Email subscription services are a great form of marketing and it is one of the most effective. In 2015 the email marketing industry census findings showed that email marketing has the highest return on investment when compared to all other forms of digital marketing (Econsultancy, 2016).  However, there are some common problems that are faced, mainly being, getting people to subscribe and keeping the customer engaged and looking at each email that is sent to them. This blog will be highlighting simple but effective ways to hopefully help overcome these problems.

1. How to get people to subscribe

Although email subscription may be one of the leading channels in marketing, some companies struggle to get those all-important subscriptions, and without sufficient amount of subscribers it would be pretty useless.

• Do automatic signups – most retailers have loyalty clubs, so on the signup form ensure to ask for the customers email. This email can then automatically be put into the email subscriptions. This stops retailers even having to pester the customer by constantly asking them to subscribe.
• Cleverly word questions to trick customers – when a customer is purchasing a product online, there is often a tick box saying ‘tick box if you would like to receive emails’, change the sentence to make the customer have to tick the box to not receive emails, for example ‘tick box to not receive emails’. Customers normally forget to tick boxes because they’re rushing or they might have just not noticed them. So by making the customer having to select a box to not sign up, there is a high chance they will miss this therefore automatically be opted in.
• Make opt in box visible – it is very unusual for customers to actively look to find email opt in boxes. Therefore they should be situated several places throughout the website to promote customers to sign up. Holdsworth (2016) claim that there should be three opt in boxes on every page of the website, the top, side, and bottom. Customers will never have to look far to sign up. However, the subscription boxes should be subtle and it is strongly advised to steer clear from using annoying pop-ups to encourage customers, as it’s more likely to do the opposite and annoy them.

Don’t use pop-ups. (Salcido, 2014).

• Make an incentive to subscribe – everyone loves a freebie or even just a discount voucher, there are many bargain hunters out there that would happily subscribe knowing that they are going to get something in return. Once someone has subscribed it’s very unlikely that they are going to unsubscribe, so it’s well worth the initial freebie giveaway.

2. Keeping the customer retention

Okay, customers are now signed up, but the next problem being faced is keeping the customer engaged and making sure that the email being sent to them is being opened, not just put straight in the junk folder

Up to 70% of people that receive emails from a brand or company, mainly open the email to search for any vouchers or discounts (Campaignmonitor.com, 2016),  so why disappoint? This creates an incentive for the customer to open the email every time they receive one, because they know they are going to be discounts and deals. Companies that have loyalty cards can make it even better for those who subscribe by linking their loyalty card to know what discounts to provide. This prevents the customer getting unwonted vouchers because using the loyalty card; vouchers can be tailored to the persons purchasing habits. Geert Hofstede culture model was created to determine whether a culture is individualism or collectivism. Each year a score is given to every country to identify what category they fit into. The idea of this model is to give insight into consumer behaviour in that specific country. If a country is categorized as individualism, it means that individuals in that culture purchase products depending on their own preferences, needs and wants. Where as those that are classed as collectives, put their preferences aside and purchase products that everyone else have, to ensure they are similar. The UK scored 89, classing us as individualism (Geert-hofstede.com, 2016).  This highlights how important it is for retailers to tailor deals around individual’s preferences, otherwise if an individual notices that they never see a discount that they will actually use, it could cause disengagement, resulting in them no longer opening their emails.

Hopefully this blog has given an insight on some ways a retail company can get people to subscribe to emails whilst also keeping them engaged and continuously view their emails. Below are some useful links:

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/get-more-email-subscribers/

http://www.wearemediaheadz.co.uk/4-ways-to-dramatically-increase-email-subscriptions/

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254225

References:

Campaignmonitor.com, (2016). 20 email marketing statistics to help you prove how awesome email is – Campaign Monitor. [online] Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2014/09/email-marketing-statistics/ [Accessed 31 Jan. 2016].

Econsultancy, (2016). Email Marketing Industry Census 2015. [online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/reports/email-census [Accessed 31 Jan. 2016].

Geert-hofstede.com, (2016). United Kingdom – Geert Hofstede. [online] Available at: http://geert-hofstede.com/united-kingdom.html [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016].

Holdsworth, B. (2016). 4 Ways to Dramatically Increase Email Subscriptions – Media Headz Design. [online] Media Headz Design. Available at: http://www.wearemediaheadz.co.uk/4-ways-to-dramatically-increase-email-subscriptions/ [Accessed 30 Jan. 2016].

Salcido, M. (2014). Social Media Strategies Your Business Should Adopt This Year. [online] AllBusiness.com. Available at: http://www.allbusiness.com/social-media-strategies-business-adopt-year-13898-1.html [Accessed 30 Jan. 2016].

Research suggests that customers are becoming less satisfied when they go shopping due to the poor service that is provided, for example, the stock availability, and the lengthy process shopping itself holds (Burke, 2002).  This therefore demonstrates the importance for retailers to use e-commerce marketing to be able to contend with the ever-changing consumer behaviour. If retailers were not to do this they are at high risk of losing custom whilst also damaging their ever so important reputation. Would you change your choice of shop if you could purchase the exact same product somewhere else, without even leaving your sofa? I would!

However it is important that if you are going to release an app, it is done properly, otherwise that itself is risky and you’re more than likely going to do more bad than good. An example of the company that got theirs completely wrong was boots, they have only got one star rating on apples App Store with many reviews claiming they would no longer shop there. So, what are the key points to success?

• Ease of access/simple layout – The layout needs to be as simple as possible, while still having the eye catching affect and contain all the necessary functions, but most importantly make it a pleasant experience for the customer. EBay is an excellent example of an app that has stripped back to the bare minimum yet still doing the exact same as what it has always done. The app has just three categories: activity, shop, and sell. It couldn’t get any simpler if it tried and each category does exactly what it says. Apps are meant to be quick and easy, so as soon as any difficulty navigating the app is incurred, the customer is likely to just exit the app and delete it.

EBay’s simple layout (Iclarified.com, 2016).

2. Make the app benefit the customer – Customers love nothing more than to think they are getting a good deal, furthermore it gives an incentive for them to come back again. If the retailer incorporates their loyalty card with the app it will benefit both, the retailers (because it’s creating loyalty to brand and customers will continue to return) and the customers (they get continued discounts). 90% of people that download an app delete it with just six months (com, 2016), so keeping them engaged is key.

There are other ways other than loyalty cards to keep customers using the app, a product scanner. This makes customers feel as though they have the upper hand, because they can know they are going to get the best deal if they scan a product and a price check of several stores appears showing which is cheapest. Or it could even just be used for those annoying times when you want to buy products but there is no price tag. All in all, it just makes the experience more pleasurable for the shopper.

3. Promote the app – Although 40% of smart phone users browse the App Store to see if there are any apps that take their fancy (Think with Google, 2016), that means that the other 60% do not, therefore they need to be told about the app. This highlights the importance of companies to promote their apps, because if people don’t know they exist, they won’t download them. There are several ways of doing this:

• Simply advertising it through other points of contact – put the App Store logo on the website, customers receipts, posters, throughout the store.

Starbucks invitation to get their app (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2016)

• Fund the advertising – spend some money getting awareness of the app out there. There are many different means of doing this, such as, social media and promoting through the App Store.
• Encourage reviews – positive reviews from customers is a great way to promote an app, as most people look at reviews first to see if there is any point downloading the app. The more positive reviews the app receives the more likely it is to go up the charts. Hopefully if the app is good, people will talk about the app to others, word of mouth is one of the best forms of publicity and even better knowing that it doesn’t cost a penny. Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels (2009) claim that word of mouth has a substantially larger influence than traditional marketing approaches, and also reaches more people. Therefore getting people to talk about the app is important.

4. Get the app tried and tested – this has got to be one of the most important fundamental things about making an app. So many companies have failed to do this and not noticed any bugs, glitches, or problems that are in the app before making it live. A couple to name our boots and forever 21. By failing to extensively test apps, companies could actually end up losing customers. For example, if a customer selects a coupon on the app to use in store, then visit the store and find that the coupon does not work and then having to spend more money than they wanted, they’re not going to leave the store happy and most certainly won’t use the app again and possibly change to a different store.

Example of an bad review due to poor app testing for Boots.

There are many companies that can be paid to test apps vigorously to check for any errors, therefore limitation any possible problems.

Here are some links to mobile app testing companies:

https://saucelabs.com/mobile/

http://www.applause.com/mobile-app-testing

Hopefully this blog has given an insight of the importance of companies entering the e-commerce market and highlighted some of the key factors to remember when creating an app. Below are some useful links to websites containing interesting information to keep in mind when making apps.

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/mobile-app-marketing-insights.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/avidlarizadeh/2013/07/19/eight-tips-for-a-successful-app/#2cb0751865cc

References

Burke, R. R. (2002) Technology and the customer interface: what customers want in the physical and virtual store, Journal of the academy of marketing science. Vol. 30, No. 4, p411-432.

Iclarified.com, (2016). [online] Available at: http://www.iclarified.com/images/news/28004/108869/108869.png [Accessed 30 Jan. 2016].

Starbucks Coffee Company, (2016). Starbucks coffee shops – Starbucks.co.uk. [online] Available at: http://www.starbucks.co.uk/?gclid=CLDZp8aO18oCFeISwwodcbAHDg [Accessed 30 Jan. 2016].

Kissmeterics.com (2016). [online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/mistakes-in-app-marketing/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Think with Google, (2016). Mobile App Marketing Insights: How Consumers Really Find and Use Your Apps. [online] Available at: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/mobile-app-marketing-insights.html [Accessed 29 Jan. 2016].

Trusov, M., Bucklin, R. E., Pauwels, K. (2009) Effects of word of mouth versus traditional marketing: Findings from an internet social networking site, Journal of marketing. Vol. 73, No. 5, p90-102.