Building customer loyalty with online email marketing
Building customer loyalty should be a core marketing objective. Retailers invest heavily in retail marketing ideas to attract customers and sometimes neglect the fact that customer loyalty and retention email campaigns can provide the best return on investment.
This series of email marketing campaign guidance blogs on how to create the best retail emails to maximise customer loyalty covers a vast area. We’ve divided it into the sections listed further down this page, and will regularly add to them. If you are a retailer wondering how to do email marketing, bookmark this page to benefit from all our email marketing ideas and find out how to produce the best retail emails.
Part Three:
Building an Email Campaign
Tips for Customer Loyalty Email Campaigns
Learning how to do customer loyalty email marketing has never been so important. Retail newsletters are one method of increasing customer engagement. They market your products and services to your customers when they are:
- not in your shop
- not looking at your window display
- not browsing your website (if you have one).
If retailers don’t use customer loyalty email marketing campaigns, how else can they reach out to communicate with their customers when they’re thinking about other things?
Fortunately, building customer loyalty systems is largely automated, from initial sign-up to providing a physical branded card, to building a contact database containing business intelligence that will apply to your loyalty email campaigns.
Customer retention email campaigns have become a fact of life for many retailers, as fewer customers have physically gone out to shop on the high street since the start of the 2020 pandemic. For many people, shopping is no longer the enjoyable pastime it used to be. Retail newsletters enable shops to run outbound email marketing campaigns.
“Retail newsletters are one method of increasing customer engagement. They enable you to market your products when your customers can’t come into your store.”
Retail email marketing tips for beginners
We know that some business owners who adopt our customer loyalty card systems are new to building customer loyalty through email campaigns, so here are some helpful tips.
Lead your customers’ eyes through your retail emails
The best retail emails guide the reader’s eyes as they scan down your email. Start with your product or service benefits, to create desire and help hold the reader’s attention.
Don’t go into too much detail
Make sure your retail email campaign content is always easy to visually scan and understand. People don’t want to read huge amounts of text, and rarely read every word.
Remember, customers receive emails on phones, iPads AND computers
Make sure your customer loyalty email marketing template design is responsive, so your emails display nicely on both computer screens and mobiles.
Add a call to action (CTA)
Don’t forget to pepper your retail email content with calls to action – in other words, tell your reader what to do if they’re interested in your topic, e.g. click through to a web page, contact you, or take part in an online survey.
If you have a website, you can ask them to click through to ‘for more information’ links to relevant web pages or ‘buy now’ links if you have e-commerce. If you don’t have a website, your call to action could use your email address and phone number.
Including traditional contact details in retail emails is important because most bricks-and-mortar shops have a number of customers who are unlikely to buy online.
“Make sure your customer loyalty email marketing template design is responsive, so your emails display nicely on both computer screens and mobiles.”
Balance retail email marketing content
Different target audiences have different preferences and behavioural profiles. However, you need to start somewhere, so we suggest you start with around 60% text and 40% images. Each time you complete an online email marketing campaign, study the results and make one tweak per email campaign.
Use space in email marketing
If your retail email newsletter content is too cramped, you will put readers off. Don’t be afraid to use blank space to divide topics and images for a much cleaner look. This helps the reader subconsciously organise their thoughts when scanning through your retail newsletter.
Organise your email marketing campaign content well
Put your most important topic first. You can identify this by putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. Think about what is most likely to make them interact. Use subheadings to break up and clearly label the content. Delete anything that might be confusing – it’s unappealing.
If you have a vitally important piece of news that doesn’t necessarily require interaction, send it out in a dedicated email campaign. Good examples of standalone news items that need their own emails are:
- you’re moving premises
- somebody has acquired your business
- you’re temporarily or permanently closing.
Do you need assistance with your marketing?
This blog gives you a tiny taster of what’s behind retail email marketing. It’s a vast subject and is a service we offer our customer loyalty system clients when they sign up to our email marketing campaign broadcasting and management tools.
If you have one of our systems and need marketing help, please contact us for more information.