Five ways marketers can improve customer experience through email

Marketing is all about personalisation. If your customers receive inappropriate communications, they’re likely to switch off and take their business elsewhere. Today, consumers expect the way brands speak to them to be tailored to their past habits and preferences; after all, they’re the ones with the buying power.

Of course, the ultimate goal of a more personal, tailored and relevant service is to provide a superior customer experience (CX). Research from thinkJar found that 55 per cent of customers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed good experience, while 86 per cent are willing to pay more for an upgraded experience. Air travel and hospitality are examples where upselling can generate incremental revenue and bolster customer loyalty. Here are five simple tips to ensure the road to improved CX is a much smoother one.

Define your audience

It’s important to stay engaged with your customers, but you need to do this in a strategic way. There’s no use sending batch emails to your entire contact list and hoping that the message will resonate with everyone. This is where the significance of segmentation becomes clear. Identify your key segments – based on anything from last order date and value to location and gender – and use all the data you have to understand what those contacts want and need. This will enable you to develop and send relevant communications, which provide people with real value.

Create great content

Without this your message will get nowhere. Even if every email is easy on the eye, if the content is not engaging then you run the risk of your messages being deleted and unopened in the future. The average consumer has between 10 and 20 brands vying for their attention in their inbox every day – so it’s crucial that the content you send makes your email stand out from the crowd.

Send more, but send better

It’s essential to keep your customers engaged with your business, and a great way to do this is to simply send better email, more often. While sending lots of emails may seem counterintuitive to providing a more personalised service, using automation technologies and continually developing a segmentation strategy means that as the volume of email goes up, so too does the relevancy of each communication.

Test and refine

Everyone understands the importance of measuring the success or failure of specific campaigns – it’s just as important for email as it is for PR or advertising. It’s also okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. By A/B testing campaigns, you can understand what works and what doesn’t. If you get a large number of unsubscribes from a certain campaign, for example, then it’s time to change your strategy – perhaps by varying the time of day you send your emails, the number of emails you send per day or even how your communication looks to the recipient. By measuring the impact of a campaign while it’s running, marketers can change certain aspects quickly and stamp out potential issues before running into bigger problems.

Be visible across many platforms

In this digital age, customers use an ever-increasing number of platforms to communicate with brands. This means that while email is the glue that holds together any marketing campaign, it must be part of a wider multichannel strategy. Businesses need to be visible and active across a number of touchpoints, and ensure they portray a consistent message across all of them. Additionally, using different channels gives marketers the opportunity to target different types of potential customers – for example, using LinkedIn can mean you’re on the radar of a more professional audience.

One company that has put these steps in place is e-commerce lifestyle brand Dormify, which has a main target audience of students. It employs a number of forward-thinking techniques to enhance CX, including using internet memes as email subject lines and catchphrases from famous Snapchat users. A human component is added to virtually every part of the buying process, such as by enabling customers to live-chat with designers and tweet questions. Staying relevant and adding a personal touch has ensured Dormify has nearly doubled website conversions since automating its email, while building a loyal audience that is not only engaged but also ‘street smart’.

Today, customers expect a more personalised experience from start to finish. This means that CX must be at the heart of your business and, by following these tips, your prime communication channel will be on the path to success.