5 Ways Email Marketing Can Help Nurture Strong Customer Relationships

Great email marketing is a lot like relationships or new friendships. It starts with a memorable first impression, progresses with a series of positive interactions, and culminates in a long-term commitment that both sides get a lot out of.

Like any relationship, there’s a lot of learning and effort needed to make sure you know what the other person needs, and how to give it to them.

As we move from a third-party to first-party data ecosystem, a key is knowing exactly how to approach this bonding process with your brand’s audience.

Yes, email is probably the dominant marketing channel for your business, but that’s likely also the case for competitors that are wooing your customers too. So how do you make sure your emails stand out from all the other suitors in the pack? And how can those emails build a lasting, mutually beneficial relationship with your customers?

Our team over at Salesforce has seen the evolution of email marketing up close, and we now have a clear understanding of what factors help nurture those relationships through email marketing. So, we partnered with Litmus to bring you 5 ways to do just that.

Here are five proven tactics for turning your email marketing into a finely tuned relationship building machine.

1. Play by your audience’s rules

There are few human drives stronger than the desire to be understood and respected.

“Personalization” has become a bit of a buzzword, and it’s easy to think of it simply as a feature or a tactic instead of what it actually represents: understanding and respecting your audience.

The point of personalization, philosophically, is not simply to sell things to your customers more efficiently. It’s to show them you get who they are and what they’re about, and to use that knowledge to give them the best experience you’re capable of giving them.

Email is a great opportunity to do just that. It’s a comparatively intimate medium compared with something public like social media or traditional advertising. You’re sitting right there in their inbox, next to all their family, friends, and co-workers, and like any guest it’s just good form to respect the rules of the house.

In this case, those rules are dictated by the data they choose to share with you. If you treat that data with respect, and use it to bring them the kind of experiences nobody else can, you’re a lot more likely to be invited back.

Salesforce Senior Experience Architect Samantha Winerip agrees that the intimacy of email presents a unique opportunity.

“Email is a familiar channel where consumers expect some degree of personalization, so they are willing to provide data to create a more tailored experience,” she says.

“Consumers are willing to share information if they believe there is value in doing so. You can gather their preferences upfront through the preference center or run campaigns intermittently, using interactive forms or surveys, to gather additional data.”

There are other ways to show them you’re respecting their preferences beyond personalization. At the risk of overtaxing the metaphor, nobody likes an uninvited guest. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help make sure your messages are sent at the best time and keeps you on the guest list.

2. A drip a day keeps ambivalence away

Consistency is key, but continuity is even better. A series of disconnected one-off messages will have pretty variable results and may run the risk of getting repetitive if you don’t have your segmenting just right. However, a steady, cohesive drip campaign allows your messages to build on themselves.

The emails in a good drip campaign work almost like the chapters in a novel, each introducing new incidents and excitements while building on previously established themes and ideas.

Messaging that rewards its audience for previous engagement and avoids repetition keeps them eager to see whatever’s coming next. Combine that narrative momentum with personalized content and you’re pretty much crafting a custom-built “Choose Your Own Adventure” experience for your readers.

“Email marketing is a perfect vehicle for personalization due to the direct communication to the consumer,” says Winerip. “Email has the ability to ingest extensive data and then leverage that data for a hyper-personalized and automated output. The personalization capabilities within email are vast, scalable, and growing through AI, dynamic content, segmentation and more.”

The consistency of the drip makes sure your audience feels remembered, the personalization makes it clear they’re being listened to, and the combination of the two makes them feel like a participant rather than just a recipient. Which brings us to…

3. Like all relationships, email marketing is about listening and learning

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking of email as the channel through which you send your customers messages, but what you’re getting from them is equally important. As first- and zero-party data increasingly becomes the primary data-source, email is one of the single greatest resources for collecting it.

Clickthrough rates, while situationally useful, are just the start, and savvy marketers are already finding other ways to use email as a conversation starter with their audience. Emails offer a unique opportunity for active engagement, whether through forms, live polls, or special gated offers.

“Email marketing enables marketers to learn a great deal about the customers’ preferences based on what they engage with, how and when,” explains Winerip.

“Email also has the ability and flexibility to support many other campaign types, driving engagement that informs the consumer’s future experience. An example is progressive profiling – information gathering over time through targeted campaigns.”

This data, information specifically and intentionally volunteered by the customer, is “zero-party” data, and there’s no better way to get it than via email.

Obviously it’s important to respect your audience’s time and boundaries when asking for it, so we recommend picking your spots and making sure you’re not asking for something for nothing; surveys that come with a coupon, for example, make customers feel good about volunteering their data.

The more opportunities you give your customer to tell you who they are, the better you’re going to be equipped to meet their needs and expectations.

4. Your emails should deliver value to each recipient

Not every email needs to be a pitch. In fact, most of them shouldn’t be. Bringing back our relationship metaphor from earlier, nobody builds a relationship on one occasion.

A thoughtful text, a fun story, or collaborative project can do just as much to build a relationship as any night on the town. Marketing is no different.

Follow-up emails after purchases or support calls demonstrate effort and sincerity, while informational emails that keep them up to date on privacy policies and show you’re taking their data seriously. Emails with useful tips and compelling stories give your audience something for nothing and makes it easier for them to think of your brand in friendly terms rather than purely commercial ones.

Even cart abandonment or confirmation emails are still opportunities to build on your relationship, if you’re smart about it. Every interaction is a chance to reinforce your brand voice, and in a lot of cases they’re also opportunities to reinforce your personalization efforts.

5. Every failure brings you closer to success

No matter how well you personalize, the simple truth is that not every message is going to get opened, not every message that does get opened is going to be read, and not every message that gets read is going to get you the results you were hoping for.

It’s tempting to think of these outcomes as failures, but if you have your data infrastructure in place they can actually be pretty significant wins.

Over a large enough sample size, you can learn why emails aren’t getting opened or read, and then optimize. In the data world, no response is still a response.

You can accelerate this process with deliberate testing methods, the most popular of which is A/B Testing, wherein you send two groups of customers similar versions of the same email with one crucial distinction to figure out what the “right” version of the email is for that audience.

You can use this method to test everything from subject lines, send times, and eyebrows to the actual contents of the email including elements like copy, graphics, or special offers.

Conclusion: create emails that keep the conversation going

Any relationship is going to have highs and lows, but if you make sure you’re always learning from the lows, you’ll make progress.

Email helps you build relationships not just via direct marketing, but by learning over time, personalizing, and adjusting. Sure, it’s a way to pitch your customers, but it also helps you entertain, educate, and most importantly, understand them. And that’s what all good relationship-building is about.