Target your email content to specific groups of customer types. You will gain more success if the content you send is tailored to the customer’s specific needs and buying preferences.

 

  • Leverage Email Mailing Varieties– Consider the following approaches when developing customer email mailings: monthly or quarterly update emails (i.e. industry updates, product/service updates, company announcements and company news), newsletters (include articles, letters from organizational leaders, industry news, announcements, etc.), promotional emails related to a customer’s prior purchases (i.e. offer accessories or service plans for recent purchases), notification emails (i.e. upcoming service dates, upcoming product launches, current promotions), and promotional blasts (i.e. direct sales emails about products and services, discounts and coupons or specific sales events coming up).

 

  • Develop a Content Database– Collect information, articles, blogs, etc for future email launches to reduce the work required for each email mailing. Consider modular content; information that can be utilized in a variety of formats (i.e. newsletters, announcements, etc.) to reduce the time commitment. And, pre-load an automatic email delivery system in advance for greater program efficiency.

 

  • Track Email Performance– Track who responds to your email messages as well as any direct links included in the content and/or pages they click through on your company’s website. By understanding the successes and failures of your email marketing campaigns, you can better tailor future messages to gain the type of response rate you are seeking.

Emails serve a variety of purposes in the B2B market; to communicate with prospects, to respond to prospect/client emails, to sell directly and to improve customer retention rates. When launched correctly, email can add tremendous value to your organization’s bottom line.

 


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