Keep Customers and Build Brand Love with Email: Webinar Recording + Q&A

Creating email experiences that will make your customers not only swoon, but also stay with you for the long haul can be a challenge. And it’s a challenge worth accepting. Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%. Those numbers aren’t too shabby.

In this webinar, we teamed up with Mike Nelson from Really Good Emails and Val Geisler from Fix My Churn to share email strategies on how to get customers to buy again, ask customers to come back when the time is right, and build deeper relationships through nurturing.

Didn’t have a chance to watch the webinar live? Don’t worry. You can access the full recording at any time and read the Q&A below.

Q&A

A big thank you to everyone who chimed in during the webinar with a question! Here’s a recap of our answers to the most popular questions, along with our take on some of the questions we didn’t get to during the live webinar. Have any additional questions? Please leave them in the comments.

Any thoughts on retention emails for an industry like education or healthcare—where there isn’t a tangible product, you can’t offer a trial, you can’t offer discounts, and the industry is highly regulated?

Mike Nelson: Remember why they wanted to start a relationship with you in the first place. Did they want more information about a certain service you offer? If so, has that offering changed over time? Are there certain developments or people within your organization that could keep them up to date on this? Retention isn’t about giving something of value away, but rather reminding them of the value.

How do you win back users who have unsubscribed?

Lyla Rozelle: You can use social and paid retargeting to reach people that come to your site but are no longer on your mailing list. This is where having some politely timed, worded, and placed pop-ups on your site can also bring folks back in. It helps to also start out with an email preference center so you can keep communications segmented.

For the travel industry, subscribers often do not need our info for a year or years. How do you recommend managing a re-engagement program?

Lyla Rozelle: Val and Mike both mentioned telling stories or elevating customer stories and I think this is a great tactic. For the travel industry, you can mix up the narrative and not only tell stories about grand adventures but small getaways or weekend trips to encourage more repeat travel. If customers don’t necessarily buy from you regularly, or even semi-regularly, what can you do to make your brand mean something to them in the times between? Talking to your customers and understanding from their perspective is the best way to get that information.

For retention emails, how often should you stay in contact with them, outside of newsletters and promotions?

Lyla Rozelle: This is tricky, and honestly, the best answer is: it depends. There’s not necessarily a “one size fits all” approach. It depends on how frequently customers buy or use your product, what their communication preferences are, how they use your product, seasonality, and plenty of other considerations. My best advice would be to see if there are some standards or set strategies for your industry, and if not, start testing things and create your benchmarks.

How can marketing retention efforts work for organizations with 1:1 sales?

Lyla Rozelle: You can still follow all the same principles we discussed in our session, but change up the CTAs or sender to relate back to your sales organization. For example, maybe your onboarding series comes from an Account Manager or you include an email introducing your customer’s sales or support contacts in your organization. Lifecycle touches can be initiated by sales folks and supported through email nurture, or vice versa like with a renewal or quarterly review. A good idea would be to get with your sales org and understand where in the customer journey they need help reaching folks, and see if you can’t bridge that gap.

How can nonprofits utilize winback strategies when they don’t offer a tangible product?

Lyla Rozelle: I think the strategies can remain pretty much the same, it’s just what you’re “selling” is a little different. With a non-profit, you still want to provide value, but in this case you want to show how you’re providing value with your work. Outcomes, success stories, what your nonprofit was able to achieve with your previous donation/involvement/contribution, what’s required to move forward and achieve more—all of these are proven strategies for nonprofits and none of them really differ from tangible products. All of it comes down to building a relationship and sharing things that matter.

Any advice on how to persuade leadership to get on board with these customer retention strategies?

Lyla Rozelle: Val offered some great advice—ask if you can test it! There’s nothing better than powerful data to help prove (or disprove!) your theory. Ask if you can try a tactic in a couple emails then report back and see what happens!