Like most consumer-brand relationships, it’s only natural for this digital connection to cool off from time to time. Whether it’s because these valued customers have experienced life changes, or your brand hasn’t been as active in the inbox as it should be, there’s plenty of reasons for a drop off in interaction.However, just because your company isn’t as close to its target audience as it once was, that doesn’t mean that you can’t reinvigorate this relationship via a smart re-engagement plan. To help you down this path, here’s a few quick and effective tips for creating the perfect “we miss you!” email.
Understand Why Your Audience Isn’t Responding
According to the experts over at the Marketing Sherpa research firm, the first step toward crafting an email that truly shows your audience that you miss them starts by understanding why you need a re-engagement plan in the first place. While this might be a hard pill to swallow at first, getting to the root of the problem before you start building a solution actually makes a lot of sense.Naturally, learning about what went wrong requires dipping into your consumer data to tell the true story. From looking over the response to individual pieces, to requesting feedback via surveys and other interaction, putting on your detective hat and delving into this information is vital to constructing an inbox offering that truly conveys your brand’s desire to reignite this important relationship.
Pick out the Right Type of Incentive for Your Email Copy
Once you’ve uncovered the cause of this faltering connection, it’s time to put your digital pen to virtual paper and craft an email that not only addresses these concerns, complaints, or other issues, but also gives them a reason to take up your latest offer. As Pamella Neely of Web Marketing Today explains, this requires pairing up a strong incentive with the need for urgency from your audience.In terms of incentives, you have three primary tools at your disposal – free gifts, discounts on the next purchase, and reward programs. Each offer helps show that you truly miss this wayward audience member, all while giving him or her a strong reason to come back into the fold. Naturally, you’ll need to make this pitch worth their while regardless of the route you choose, so don’t be afraid to go all-in with a truly valuable and intriguing re-engagement offer.For the second half of this equation, it’s important to generate urgency within these viewers. Otherwise, you run the risk of giving your audience too much flexibility to sit on the fence indefinitely. By incorporating time limits and deadlines into your calls-to-action (CTAs), you ensure that these potential customers understand that time is of the essence, thereby reducing the threat of inactivity that can stymie even the best inbox proposals.
Create the Right Content for Each Engagement Phase
While creating a single great offer is a good first step, the truth of the matter is that not every member of this segment of your audience is in the same stage of lapsed interaction with your brand. This means that you’ll need to go a step farther and tailor this message to each phase of the re-engagement process if you really want to maximize your impact on this front.Specifically, there are three different time slots you need to consider as you craft these offerings – short term, mid-term, and long term lapses. Consumers that fall into the short term category technically haven’t actually reached the lapsed designation, but they are right on the edge. Moderate deals and discounts work best when reaching out to this group.Mid-term offerings should get a little juicer, as these viewers have been inactive for three or more months. Sweepstakes and contests, as well as sizeable sales (25 to 30 percent off), fit this billing. For the final group – the long-term non-respondents – you’re looking at throwing up an email marketing “Hail Mary.” Bold offerings (flash sales, major price reductions, etc.) are the only things that can get the people who haven’t interacted with your brand over the past six months back on track.As you can see, the perfect “We Miss You!” email isn’t actually one email at all; it’s a combination of multiple approaches and specialized responses to the issue. However, by keying in on all of these different angles of attack – and putting what you’ve learned here to good use – there’s no reason why you can’t reconnect with these valued customers and show them just how much they mean to your brand.
