Monday Catch-Up: Turning Holiday Customers Into Repeat Customers, Email Newsletter Tips and Metrics

Happy Monday, marketers! Ready to get back at it? Before diving into to the workday, how about taking another sip of coffee and checking out some of the latest email marketing news? Here you go:

A strategy for turning new holiday customers into repeat customers

Jordan Elkind, writing at Marketing Land, says email marketers shouldn’t be satisfied with attracting one-time customers this holiday season; rather, they should take steps to ensure those new customers who are attracted by festive deals come back again (many times).

“Some of your new customers might join the ranks of your most loyal shoppers, but without a tailored marketing strategy, you’re likely to end up with a stocking full of folks you’ll never see again,” he writes.

Elkind cites some compelling metrics to back up his case for making a concerted effort to turn one-time customers into repeat customers: “Two-time buyers are up to nine times more likely to repeat than first-time shoppers,” he writes. “In addition, it will cost you anywhere from two to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to simply retain an existing one. With those figures in mind, making an investment in your new holiday customers is a tactic that’s sure to pay off into the new year and beyond.”

While he says that there is no “silver bullet” to ensuring that one-time customers become repeat customers, he sees a series of a welcome messages that leverage personalization and segmentation as being essential to the process.

“The welcome series is a (simple and relatively easy to set up) succession of automated emails that introduce a new customer to your brand after their first purchase,” he writes. “The ideal next step would be to start personalizing the series. In theory, the team would craft a special sequence for each unique shopper.” And segmentation “can take us closer to truly personalized communications while striking the right balance of creative effort,” he adds.

“With the holiday shopping season upon us already, there’s no better time to take proactive action to build a comprehensive one-time buyer program. While truly 1:1 communications may still be the ‘golden goose’ of customer marketing, taking simple steps towards personalization can make all the difference in your customer engagement (and revenue) this year,” he concludes.

What you should and shouldn’t do with your email newsletters

“A newsletter is a valuable tool for both your company and your customers,” writes Hana LaRock at Business 2 Community. “By taking the right approach to your newsletters, you can get your name out there more, enhance your relationships with your customers, and ultimately increase sales for your company.”

With that said, LaRock has some suggestions for email marketers regarding exactly what they should and shouldn’t be doing with their newsletters.

The foundation (and thus the first “should”) is targeting, she writes. “Who is this newsletter going to? Surely, just because they are all your customers, doesn’t mean they all have the same interests or needs. By taking a look at your demographics, the buyers’ history, and your own goals of the company, you can create a newsletter that’s personalized for your target audience.”

Including meaningful information, specifically about new offerings, is also critical, she advises. “If a customer has already subscribed, it means you’re doing something right so far,” she writes. “This person obviously has an interest in what you’re offering, and they want to hear more from you. Hone in on that. Got any sales coming around the corner? Holiday specials? Maybe a promo code that will have the customer save money on their overall purchase? These are all very important things you want to highlight in your newsletter.”

Another “should” is including a compelling subject line. “If there is an incentive you’re including in your newsletter, it should be clear from the moment it arrives in your readers’ inbox. The way to do this is by creating a strong subject line. There are services that can automate a good one for you; one that will leave customers hanging so that they’ll open up the newsletter.”

At the top of the list of what you shouldn’t do is being too wordy. “Unless you’re a publishing company or you’re selling an author who wants to give away a free eBook, do not write a novel in your newsletter. Keep it short, advisably less than 500 words. Remember, getting readers to open emails in the first place is hard enough. Getting them to stay in that email and actually read it is even harder.”

Other practices to avoid include having an irregular delivery schedule and employing too many fonts or creating other “eyesores” in your newsletter. And don’t be modest, LaRock advises. “Modesty won’t give you the results you’re looking for. We’re talking about putting yourself out there all the way. A newsletter is a great way to remind new customers who you are. Therefore, your newsletters should include backlinks to your landing pages, call to action buttons, and sharing icons so that your readers can spread the love.

Make sure to track the right metrics

Are email marketers focusing on the right metrics to assess the success of their efforts? Maybe not, posits Sarah Patrick. senior content developer and marketer at Clutch, a Washington, D.C.-based B2B ratings and review company, in an article published on PromotionWorld. Her article reports on a recent survey Clutch conducted of more than 300 email marketers working in companies with more than 100 employees. Subscriber list growth was the top metric cited by survey respondents, followed by conversion rate, click rate, delivery rate and open rate.

“Top email marketers generally agree that it’s far more important to track metrics that reflect how people actually engage with messages. Depending on an organization’s goals, those metrics may include click-through rate, open rate, audience engagement, or conversions. Yet, many marketers are gauging their success based on the size of their subscriber lists. While having thousands of subscribers might make a marketer feel good or seem impressive to higher ups in the organization, list size actually has relatively little impact on a company’s larger business objectives.”

Patrick emphasizes that email marketers are not helped by having “a huge list that never opens your emails your emails or click on your links.” In fact, she suggests, having “a large list that doesn’t care what you have to say can actually hurt your email efforts.

For example, sending messages to expired email addresses or inactive subscribers can result in bounces that will hurt your email deliverability and get your emails caught in spam filters. If that happens, even the people on your list who do want to hear from you may not get your messages. A better option is to stay on top of your email lists and attempt to either re-engage or remove inactive subscribers. It’s far better to have a smaller list of active, engaged users than a massive unengaged list.”

Her bottom line: “Focus email marketing efforts on providing true value for subscribers, and track the metrics that reflect that value. From there, list growth, and more important, meeting your business objectives, will follow.”