A Customer Retention Email Guide to Build Strategy

In today’s competitive business environment, retaining customers is paramount to sustained success. Email marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing existing customer relationships, driving engagement, and fostering loyalty. In this guide, we will delve into effective strategies and provide real-world examples to help you craft a compelling customer retention email strategy.

Whether you’re looking to reduce churn, increase customer lifetime value, or enhance brand loyalty, this guide will equip you with actionable tips and inspiring examples to elevate your customer retention efforts through email marketing.

What are Customer Retention Emails?

Customer retention email marketing is a popular and widely used form of email marketing. The main objective of retention emails is to make sure that the customer is satisfied and engaged. Usually, businesses send out these emails with a view to:

• Re-engage old consumers
• Familiarize users with how to get the best out of their services and products
• Highlight the audience’s importance to a business

All in all, customer retention emails help you translate your audiences into loyal fan bases by allowing you to build everlasting customer relationships. Now, it is crucial to understand why you should send customer retention emails.

Why Should You Send Customer Retention Emails?

Customer retention emails come under re-engagement emails but follow a slightly different approach. Sending customer retention emails is indeed the cheapest and easiest way of retaining customers, as email is the most cost-effective and recognized way to reach out to your audience.

Almost 80% of retailers consider email to be the best medium for retaining customers. Moreover, email marketing software enables you to automate emails —making customer retention as easy as possible. Thus, there’s no excuse to avoid sending customer retention emails.

How to Create A Customer Retention Email Strategy

1. Identify Customers Who are About to Churn

Customers who don’t get value from your product will likely get churn. For instance, this could be a paying customer who last logged in a while ago or a user who has yet to switch to pay because they haven’t engaged with your product.

Whatever the reason is, the user isn’t getting any benefit from your product, so you must send a personalized customer retention email that helps them understand the value.

It would help if you had welcoming and onboarding emails to assist new customers in understanding your product use cases. Still, if someone needs more encouragement, reach out to them individually with an offer to help them overcome problems.

2. Understand What’s Working for Existing Customers

Do you know happy customers are the best referrals? Not only that, but they are also the best sources for understanding what makes your product valuable.

As you receive feedback from users, which you should be doing regularly, pay attention to your software features and the business aspects that they appreciate the most. This will give you a starting point for messaging customers at risk of churning. 

3. Communicate Product Value Clearly

Whenever you communicate with your customers, especially those who are at the risk of churning, you should clearly convey what makes your product valuable. Make sure that your customers know which pain points you are trying to solve and what stands you apart from the competition.

Moreover, tell them how to find resources to help them unlock the potential of your product so that they can make the most value from it. Keep reminding them of the value they’re getting from your product.

4. Keep A Consistent Cadence

Your retention email strategy isn’t about how often you send out emails and follow-ups. Frequency can be part of it, but cadence also refers to why you should send out emails, what sorts of emails, and what triggers them.

Whether it’s standard onboarding emails crafted to get the user up to speed, cart abandonment emails, or emails to reach out when they’ve been inactive for a while, your customers should know when to expect an email from you. 

5. Get Your Subject Line Right

Your email can only be helpful in retention if your customer opens it. Subject lines play a significant role in whether an email is opened or instantly deleted. Make sure to keep subject lines short.

Consider clearly communicating your message in the subject line and, if possible, selling your product’s value. But always be moderate in your subject. The subject line should be easily digestible and engaging. 

6. Build Feedback Loops

As we mentioned earlier, you should use positive feedback from your happy customers to guide your messaging to customers at risk of churning.

Making feedback loops is crucial to understanding what makes your product valuable and why people churn. Make sure you regularly ask all customers on your email list for feedback.

Still, those who churn can provide the most helpful input because they’ll tell you which areas of your product or service require attention and modification.

7. Test & Iterate

The most crucial aspect of the customer retention email strategy is the testing and refining. It’s essential to test and iterate, and it’s part of the process.

Therefore, using customer retention software will let you track your churn and measure the effectiveness of your retention strategy.

You’ll have data on what works and what doesn’t, so you can make adjustments as required. Allow time for things to progress and settle before making adjustments. 

8. Optimize with Templates

Email marketing offers much personalization, but you often convey the same things to different customers. Thus, templates let you create the same basic message but personalize it to distinct people or varying use cases.

This saves you time preparing customer retention emails and makes it easy to refine and tailor your messaging from the subject line, body, and email signature during the testing and iteration portion. 

5 Customer Retention Email Examples

1. Asana 

Asana’s product is all about supporting teams to work together. In their welcome email, they notify customers that they’ve joined their team of workers and the Asana team.

This first email is brief, concise, and designed to match Asana’s branding perfectly. It wastes no time before presenting users with the first three steps they should take, letting them quickly get value out of the product without wasting time trying to figure out how to utilize it.

2. Zapiers

Users usually sign up for a free trial and forget about it. When that happens, the trial may end without them realizing it.

Zapier understands this, so they not only send customer retention emails to remind customers about the expiring trial but also offer to extend it if the customer needs more time. This costs them nothing and can be an excellent way to avoid losing a customer. 

3. Chubbies 

Chubbies leverage personalized content and eye-catching visuals to amuse customers and remind them of the items left in their carts. Customers can click on any button, graphic, or image to be linked back to their cart.

By integrating visually compelling interactive elements such as these, Chubbies makes it effortless for customers to return to their cart and finish checking out.

The CTA in Chubbies’ cart abandonment email is distinguished and eye-catching, with language that creates a sense of urgency. Employing action-oriented language such as “Teleport To Your Cart,” the CTA encourages customers to complete their purchase immediately.

4. Amazon

Customers like a thank you email when they place an order or engage with your eCommerce site, so this barely feels like a retention effort. However, a well-done thank-you email is an invaluable retention tool that enables you to build customer loyalty.

Whenever someone orders from Amazon, they get a brief thank you note that is branded perfectly to match the site.

Moreover, at the bottom of the email, you’ll notice a list of products similar to what you just ordered. SaaS businesses could quickly adapt this to show off different features or a tips-and-tricks section. The point is to send a thank you email to keep the customer engaged.

5. Grammarly 

Grammarly uses a clear call-to-action in its product launch/feature announcement emails, utilizing language such as “Learn More.” They also create hype and excitement around the new product feature by emphasizing the benefits customers could have if they choose to participate.

In this example, Grammarly urges users to click a link to learn about a new feature or product. By offering a clear and concise call to action, they can direct users to the desired action, leading to improved engagement and adoption of new features.

Conclusion

An effective customer retention email strategy is pivotal to nurturing long-term customer relationships and driving business growth. The tips and examples outlined in this guide serve as valuable resources for businesses aiming to strengthen customer loyalty, reduce churn, and maximize customer lifetime value through strategic email marketing.

By leveraging personalization, targeted communication, and value-driven content, businesses can create meaningful and impactful email campaigns that resonate with their audience, ultimately fostering enduring customer relationships.