Ross McPheat, hungryhouse’s marketing manager, tells eSeller how he keeps customers returning via (in part) a carefully cultivated email campaign.
We aim to build loyalty from day one. Data analysis has shown us that customers who re-order within 21 days of their first order are much less likely to lapse, and are much easier to win back later on.
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Of course, user experience and the product performance have a big part to play, but if a happy customer receives engaging communication and sees great content following their first brand encounter, it leaves a lasting impression.
There is no hard and fast rule as to how to compose the perfect email and every brand takes a slightly different approach, but there are a few general points to bear in mind:
Everything needs a purpose
No one reads every single email they receive from a brand, so ensure your communication has a clear purpose. Pointless, unfocused emails are just spam, and you will soon fall victim to the ruthless unsubscribe button.
Content rules
Whatever content you serve, make sure it is relevant to your customer and sent at an appropriate time. Personalisation is the marketing buzzword of the moment on email, and should not be ignored.
Sending generic content emails (batch and blast) is sometimes ok to maintain contact with your base, but event/lifecycle triggered emails are best as they are more relevant.
In our case, serving dynamic content, such as sending the customer our top 3 hyper-local takeaway recommendations, reaps great rewards, as is reflected in engagement and order rates.
De-clutter
Keep copy brief and concise with a clear CTA as close to the top as possible. Customers will often scan your marketing email at best, so keep a clean simple layout and your key messages will jump off the screen.
Optimise for mobile
40% of our mails are now opened on mobiles, so responsive design is essential for hungryhouse. Responsive design should be standard practice when implementing email campaigns and only requires a simple template.
Our stats speak for themselves as rolling out responsive design templates at the beginning of 2013 resulted in a 23% increase in our click-to-open rate.
Consider the layman
Always do the ‘above the fold test’ – look at your emails on a variety of screen sizes, mobile devices etc to see what appears when it is first opened.
Remember, you need to prepare you emails for the worst viewing conditions possible, without compromising too much on the design. Graphic designers can often lose sight of this when they are viewing their beautiful creations on 26″ apple monitors!
Treat your relationship with your customers like any other – don’t be too needy and don’t let them down!
If you spam customers they will switch off your emails, so stay relevant yet rare. If you deliver engaging content in a timely manner customers will stay interested.
As soon as a customer’s interest begins to wane your influence wanes with it. hungryhouse has found that customers who opt-in to receive emails have about 80% higher retention rate than those who do not.
Of course, some customers will never require your service again, but listening to feedback and recognising why your customers have lapsed then addressing those issues in our communication is key and can often result in winbacks.
Where possible we try to reward our customers with little treats, vouchers, discounts, fun competitions and other interactive engagement. It’s better to surprise customers with little benefits that they were never promised than promise something and risk under delivering on expectations.
Timing is key when winning back lapsed customers. Analysis shows that contacting customers with a winback campaign as quickly as possible after they churn is key.
However the timing is tricky – too soon and you end up cannibalising your natural orders, too late and they become harder to re-activate.
Hungryhouse tackles this uncertainly by segmenting customers based on their order frequency and sending emails as soon as we think they have fallen out of the ordering pattern. Of course, this is not an exact science, but we have seen it reap rewards.
For more visit hungryhouse.co.uk
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