What is Email Marketing all about?
Gmail, Hotmail, iCloud.. who doesn’t have an email account?
In 1985, it is hard to believe that only 2million email accounts existed, progressing to 891.1million at the beginning of 2001 (Chittenden & Rettie, 2002). According to Statista (2018) there were 4.1 billion active email accounts in 2014 and it is predicted that by 2019 this will reach 5.6 billion.
Chaffey (2016) explains how marketers need to plan for both outbound email marketing and inbound email marketing.
- Outbound email marketing – Used to encourage trial, purchases and part of CRM
- Inbound email marketing – Where the emails from the customers are managed
Email marketing allows you to create more personalised messages and target a specific segment of your customer base, in the hope to build greater customer relationships. Ariely (1999, cited in Alrawi. 2007) discusses the convenience in which the internet and email brings to society. Pavlov et al. (2008) argues this by stating that marketing messages are lost in background noise with negative consequences for return on investment. Gautier (2002) strengthens the argument and discusses the difficulties in measuring the response of email marketing and states how measures such as click throughs are not effective.
Key Marketing Statistics
For further reading on the Ultimate Marketing Statistics, click on the following link: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics
Before customers receive an email, they need to sign up. Within the health/fitness sector this could be done through the ‘sign up’ heading on the website, a web form on blog page, a newsletter sign up, applying for a membership, social media and offline platforms.
What is Customer Retention?
Customer retention refers to the actions which companies take in order to retain a satisfied customer long term. No matter how great a product or service may be, there is always that risk that a customer may leave, which is unpredictable for a business and can be the most significant retail revenue driver.
52% of respondents use email primarily for retention, which is the second highest online channel for retention rate (Ratcliff, 2014).
E-Consultancy (2014)
According to Bain & Company, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a companies profitability by 75%, in addition to this, Gartner Group claim that 80% of a businesses future revenue will come from 20% of the existing customer base (Kulbyte, 2017). Bain & Company strengthen the argument for customer retention by stating that attracting new customers will cost a company 6-7 times more than keeping an existing customer (Kulbyte, 2017).
A company can strengthen their customer retention through CRM, which is designed to help businesses help improve their customer relationships. Companies such as Salesforce offer a range of CRM systems to help companies retain their customers, grow revenue and track activity (Salesforce, 2017). The RACE Model provides companies with a framework for developing the right approach for the businesses unique needs, which should be updated with analytics and important data on a regular basis (Booher, 2015).
Check out this video for a great overview on 5 customer retention emails you can use today..
How can this channel be used?
Retention emails are designed to get customers more engaged and to ensure they are taking full advantage of either your product or service. Retention emails act as a reminder to consumers to let they know what they are missing. (Daly, 2015)
15 Examples of Retention Emails to keep your customers happy
https://www.getvero.com/resources/retention-email-inspiration
Benefits
- Greater conversion rates, from both new and existing customers
- Increase of impulse buying, effortless clicks allow sales to increase rapidly
- A low cost channel, the company doesn’t have to pay to advertise/print/postage
- Global reach, email is one of the only channels which has the ability to globally reach consumers at a low cost
- Tracking capabilities, software allows click-through, open email and conversion rates to be tracked
- High return on investment
- Time saving, super quick and easy as opposed to writing out letters!
- Environmentally friendly, as nothing is printed there is no direct marketing by post
- Less Intrusive, especially for those customers who are very busy so allows them to read at a time convenient to them
- Sharing, a click away to share the content which can lead to viral marketing or this could be word of mouth
Risks
- Inactive subscribers
- Spam, when starting email marketing try to start you mailing list organically as opposed to purchasing emailing lists as this causes annoyance for others and could lead to the company being banned
- Privacy and data protection, ensure your marketing complies with the rules of only sending to those who want to receive it
- Reputation, it is important that your email marketing still projects your brand image, does not use any false/misleading information, does not use a deceptive subject line and must give the readers an opt out/unsubscribe option
- Undelivered emails, make sure that emails lists are kept up to date and to not use certain spam keywords
- Design element, is the email supported both on a desktop/mobile/tablet, does it function as it should across all platforms, does it download in a reasonable amount of time
Top Tips for Email Marketing in the Health/Fitness Sector
Additional Links
https://econsultancy.com/blog/2354-email-unsubscribing-a-worst-practice-example
http://www.jeffbullas.com/3-steps-to-creating-a-powerful-email-marketing-campaign-through-linkedin/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-use-mailchimps-newest-free-feature-email-your-brendan-colarusso
https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/advantages-and-disadvantages-email-marketing
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/beginners-guide-email-marketing/
http://docs.aweber-static.com/email-marketing-guides/email-marketing-for-fitness-centers.pdf
https://www.webpagefx.com/industries/health/gyms/email-marketing-gyms.html
https://uhurunetwork.com/how-email-marketing-can-grow-your-fitness-business/
https://uhurunetwork.com/fitness-marketing-10-creative-ideas/
References
Alrawi, K. (2007) “The Internet and International Marketing” Health Research Premium Collection. Vol 17, Issue 4, pp. 222-233
Booher, M. (2016) How ROCE Process Strategy Impacts Digital Marketing. [Online] Available at: https://webdirexion.com/online-marketing/how-r-a-c-e-process-strategy-impacts-digital-marketing [Accessed 26 December 2017]
Chaffey, D. & Chadwick, F.E. (2016) Digital Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 6th ed. Pearson: Harlow
Chittenden, L. & Rettie, R. (2002) “An Evaluation of Email Marketing and Factors Affecting Response.” Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing. Vol 11, Issue 3. pp. 90-95
Daly, J. (2015) 15 Retention Emails to Reduce Churn and Keep Your Customers Happy. [Online] Available at: https://www.getvero.com/resources/retention-email-inspiration Accessed 28 December 2017]
Gautier, A. (2002) “You’ve got mail”. New Zealand Marketing Marketing Magazine. Vol 21. Issue 8. pp 14
Kulbyte, T. (2017) 5 Unique Ways To Increase Customer Retention. [Online] Available at:
https://www.superoffice.com/blog/customer-retention-tips-with-crm-software/ [Accessed 29 December 2017]
Pavlov, O., Melville, N. & Plice, R. (2008) “Toward a sustainable email marketing infrastructure.” Journal of Business Research. Vol 61, Issue 11.
Ratcliff, C. (2014) Marketers more focused on acquisition than retention. [Online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/65339-marketers-more-focused-on-acquisition-than-retention [Accessed 29 December 2017]
Sales Force (2017) Bring your CRM to the future. [Online] Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/crm/ [Accessed 29 December 2017]
Statista (2018) Number of active email accounts worldwide 2019. [Online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/456519/forecast-number-of-active-email-accounts-worldwide/ [Accessed 2 January 2018]
Email marketing in healthcare is a strong option for nearly every marketing plan. Personalized subject lines increase the likelihood that your emails will be opened. Provide online registration for your hospital’s emails. Offer something in return.