As a business owner you no doubt want customers that keep coming back to you, to purchase products and services from you time and time again. It’s exactly the same with email marketing and there are a number of ways to help keep your customers and prospective customers coming back for more. Plus, we’ll talk about getting repeat customers, upsells, and how to get more blog revisits.
Five Keys to Return Customer Business
The obvious first step to successful email marketing is to first create your list, but that’s not enough, not nearly enough. Once you have people on your email list, it’s imperative that you treat them like the valuable commodity that they are. This means that you need to invest time, effort and resources in your email marketing. If you can do this, you could bring in a significant return on your investment not only in the form of increased profits but more importantly a growing group of customers loyal to you. Here are a few keys things to consider.
Always Create Great Content
Again this is pretty obvious but people aren’t interested in the same old boring content, but it never ceases to amaze me how many marketers focus so much on building an email list that they forget all about maintaining it and actually marketing properly.
If you don’t email your list regularly, your audience will soon start to forget who you are, everyone’s inbox is crowded with lots of offers from lots competitors. As the saying goes you have to be “in it to win it”. Great content helps you stand out from the crowd and is something your audience craves.
Evergreen is always the preferred type of content. It never goes dry from a timeline perspective, isn’t dated or look ‘old’, and Google rank actually prefers this kind of content.
Be sure to update older posts with new content, and tell your readers about those updates. This is a great way to get blog revisits back to your website to read the updated content or new modifications. Have a resource library and just added to it? Let your readers know!
Create Exciting and Engaging Subject Lines
Think of your subject line as the headline of your email. When people read a newspaper, everyone will read the main headlines. Based on each headline, they will then make up their mind as to whether or not they want to read more.
If you don’t have an awesome subject line, your email is never going to get opened. This means that no matter how great the content is inside of your email, it will never see the light of day unless you try to maximize your open rate by creating great subject lines.
I have a whole list of engaging subject lines you might want to check out in the Email Marketing resource library. Be sure to first register for an account on the site if you don’t have one yet.
Train Them to Become Eager to Hear from You
You want your email list members to not only remember who you are, but to also look forward to your emails and open them almost automatically. You want them to be happy, not say, “Huh?” when they spot your latest message.
There are several ways to do this. We’ve already mentioned great subject lines, but let’s also look at the introduction and conclusion of each email. The introduction should support the subject line and give them a “teaser” of what to expect if they read on.
The summary of the email at the end rounds it out and can also set it up so they look forward to your next email. Keep your customers coming back to your website with small updates to your blog posts, which you can mention in your emails, as well.
E-courses are particularly useful for this. You can give a hint as to what will be in the next lesson and remind them to look out for it. Don’t forget to encourage them to share as well. Give them a link to your email archive so they can catch up in case they have missed any emails in the series.
You can easily create an email course via Flodesk so that your email course is visual-friendly and keeps their attention.
Remember that every email is a sample of the quality of your work and what they would be getting if they were to buy from you. Try to keep emails like you would a text – short and sweet, offering links to more in-depth explanations on your website.
Craft Amazing Offers for Repeat Customers, New Products
When you’re first starting out in business, you might not have that many products and services to promote to your target audience. Affiliate marketing – that is, selling products for Amazon and other top brands in exchange for a commission, is a good way to make money until you are ready to launch your first product.
Showing a range of solutions can also help show you are “in the know” in your niche and therefore an expert worth paying attention to. A good balance of informational and promotional emails should keep a steady stream revenue coming into the business.
Part of becoming a thought leader involves giving amazing value, even when you could have charged more. Thought leadership sometimes calls on you to help people that aren’t quite where you’re at, and to help challenge them to think differently. Sometimes changing those thought patterns means they need to invest.
Make it possible by crafting amazing offers. I call these ‘exclusive opportunities‘ and ‘one-chance‘ offers on my own site. These are often offered at product launch as a one-time opportunity to get a discount before the product is listed at regular price.
You’ll find that repeat customers often come back just for the exclusive one-time opportunities. They happily invest in your work because of their past experience with you and the quality that you offer.
Keep an Editorial Calendar
Don’t just email when you feel like it or want to make more sales. Set up an editorial calendar for the year and plot out all your content and your promotions. Plan your product launches and position them strategically, such as once a month. Keep your customers coming back for more by scheduling content in advance that will capture their interest and attention.
Strategically target your repeat customers with offers that enhance their existing products. I often refer to these as add-on packs, a la carte add-ons, or even supplemental packets. They love them. Sprinkle add-ons into your content calendar so that you provide the occasional surprise from time to time.
Also, it’s helpful to keep a steady stream of interesting and engaging content in front of your prospective customers and see what a difference it can make to your profits.
Parting Thoughts
One of the best ways I’ve kept customers coming back is delivering an immense amount of value in my free downloads and shoppable products. How do I keep non-buyers returning? I use retargeting features on Pinterest ads from time to time. Using a combination of tactics, but with a central focus on what your customers need ad want from you, will keep them returning to your shop or website for more.
With each and every email, I make an attempt to drive the customer or reader back to the website to learn something new. I’m a huge believer in education and creating tutorials, as well as helping my readers get a win for themselves by offering easy solutions to challenges they might have. When you teach, and challenge someone’s brain or thought process by providing new information, you’ll have them coming back for more to continue that journey of learning with you.
Repeat customers are the best. It means they see your value, your worth, and love your solutions. That’s a good sign that what you’re offering and doing with your marketing efforts is working!