Last Updated on September 1, 2023 by David

Email is a great way for eCommerce businesses to build and maintain a relationship with their customers and boost retention. Unlike brick and mortar businesses, eCommerce brands have to put in extra effort to build customer relationships since they don’t have the opportunity to do so face to face. With this in mind, keep reading to learn how to build strong customer relationships via email.

Focus on How Your Product or Service Helps Your Customers

If a customer has stopped buying your product or ceased using your services, it’s likely because your business can no longer solve their problem or they no longer have that need. In either case, your email to them should be about how they still need you. Simply sending a “We miss you” email isn’t focusing on the issue at hand and will likely be deleted.

Instead, focus on the need of your customers and point out how you can still help them. Maybe you’ve upgraded your service or have a new product offering. This is a great opportunity to point this out to clients and prove to them you can still solve their problems. This is a great way to re-engage lost clients and encourage new clients to maintain their relationship with your brand.

Include High-Quality Content

Your emails should contain high-quality content that is engaging, informative, and useful. Whether it’s a newsletter, new product offering, or a simple customer touch email the contents of the email should be something that your customers will see as valuable.

Get to Know Your Customers

In order to build strong relationships with your customers, you first need to know them. There are a few ways to go about this:

1. Survey your customers — A survey is a great way to collect customer data and also give them an opportunity to interact with your brand. The data you collect will enable you to focus your marketing efforts to ensure your emails are more targeted and effective. This also reduces unsubscribers since you are sending out the kind of content your customers want.
2. Send emails from a real person — Avoid sending emails from an “info@” or “sales@” or do not reply email address. This can often be off-putting to customers since it seems like it will be “salesy” spam mail. When business emails come from a staff member it makes your customers feel like they are really connecting to your brand.
3. Make it easy to unsubscribe — It may be tempting to hide the unsubscribe button, but this can be off-putting to your customers. Showing them the respect of making it easy for them to opt-out should they choose will actually make them trust your brand more in the long run.

Share Plenty of Non-Promotional Content

Another great way to build a strong rapport with your customers via email is by sending out a good balance of promotional and non-promotional content. People don’t enjoy being sold to constantly, and if you do so in every email you’ll turn off your customers.

This goes back to the idea of providing high-quality content. The purpose of sending out emails is not just to convince your customers to make a purchase, but to build a relationship for customer retention. Sending a mix of content helps to cultivate both trust and engagement. Then when you send out new product or service info your customers will be more likely to open and read your email.

Assign Clear Ownership of Email Marketing Among Your Staff

Ensuring your staff has a clear understanding of who is responsible for sending and replying to emails will keep your team productive and your customers happy. If your staff doesn’t have a clear understanding of who is responsible, problems and miscommunications can occur that will leave your customers frustrated which may cause them to take their business elsewhere.

What to Avoid in Email Marketing

While using email is an unavoidable part of building a strong eCommerce business, there are some practices to keep in mind to ensure it doesn’t end up hurting your business or team’s productivity. Here’s what you shouldn’t do with email:

1. Send too many emails — Sending out a high volume of emails is not only burdensome to your staff, but it deters your clients. No one wants to be spammed by a company, so while being top of mind for clients is important, be careful not to email them so much that they mark you as spam.
2. Not including your staff on email content — Whether you’re sending out an email with a new product, special offer, or update to your service offering be sure to clue your staff in about it. One of the most frustrating things for both your clients (and staff) is not if your employees don’t have up-to-date knowledge of your product or service offering.
3. Your email program isn’t integrated with your other systems — It’s important that all of your communications are integrated to ensure they work collaboratively. When they don’t emails may be missed or staff may respond twice to the same email leaving customers frustrated. Additionally, a lot of time is wasted switching between communication channels which can slow your team down and waste productivity.

Re:amaze Inbox is an excellent tool to implement into your administrative side to ensure your email communications are efficient and productive. This is a shared inbox for your entire team that will manage customer conversations from multiple channels including email, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, and text messages. Visit our website today to schedule a demo.