When it comes to retention marketing tactics, marketers have dozens of channels to choose from. Social networks, paid search, remarketing ads, push notifications, in-app messages — but one of the most powerful and widely used is email marketing.
Why emails?
Customers expect their favorite brands to show up in their inboxes, so there’s less worry about annoying recipients with messages that feel intrusive. New product announcements, sales and discounts, seasonal/holiday campaigns, and loyalty program invites are all anticipated by customers who have engaged with your brand.
Email is an inexpensive way to meet customers where they are and grab their attention. Email marketing has a jaw-dropping ROI of 122%, higher than any other channel — including search and social.*
Emails are also easy to personalize for specific customer segments and an effective way to engage your most valuable customers. Segmented email campaigns have 14% higher open rates and 100% higher click-through rates than generic campaigns.*
You can experiment with A/B testing emails to learn more effective ways of engaging customers and improving results. Every click — whether it’s to convert or unsubscribe — is valuable insight into what your customers want from you. These insights can be applied to other marketing activities to hone your strategies and improve outcomes across the board.
With such compelling results, retention marketers are turning to email to increase customer LTV, average order values, and purchase frequency. But success takes more than a few email blasts.
To grow repeat sales and scale your business, you need a complete calendar of customizable customer retention emails that are triggered by specific events and user behaviors.
8 Must-Have Emails to Boost Retention + Examples
1. Welcome email
Trigger: New app download or profile registration
A new user’s interest in your app is at a high point. They’re sold on your value prop (they just signed up, after all) and are ready to explore your offering.
Welcome emails present the perfect opportunity to help new users experience your app’s value and reaffirm the benefits they’ll gain from using it. Not to mention they generate 320% more revenue* than other types of promotional emails.
Use Colombia Phone Numbers List analysis to discover what key actions lead to long-term retention: whether it’s conducting a search, purchasing a product or subscription, submitting a review, or uploading a photo. Then create specific CTAs for your welcome emails that effectively hook new users on your app’s unique value and set them on a proven path to becoming brand champions.
Pair that CTA with a compelling reason to act. Offer a personalized promo code, temporarily upgrade a subscription, extend a free trial, or provide limited-time access to exclusive features or content to nudge new users to convert into paying customers.
One clear CTA that encourages first conversion (take a class)
Copy is short and laser-focused on onboarding new users
Spotlights key features users need to know to experience value
2. Abandoned cart email
Trigger: Added item to cart but failed to transact
Abandon cart emails are not only effective, they’re also lucrative. Compared to promotional emails that are worth on average $0.02, the average abandoned cart reminder email is worth $5.46.* They boast open rates of nearly 45% and conversion rates of over 10%.*
Why so high?
Most customers expect abandoned cart emails to include some kind of special offer or promotion to entice the sale. In fact some savvy customers who fully intend to complete their purchase will purposely abandon their cart just to see what kind of goodies will show up in their inbox — free shipping? 10% off?
Other times customers are confused by a long checkout process, get distracted, go comparison shopping or hunting for discount codes — or simply changed their minds.
Whatever the reason, you can recover an average 10%* of those lost sales with effective abandoned cart emails that feature an attention-grabbing subject line, clear CTA, sense of urgency, personalized promotion, and compelling social proof.