We live in a connected world and amongst the many things that bonds brands with its target market, email marketing has emerged as one of the most trusted tools.
Even though it has the ability to give your customers accessibility to more than one service or product, it is not that easy to drive them down the sales funnel. And that’s where customer engagement comes into the picture.
Without great customer engagement, email content or information is of no use. If you are planning to launch your own email marketing campaign, here are some top reasons why brands are failing to engage customers through emails and tips to boost your customer engagement:
#1. Reason: Sending out TOO MANY emails
Bombarding your customers with emails not only deteriorates conversion rates, but affects engagement as well, courtesy increased email fatigue.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Streamline Email Frequency to Improve deliverability
Though it is quite vital to engage email subscribers regularly, there’s a fine line between annoying your subscribers and maintaining acceptable email frequency. A triggered email program must be used for deploying messages based on mobile consumer’s behavior. So, what do you do?
- Encourage free trial prospects & compel them to use key features.
- Entice ‘low engagement’ customers with interesting offers.
- Notify ‘loyal’ customers about special offers
Implementation of these steps will certainly give subscribers a break from series of automation emails, besides doing away with looming email fatigue syndrome.
#2. Reason: Emails serving more than one purpose
Email newsletters, can most of the times serve more than one purpose. Most brands do not follow target audience or product interest segmentation best practices while sending out email newsletters to a list of subscribers.
As a result, people with least interest in the particular product or service start disengaging with the brand and may even lead to unsubscribes.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Segment your Email Newsletter list
Email personalization has a direct impact on customer engagement. Non-segmenting your email list is like, you filling the medical information with event reminders and end up inviting them for an educational survey. Therefore, it becomes quite vital to differentiate between customers and prospects as they both belong to different levels in the buying cycle. The contacts can be well-divided by brand, industry, targeted message and interest.
Some marketers are also designing personalized emails with entirely innovative features. And the same can be enhanced with dynamic content display that keeps changing on the basis of consumer behavior.
#3. Reason: Neglecting ‘weather’ factor for more email engagement
Weather do have a significant impact on email engagement depending upon location’s environmental factors. Unfortunately, most of the companies nowadays neglect the impact it could create on email engagement.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Weather-weapon for uplifting customer email engagement
When hurricane Charlie hit America, Walmart experienced a sudden increase in marketing activity for Pop-Tarts. That resulted into a boost in sales by 15%. But, at the same time, it even affected email engagement rates significantly.
While studies have noted a noteworthy increase in customer engagement during hot weather, besides user-marked spam rate; trends depicted completely opposite results during colder weather.
In France, rainy and warmer weather both displayed increases in response rates of marketing emails from restaurants. However, higher rainfall in UK showed a negative impact. Hence, Walmart designed a weather feed and created email content in the context of current weather – witnessing noticeable uplift in email engagement henceforth.
#4. Reason: Increase in Mobile Marketplace
The use of mobile has witnessed a continuous shift mainly when it comes to research, online shopping and even accessing emails. According to a Marketing Land report, mobile clicks for email increased by 10% in 2015.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Create responsive design to align email marketing campaigns
Email marketers must adjust their marketing strategies according to the changing consumer preferences and encourage active subscribers for constant engagement – responsive email designs being one of them.
At the same time, email content and design must be contextually relevant to customers as subscribers respond to email messages that are relevant and matter to them. Moreover, contextual relevancy is much more vital for mobile ‘on-the-go’ customers as they are considered to be less patient compared to desktop users.
However, irrespective of whatever your customers’ preferred platform of communication is (e.g. Mobile, desktop), email marketers can acquire noteworthy improvement in customer engagement by delivering personalized or relevant offers.
Is your brand refraining itself from building a community over different social media platforms along with email marketing? Several brands are found to have restrained social media marketing to status update and image posting. However, social media can be used to create enhanced user experience and valuable content so as to keep both sides active & connected.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Flutter your Social Media wings along with Email Marketing
According to a Business2Community report, 90% adults between the age of 18-29 use social media to learn about recent updates from their favorite brands. It is no longer just a phenomenon or trend; but an opportunity to bridge the gap between your audience and community.
American cereal connoisseur, Cap’n Crunch used their Twitter handle as a medium to bring more engagement with men between the age of 20-30, who often have cereal as their meal.
In order to communicate directly with their target, Cap’n Crunch replied to all the brand mentions on Twitter in a jocular and unique way that amused mainstream media as well as the brand fans. In addition to this, the topic was quite trending on Twitter with #ThreeWordsSheWantsToHear for long span of time.
Synopsis: Small steps go a long way …
Get started with few of the above-mentioned customer engagement practices. Once your customers start experiencing the strategies you have employed; maintain consistency in the amendments you have made so far. Then, try enhancing it to give your customers end-to-end experience from the very first communication to all the stages customer will be going through.
Your customers will surely appreciate the exceptional experience you create for them and reward you with more engagement from their side. Have some spices to add to this discussion? We’d love to hear from you.
Images: Author’s Own
