The Power of Email Marketing: Building Customer Relationships

In today’s day and age, email marketing for small businesses stands out as a powerful tool you should be leveraging. With over 4.5 billion email users worldwide, it’s no wonder that 50% of marketers consider email marketing critical to their success. 

If you’re questioning the relevance of email marketing, let me share with you a statistic to change your mind. Email marketing has one of the highest ROI’s out of all the marketing types. For every $1 spent on email marketing, it brings a whopping $44 back. Making it one of the most effective marketing channels you can use, granted it’s done correctly.

In this blog, we’ll explore why email marketing is so effective and its importance in making, maintaining and progressing customer relationships. 

Understanding Customer Relationships

Customer relationships refer to the ongoing interactions between a business and its customers, these relationships are categorised by trust, loyalty and engagement. 

Building strong relationships, especially as a small business trying to grow is crucial. Starting and building those healthy habits when it comes to relationship building will only benefit you as your business grows. 

Strong customer relationships lead to higher customer retention rates, increased customer lifetime value and positive word-of-mouth referrals. According to research, loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase, as your happy customers will continually come back to you. 

Where email marketing differs from other forms of marketing is that it’s very personalised. It’s one-on-one messaging between you and your customers, where you can get to know them and their tastes. 

Personalised emails can significantly enhance customer engagement. According to Experian, personalised emails deliver six times higher transaction rates. 

Using past customer data from past purchases or browsing behaviour, you can tailor emails specifically for individual customers. For example, you could send recommendations on the next products to purchase based on previous purchases, to create a better experience for your customers. 

Another way of building relationships with your customers is to nurture them into their next purchases. Implementing drip campaigns, where your emails are automatically sent to customers can guide them into their next purchase, granted the right audience research has been done. 

Engagement Strategies

Segmentation is a great way to get better engagement out of your audience, as you can tailor your message better to them. You can segment your list by demographics, purchase history or engagement levels. 

For example, you could send exclusive offers to loyal customers and new subscribers. This makes your customers feel as though they are part of a community with your company, improving your engagement rates. 

Feedback loops are another great way to get information on the weak sides of your business. You can encourage feedback through surveys or polls, this shows that you value your customer's opinions and opens up insights on their needs from your business. 

Have consistent communication with your audience, don’t just go dark. Keeping up your audience with newsletters or monthly updates keeps your brand in the back of your audience's mind. 

Make sure your communication always has something valuable to offer your customers whether it be new information or just offers on items!

Building Trust Through Transparency

A great way to build trust with your audience is with honesty and authenticity. 

Be transparent about our business practices, including how you handle customer data and privacy concerns. Finding a company that’s honestly honest is hard to find. Being authentic as a brand makes it easier for customers to build trust with you. 

A fun way to humanise your brand is to show behind-the-scenes work, what happens when no one is watching? 

According to HubSpot, 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than ads. Ads get annoying for customers, so be sure to utilise this special type of marketing. 

Benefits of Email Marketing 

1. High Return on Investment (ROI): as mentioned earlier, email marketing has the highest ROI out of any other type of marketing channel. With the potential to earn, $30 to $44 for every dollar spent. According to Constant Contact, 60% of consumers say they’ve purchased as a result of a marketing email they received. 

2. Improved Customer Retention: Email marketing is essential for nurturing existing customer relationships, sending targeted retention emails can maintain engagement with existing customers and encourage repeat purchases. Businesses that focus on customer retention often see improved customer lifetime value as retaining existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones. 

3. Building Brand Awareness and Recognition: Regularly sending emails helps keep your brand top-of-mind for customers. By consistently providing valuable content, businesses can enhance brand recognition and loyalty. 

4. Flexibility and Versatility: The nice thing about email marketing is that it doesn't have to be one form of content, it can be many different types. It could be newsletters, promotional offers, product updates, and educational content. This type of versatility allows you to shape your message to best suit your customers. 

Building a Targeted Email List

Now We’ve covered roughly what it is, how to build relationships and the benefits of email marketing. Let’s move into how we can build our email list and why it matters. 

Emails, unlike other forms of marketing, ensure users actually want to receive messages from your company, due to certain laws in parts of the world, users have to opt in to get marketing emails from you, so if they opt in it’s because they want to hear what you have to say. 

Now, how can you build your list? Here's how:

• Offer incentives for sign-up: Offering incentives such as discounts, exclusive offers or free resources can significantly increase the amount of sign-up rates. For example, providing a discount code for first-time sign-ups is a great way to encourage users to join your list. 
• Utilising Pop-ups and Forms: Implementing strategically placed pop-ups or sign-up forms on your website can capture visitor information effectively. Ensure these forms are user-friendly and clearly state the benefits of subscribing. 
• Create actual valuable content: If you create content that people actually want to see and learn, you’ll have no problems gaining subscribers. It also encourages word-of-mouth promotion if it’s that good!

That concludes this blog, in which I hope you learnt something useful. If you want to learn more about email marketing, consider reading another one of our email marketing blogs. (link) 

And if you feel email marketing is the move for your business, get in touch with us and book a call, no sales jargon just a chat with our Founder Matt!