Your customers are the essence of your business. Most business owners instinctively know this.
What many don’t know is that you have to cultivate and nurture your customers to grow your base and retain your customers.
In this article, we look at seven ways to grow your business with emails. We’ll show you how to do it and why.
Let’s look at the transactional email and the power it has to grow your business.
The Transactional Email
Transactional emails are triggered emails. They involve correspondence you send to someone based on the action your user had with your website.
For example, your customer places an online order, and he expects a confirmation in his inbox shortly thereafter. This is a transactional email.
Often times if the customer doesn’t receive your email, he’ll call customer service to find out why not.
How about when someone signs up for your email list. Do you send them a welcome email? Again, this is a transactional email.
If you aren’t leveraging the power of this type of advanced email marketing, you’re missing out on a big chance to grow your customer base.
Bottom line – a transactional email is an advanced way to send trigger-based, ultra-personalized, targeted and highly-specific emails.
You can expect your transactional emails to have high open and click-thru rates and low bounce rates. This is, after all, information that’s valuable to your customer.
How Transactional Emails Grow Your Base
First, your customers are usually happy to see these emails in their inboxes. Because they’ve done something on your website to trigger the info, they are usually expecting it.
Email marketing extends your digital reach well past your website. Your customers have invited you into the inner sanctum of their inbox, so you have a chance to deliver personal, valuable information.
Now let’s look at the seven ways to grow your customer base with emails – transactional emails.
#1: Welcome Email
Someone created an account, made a purchase, downloaded a product or signed up on your site. This is a good tie to send them a welcome email.
Welcome emails usually provide a login and password and a welcome from your company.
Take this time to say thank you and let your customers know how much you appreciate them. Send this email within an hour of the action taken.
You can also include a call to action in the welcome email. How about asking your customers to tweet or share that they joined your company?
#2: Confirmation Email
You send a confirmation email to notify your email user when the action they took on your website is complete.
This email is fairly straightforward as it’s most often a receipt for a purchase, confirmation of a reservation or a link to a download.
Confirmations have all the information your customer needs in them. It’s up to you, though, to make sure you’re getting everything you can out of the email.
You can take the space to add some additional information in your email that provides value for your customer.
Offer them helpful tips and resources. For example, if they purchased a new camera from you, direct them to your website for blogs and whitepapers on how to use it.
If they booked a room at your hotel, send them their confirmation email with a list of restaurants and things to do in the area. Include insider tips only locals know about.
#3: Newsletter Sign Up Confirmation Email
Don’t be the business who neglects to send a newsletter sign up confirmation. Many of your website visitors will be confused if you don’t.
Not only do these emails confirm their subscription, but this is your chance to let them know what to expect and to welcome them to your “family.”
Provide them a list of what you’ll send and when. Give them a brief overview of the types of information you’ll send.
If you offered them something special for joining your list, you want to provide it to them in this email.
#4: Cart Abandonment Email
Cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges facing e-retailers today, as the average abandonment rate is nearly 70{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4}.
The best way to encourage your customers to come back to your website and complete their purchase is with a transactional email.
Often, people who return to their carts spend more than they had originally planned.
The best time to send this email is within 24 hours of the abandoned cart. You can even include a special offer such as free shipping or 10{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} off to increase the odds they’ll finish their purchase.
Do put a time limit on the promo – a sense of urgency moves the process along.
#5: Birthday Email
These are easy emails to send and work to further customer loyalty by growing your customer base.
Provide a gift for your customer in this email. Think video, download or special.
#6: Customer Feedback Email
This email solicits feedback from your customer. Ask for comments on your products and services.
It lets your customers know you value their opinion.
#7: Reactivation Email
Send this email to subscribers who used to interact with you, but haven’t in a while. This email is the perfect vehicle to grow your customer base.
These emails keep your company top of mind and remind subscribers why they signed up in the first place.
To Conclude
We’ve looked at seven ways to grow your customer base with emails.
These emails are transactional emails, and they are key to your advanced email marketing strategy.
Why? Transactional emails are expected, and they encourage your users to take another action.
While some transactional emails are sent because of someone’s inaction, many more are sent because of their action.
Another word for transactional emails that grow your customer base is relationship-based emails. These emails have much higher open and click-thru rates. They also have greater revenue potential than regular emails.
It’s in your best interest to harness the power of the transactional email today. Increase your engagement opportunities with relationship-based emails and watch your customer base grow.
We’d like to leave you with one last tip. Ensure that every transactional email you send is optimized for mobile. The email must render as well on a smartphone or tablet as it does on a desktop or laptop computer.
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Image: Alexandru Tudorache