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What are some methods you’re using to strengthen your relationships with your customers? Phone calls? Social Media? One-on-one conversations?
Perhaps you’re wondering if there’s any point to building a relationship with your clients. But, what if I told you that strong customer relationships are fundamental to business success?
When businesses build powerful relationships with their clients, it will lead to customer loyalty and increased sales. The good news is that you don’t need to speak to every single customer face-to-face to improve your relationships. There’s a way to reach a significant amount of your customers in a flexible and cost-effective way, and it’s called email marketing!
Let’s explore how to use email marketing to build customer relationships.
Reach Out to Customers in a Non-Invasive way
When customers are always on the move, how do you build a relationship with them without overstepping your boundaries as a professional? Options like texting and calling are intrusive and it can cost you and your client time and money! With emails, you can connect with your clients when it is convenient for them.
About 91 percent of U.S. adults get their promotional emails from business. In addition, email campaigns have been found to be 40 times more effective than both Twitter and Facebook when it comes to bringing in new and returning clients.
Send personalized emails
Don’t you just love that feel-good birthday card from your favorite business? We do too. Not only does this gesture reinforce your relationship with your clients, it encourages them to continue doing business with you. According to Aberdeen, personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversions by 10%!
Combine personalized emails on special days with a birthday discount or promotion. Add a call-to-action at the end to give clients a little push to book with you. A simple message such as, “Happy Birthday, Crystal! Enjoy $20 off your next manicure service. Book your appointment today!” will work splendidly—it’s short, sweet, and straight to the point.
Optimize your emails for all devices
Let’s be real, not everyone will read their emails on a computer. In fact, 59% of email opens occur on mobile and 15% on desktop according to Adestra “Top 10 email clients” (2018). Beyond the stats, we’ve all experienced how clumsy it feels to open an email from your phone that’s meant to be viewed from a computer screen. Poorly designed mobile experiences will leave clients wondering if the business made a mistake sending the email to the wrong person. Either way, the customers’ opinion of the business will suffer.
When creating an email marketing campaign, don’t forget to double-check what your emails look like across different devices. Make this process easier for you with tools like Vagaro’s email marketing feature which allows businesses to view what their emails look like on phone, desktop, and tablet.
Automate your emails
Need to send 300 welcome and birthday emails to 300 people? Ain’t Nobody got time for that! Instead, automate your emails. Why automation? Because you’ll ensure that no client gets forgotten. Automating emails is straightforward: you set up the email once, and as clients meet the trigger you defined, the emails will send without any additional effort on your part.
The true beauty of email automation is that it can be a useful tool for lead generation, customer retention, and to get inactive clients back into the door! The secret lies in how you set up your triggers. For example, a salon can set triggers for routine hair trimmings. Knowing that it takes roughly 12 weeks before a client is due for another visit, the salon can customize “we miss you” email reminders to automatically send to the client when they surpass 12 weeks without booking an appointment. Successful businesses will create a complete customer journey with triggers from “welcome” and “instructions on how to book an appointment” emails, to “come back” and “thank you” emails.
There’s a lot of value in connecting with your audience through emails. You’re able to provide greater opportunities for your business, get a better return on your investment and build stronger relationships with your audience.
To learn more on how to use email marketing in Vagaro, click this link: How to Use Email Marketing in Vagaro.
