‘’E-mail Marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses E-mail as a means of communicating commercial messages to an audience’’ according to Fariborzi and Zahedifard (2012). The focus of this blog, is to be able to identify key drivers that will drive customer engagement via E-mails and discuss the associated risk factors with E-mail Marketing. Past research shows E-mail Marketing has the highest return on investment than other marketing methods (Fariborzi, E. and Zahedifard, M. 2012).
Moreover, customer engagement is a business communication method between customers and an organisation through various channels (Verhoef, Reinartz and Krafft, 2010). Customer engagement enhances customers’ service brand evaluation, brand trust and brand loyalty. The result of this outcome shows that brand loyalty can be strengthened not only through the service consumption experience but also through customer engagement beyond service encounter according to So et al (2014) for instant in this case via E-mail Marketing.
Building Personalised Relationship via E-mail Marketing
Tailored services, which makes customers feel that employees are polite, friendly and exhibit personal warmth, and that customers are unique and valued, these are crucial in building good customer relationship according to Huang, J. and Shyu, S. (2009). Tailoring a service enables to create personalised content for each individual customer which will create brand loyalty. This is more expressive as you can customise messages for different customers and provide content and promotions that are consistent with their profile.
Guide to Drive Customers via E-mail
The template is the formation of the basics of creating an effective E-mail campaign to attract readers. The subject line in the E-mail is the first point of contact and acts as a trigger to encourage the message recipient to open the E-mail. There are two main components in the subject line. E-mail Sender can be identified as; company name (only) as this is a form of creating brand recognition and the Subject Matter is a topic which you are trying to achieve that can be categorised into incentives, discounts or savings to get readers attention on the main focus of the E-mail.
To be able to drive customer engagement the following is key to consider when writing an E-mail campaign;
- Know your goals and what you are trying to achieve from your E-mail for example, welcome new subscribers by telling them about your business and values so you can start building a relationship with them, re-engaging existing customer with offers, target E-mail marketing campaigns by segmenting your subscribers.
- Understand E-mail types; promotional E-mails with latest offers, rational E-mails which are made up of weekly newsletters & free gifts and transactional E-mail leading to a purchase on the company website.
- Build an E-mail list by promoting it via other form of social media so customers can subscribe, share and like.
- Plan E-mails ahead and follow ups.
- Focus on the content and the design of the E-mail
- Track your E-mails using marketing matrix such as delivery rates, open rates and click though rates.
Source: (Hall, 2018)
Risk Factors
According to Fariborzi, E. and Zahedifard, M. (2012) the risk of E-mail marketing is becoming problematic nowadays because;
- Undelivered E-mails this can happen when users set their setting that redirect all unknown sources of emails to their junk emails who aren’t on their contact list.
- Renderability – some graphics, links and other media within the E-mail may not support all browsers. So, if a recipient tries to open a high content email on their phone it may not support the device/browser.
- E-mail overload, some recipient gets so much email, they may disregard the mail if it’s not their priority.
- Competitors
- E-mail can be time consuming if a recipient ignores the E-mail.
Overall, to drive customer engagement it is important to take into consideration the basic tools to create excellent content and catch audience attention to be able to build an awareness of you company. To avoid risk it is also important to stay aware what your competitors are doing and stay ahead of the game by thinking creatively and efficiently to attract customer first in your market.
To learn more on how to drive customer engagement please click here to watch a small clip.
References
Fariborzi, E. and Zahedifard, M. (2012). E-mail Marketing: Advantages, Disadvantages and Improving Techniques. International Journal of e-Education, 2(3), pp.232-234.
Hall, S. (2018). How to Run a Successful Email Marketing Campaign (Step by Step). [online] OptinMonster. Available at: https://optinmonster.com/how-to-run-a-successful-email-marketing-campaign/ [Accessed 22 Feb. 2018].
Huang, J. and Shyu, S. (2009). Building personalised relationships with customers via emails. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 20(6), pp.585-601.
So, K., King, C., Sparks, B. and Wang, Y. (2014). The Role of Customer Engagement in Building Consumer Loyalty to Tourism Brands. Journal of Travel Research, 55(1), pp.64-78.
Verhoef, P., Reinartz, W. and Krafft, M. (2010). Customer Engagement as a New Perspective in Customer Management. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), pp.247-252.