Generating Customer Loyalty Through Email

A well-rounded email marketing program is about much more than hard-hitting discount campaigns. In fact, when you are creating and fine-tuning your email marketing plans, you should only pepper your messaging with aggressive sales promotions. These days, the email subscriber has control. They know what they want, and although they do want discounts, they don’t want to be hit over the head with them.

Today’s email subscriber is looking for a relationship with their favorite brands. They want to interact (albeit on their terms!) with you — they want to learn about you and tell you about themselves. So, as you build your email marketing program, be sure to think about ways to build not just sales, but subscriber loyalty and engagement as well.

Top 5 Ways to Build Email Subscriber Loyalty:

1. Be Interesting

Don’t just send out the same exact email over and over — change things up! Stay true to your brand guidelines and messaging of course, but don’t be afraid to try new things. Give interesting offers, promote a wide mix of products and experiment with different templates so that you can present your message in a fresh way every time. You know what YOU like to see in your own inbox — your subscribers feel the same way.

2. Be Relevant

You wouldn’t talk to your grandma the same way you’d talk to your teenage nephew, right? Nope, you would speak to each of those people differently since they have different interests and different perspectives and they will engage with you in different ways. Same goes for your email marketing. Subscribers should be treated in a specific way depending on what they purchase (or don’t purchase), as well as their level of engagement with your emails and overall brand. Relevant messaging goes a long way to building loyalty.

3. Get Personal

C’mon, admit it. You like it when everybody knows your name. (At least Norm from Cheers did!) Seriously though, personalizing your email messages is a great way to increase subscriber loyalty — not to mention, increase your messages’ open and click-through rates as well. Adding in dynamic message elements in your subject line or message content is a proven way to increase engagement, and can easily be done through most email service providers.

4. Reward Them

If you want to increase loyalty, you must make it worthwhile for subscribers to BE loyal. Special discounts or first-look offers sent exclusively to email subscribers will keep them engaged with your program. After all, who doesn’t like to feel special?!

5. Be Social

Interacting with subscribers through social media is a great (and free!) way to build engagement and brand loyalty. Your email footers should always have your social media icons on them, but take it a step further and incorporate social into your email content. Promote a Facebook contest through an email campaign, or highlight new products on Pinterest boards, called out in a special “Pin-worthy” email. When working to create subscriber loyalty, socialize to your heart’s content!

Have you found other ways to build email subscriber loyalty for your small business? Let us know in the comments below.