Ignoring Customer Emails Leads to Lost Revenue

The title of this blog post might seem like a bit of a no-brainer. Kind of a “well, duh. If I don’t respond to customer emails then I will lose revenue,” moment. However, the fact that we have to write this blog post should tell you something about today’s email marketing environment. To be point blank, the reality of the situation is simple.

The average person sends and receives 121 emails per day. Let’s look at an hour figure to put this number into perspective. The average person spends 13 hours of their work week (based on a 45 hour work week) composing and responding to work emails — not to mention the hours spent on personal email communications. Let’s go one step further to look at the number of words that are typed during those email correspondences. On average, a person will send and receive approximately 42,000 emailed words per year. To put this into perspective, the average novel has 90,000 words. And so the average person reads and / or writes half a novel in email correspondence on a yearly basis.

Now let’s look at the title of this blog again. “Ignoring Customer Emails Leads to Lost Revenue.” Suddenly, with 13 hours of your week spent on emails, you might be able to see how a few lost emails could slip through the cracks. You know the ones — the emails that you read on your way out of the office, or during your commute, or on your lunch break, or any time of the day when you couldn’t type out a response right then and there. The problem with your failure to respond, is that your customer, you know the one that you forgot to email back right away, well he happens to be equally as busy as you. In fact, he’s so busy, he’s probably working on the second half of that email novel right now.

Don’t Ignore Customer Emails

The moral of the story is simple: if you don’t want to lose customers and you don’t want to lose revenue, then don’t ignore customer emails. In case you need additional convincing we have gathered together a few helpful statistics.

• According to Bain and Co., a 5 percent increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75 percent.


• Gartner Group statistics show us that 80 percent of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20 percent of your existing customers.


• Lee Resource Inc. joins the customer retention and customer response fray by finding that, on average, attracting new customers will cost your company five times more than keeping an existing customer.

In short, responding to emails is a great way to improve customer retention ratings and thus bolster revenues. Don’t believe us? Let’s look at the 2007 cautionary tale of the 44 percent of major UK who ignored customer emails to the detriment of their revenue streams. Failing to respond to customer emails in a timely fashion will result in lost revenue. This is not a speculation, it is pure and simple truth.

If you want to succeed in today’s competitive environment, then you must not ignore your customers. However, the conundrum remains that if you are bogged down by emails, how on earth are you supposed to keep from ignoring your customers? Once again a simple solution is readily available: email automation. In a world where customer retention is key, email automation is better than a delayed email response or worse ignoring your customer completely. Email automation services can allow you to easily share news, follow-up, or send friendly (often times slightly personalized) reminders to your customers. So, do yourself a favor and remember to take a moment to show your customers that you are not in fact ignoring them and that you do value their business. Your customers will thank you and so too will your revenue stream.

Ignoring Customer Emails Leads to Lost Revenue

How to You Use Email to Increase Sales

Email is one of the most powerful tools for online marketing. It allows you to bring customers back to your website and to provide them with ongoing “connections” to your business, product and service. The end result is that you’ll be investing one time in the effort to get a new customer to your website and, once they buy from you or interact with you, they will then come back time and time again. How do you make it happen, though? Here are some tips to help you to do so.

Subject lines are headers in a paper

From the time they open their inbox, your message can stand out or fade in with the rest. It all comes down to the headline you create. View these as a headline in a newspaper – ensure they stand out, provide important information, and pull your reader in. Be sure they are not “spam” titles, which tend to be very sales-oriented. Instead, make them information and provide a solution to a problem or information they really need.

Not all emails should sell to your customers

Every email should have links back to your website and sales pages or inventory. However, your emails need to do more than just offer sales information. For example, if you are a dentist and its fall, provide a few informational articles about getting kids in to the dentist and back in a routine. You may want to offer tips on how to get a garden ready for the summer reason if you are a landscaper. The key here is to provide valuable, interesting, and useful information to the reader. It matters that they get something of value from your emails.

Build your brand with your emails

Emails do more than just provide information on your products and service. They also help you to sell and build your brand among your clients and customers. What you include in these emails will help to form an opinion about your brand and business within the mind of your client. Do you want them to view you as:

• Affordable


• The expert in the industry


• The place where everything is in stock


• The brand that solves their problems


• The company to turn to for hard to find solutions

This list could go on and on. What do you want your customers to think about you when they need a service or product that you offer? Be sure that is clear in your email marketing campaign.

Offer an incentive

Of course this is a fantastic place for you to offer a special or discount to your readers. You don’t want this to always be the only reason you reach out to your readers, though. Rather, you’ll need to work one-on-one with your client base to create valuable offers that get them to your site and still allow them to maintain a high value of your site and your products. You might do this by offering a discount price on subscription services rather than on purchases for one item. If you have a storefront, send a discount offer when they bring the coupon into the store. Find a way to engage your customers and get them to your site.

Email marketing can help to increase your company’s sales if you put the time and effort into create effective, professional emails and you manage your list effectively. Having a powerful email marketing software program to do this is an important step of course, but so is creating a message that really matters to your reader, not just one that gets sent to the spam folder.

How to You Use Email to Increase Sales

Are You Giving Your Customers the Wrong Impression?

As you build your client base and email marketing campaign, you’ll likely start playing the game of “what works.” That is, you’ll have to try out a variety of marketing methods, language, styles of interaction, and everything you can think of to get people to click the link in their email and come back to your site. What makes one person click and another not? A good place to start when trying to determine this is looking at the type of impression you are giving your email sign-ups.

How could you be giving your customers the wrong impression with your emails? There are things that could be working against you.

Are you desperate?

One of the biggest bad impressions you’ll give to your readers is that you are desperate for their business. This happens if you send them too many emails in a short span of time. How long does it take before you get annoyed with seeing the same sender in your email inbox? The fact is, you need to ensure you are not sending so much email that they avoid it and unsubscribe from it.

Are you a newbie? Let’s say you make a critical mistake and send your email to your huge list of followers without taking the time to send a test email first. Then, you realize the link in that email is wrong or there is a glaring mistake in the content. Not only do you lose out on potential sales this way, but you also end up looking like you are a newbie, not the industry leader you need to be.

Are you arrogant?

Another big mistake that will give the wrong impression is sending graphic-filled, hard-to-open emails. Sure, you may have a big budget to spend in fantastic graphics (and you think that will make you stand out) but the fact is, no one wants to wait for graphics to open and load. You’ll look arrogant, not a quality that many clients and customers want to interact with through email.

Are you lying?

Let’s be frank here. If your subject line is misleading so much so that it basically lies to your customer or client, chances are good you are going to put a bad taste in their mouth before they open their email. Don’t try to be so clever that you end up making people annoyed with the email message that doesn’t fit the subject line.

Are you unprofessional?

Another bad impression you could make has to do with the way your emails look and present themselves to your readers. For example, are you using email marketing software? This is the only true way to send a sales or newsletter type of message in a professional, organized manner. The good news is once you do this, you can really impress your newsletter subscribers with truly easy to read content that allows them to take advantage of your opportunity.

There’s some good news, though!

If you are not seeing the responses that you want, and you still have peopled signed up for your emails, you still have opportunities to turn things around. To do that, start with outlining the type of impress you do want to provide your readers. You likely want your readers to believe that you are professional, experts in the industry, and worth investing time in. To achieve that goal, you’ll want to improve communications, use email software to ensure you are being professional, and invest in a bit of marketing know-how. Doing so will ensure that every one of your emails gets attention.

Are You Giving Your Customers the Wrong Impression?

The 5 Mistakes That Will Prevent You From Getting the Sales You Deserve

As a business owner, you may think you are doing everything right, yet your actual sales don’t match up with the goals you have for your business. When you take a long hard look at your current practices, are you guilty of any of these five mistakes that will prevent you from getting the sales you deserve?

1. You Lack a Viable Online Presence.

Think about the last time a friend mentioned a new restaurant to you. Did you reach for your phone or tablet and quickly search for it to gain more information? Most people do. Small companies that lack a viable online presence are missing out on sales. Even if you don’t actually sell a product online, customers want to know what your hours are, what your history is, what services or goods you provide, and your location before they ever step foot in your storefront. With the rapid advances in mobile technology, it’s not enough to simply have a website; that website must also be mobile friendly. What happens when potential customers conduct an Internet search for your business? Your online presence is just as important as your physical location. A great website can also lure customers to participate in your marketing campaigns with attractive opt ins to receive advance notice of sales or special deals via email.

2. Your Competitor Does It Better, Faster, Stronger.

Remember Kodak? The film company was the king in the land of film photography for 120 years. How about now? You probably use your phone to take most of your pictures and that phone isn’t made by Kodak. According to Forbes Magazine, every company serves three functions: social, managerial, and entrepreneurial. While all three are equally important, it is very easy for established companies to become complacent and forget that they have an entrepreneurial function as well. If your competitors are more innovative than you and do it more quickly, you are going to lose out on important sales. In the case of Eastman Kodak, they excelled in the social and managerial areas and failed as entrepreneurs in the digital age.

3. You Offer Too Many Choices From the Beginning.

When overwhelmed with too many choices, potential customers can suffer from analysis paralysis. If you promise the moon and the stars too, not only do they become overwhelmed but you may unwittingly be portraying yourself as a “jack of all trades; master of none.” While you do not need to pair back your offerings, concentrate on those you consider to be your specialty. For example, a construction company may portray themselves as an expert on exterior remodeling without individually promoting that they do windows, doors, soffits, gutters, siding, trim, downspouts, etc. Know your strengths, stick with them, and build your brand.

4. Treating Your Customers as One Size Fits All Components of Your Game Plan.

Customers are individuals. Unless you have an offer of universal appeal, try not to treat all of your customers exactly the same. Divide your clients into subgroups based on the data you have and send targeted emails. The more targeted and personally valuable the email is, the better chance you have of converting your efforts into a sale. What is compelling to one, may not be to another. If you miss the mark too many times, you will find that your emails go unread or worse yet, the customer will unsubscribe from future communication.

5. Your Carefully Planned Email Campaign Ends Up in the Junk Folder.

Your written advertisements are only effective if they are actually read the by the intended audience. If your carefully constructed emails are ending up in your customer’s junk folder, you have a problem. Practicing an opt-in strategy, clearly identifying yourself, and developing a catchy title for your valuable emails are all practices that can help keep you in the inbox crowd.

The 5 Mistakes That Will Prevent You From Getting the Sales You Deserve

5 Strategies for Converting Leads into Buyers

Unless your marketing campaign includes automated emails, it’s doomed to fail. That may sound apocalyptic but, unfortunately, it’s the truth.

Whether your company is adding a blog to its website, promoting a new product or service or simply maintaining close customer relationships, email represents one of the most effect channels for communicating, engaging and ultimately, persuading potential buyers to make a purchase. Why, you ask? Because email:

• Sends real-time messages to consumers searching for cutting-edge information that gives them an advantage over other consumers.


• Grabs attention by addressing leads with personalized information–first name, geolocation, etc.


• Lets you stay in constant contact with your leads (remember the old adage “out of sight, out of mind”?)


• Can be compared against “test” emails using different content, graphics and subject lines. Sending two different versions of one email to leads and examining what kind of response you receive to each email lets you know right away what works and what doesn’t.


• Is shareable in an instant. Gone are those awful days of trying to reach just a few customers by spending a lot of time and money on snail-mail campaigns. Email marketing strategies can have your products and services known to virtually thousands of leads via Gmail and social media.

And the really good news is that there are even more ways to convert leads into buyers!

1. All You Gotta Do is Show Them the “Money”

In this case, “money” means “proof” that supports the benefits your leads will enjoy if they purchase your goods. Proof could include customer reviews, offering free product samples, testimonials and BBB accreditation.

2. Come and Get Yours Before They’re All Gone!

There’s something about being told a great product is on the verge of selling out that converts leads lickety-split. Savvy businesses that have profited by relying on this behavior often create a genuine product shortage by limiting inventory or selling a product only for a certain time period.

3. Reach, Engage and Nurture, Nurture, Nurture!

Don’t stop your email marketing efforts just because you find new leads. Since the majority of new leads are not yet convinced that your product or service is worth entering their credit card info, you’ve got to nurture those leads like newborns while building their trust and establishing a long-term commitment to your business. You can do this by developing a failsafe email marketing plan that cultivates personalized relationships with all your leads.

4. Once Upon a Time…

A business began sending emails to customers that told compelling, emotionally engaging stories centering on their products and services. Since these emails did not reek of “sales-y” talk or scream spammy headlines, customers began looking forward to reading “storytelling” emails that naturally developed a sense of belief and trust towards the business.

And they started making purchases–a lot of them!

5. Make Leads Feel a Bit Uneasy–-Just Don’t Scare Them

Arousing curiosity colored slightly with a sense of uneasiness makes it really hard for customers to just walk away from your emails without turning into amateur detectives. By understanding the needs and desires of your audience, you can start an automated email marketing campaign with a few “story-telling” emails hinting at what may happen to them if they didn’t use your services or products. Follow up those emails with fascinating info about your products and scenarios describing the many benefits of purchasing your products.

Those flesh-and-blood leads are out there right now, just waiting for you to push their “persuade me” button and boost your conversion rates into another dimension. It’s never been a better time to start working on your next automated email marketing campaign–today.

5 Strategies for Converting Leads into Buyers

What is A Follow Up Series?

Email marketing has quickly become one of the most powerful tools available to businesses both large and small. The wonderful thing about email marketing is that the same marketing and advertising tactics that are being used by the big corporations can also be implemented by the small business owner as well in order to get big results. The trick to great email marketing is in understanding some of the different tactics used and the timing of when to use what.

An email follow up series is all about timing. Once you have effectively obtained a lead, they have opted in by offering their email address, the real work of landing the sale starts. Your email follow up series is the tool that will help you finish convincing the lead that you are the choice they should make, or to encourage the lead to continue making purchases.

Use Your Tools

Most small businesses which are using some type of email marketing software or marketing automation software have at their fingertips email follow up series capabilities, but most companies do not put this important tool to work. Why? Because most business owners feel intimidated by the prospect of mapping out their objectives and then writing up the pre-arrange emails. What these business owners do not realize, however, is that an email follow up series is a small time investment which will continue to build your business, land sales and increase your revenue for a long time to come.

What Is a Follow Up Series?

A follow up series is quick simply a series of email messages which are automatically sent out to leads (potential or returning customers) with more information or encouragement to make a purchase or respond to your message in some way. Your email follow-up series is quite literally the best and most authentic way to engage people in your brand and get them committed to be a part of your online community as well as a “free” advertiser. People share brands and messages that they enjoy and believe in.

What Should A Follow Up Series Consist Of?

A follow up series of emails should consist of a couple of different kinds of messages.

• Thank You- The thank you message should be sent immediately after a purchase or after an opt in. This will also offer an email confirmation to cement the address to your list.


• Let’s Get Started or Welcome- This message or a variation of it is a way to reach out to the lead to connect on a deeper level. This is a good time to invite them to share your brand on their social media, making sure that sharing capabilities can easily be done from the email itself.


• This Way to Great Content- This message will refer the lead back to your website where they can find new, relevant content (articles, blogs, offers) to help them in whatever niche your product, service or brand promises to assist them.


• Make the Most of…- This message will offer your lead tips to ensure success with the product, brand or service. This is also a great time to encourage your lead to share content with others who might also need this brand, product or service.


• Bonuses- Everyone loves bonuses and free gifts. At this point in the relationship with your lead you should offer a bonus of some time. The most inexpensive way to keep leads interested is with free content. Content is free for you because you can create it, and it appealing to the lead because it will continue to help them along whatever path they started out on with your product, brand or service. Bonus content can come in the form of free e-books, articles, videos, tutorials or webinars.


• How Pleased Are You?- This message will seek to engage the lead on an even deeper level by giving them the opportunity to offer feedback. Feedback can be offered in the form of a testimonial. This has a twofold purpose. One is makes the lead feel special and necessary to the brand and two it provides you with important marketing feedback which can help you improve your marketing strategies.

What is A Follow Up Series?

When To Resend An Email To Boost Your Open Rates

Email marketing works best when you are in tune with your subscriber list to the extent that you are providing the sort of content they want to receive.

This results in higher open and click-through rates and maximizes the chances of getting your subscribers to go on and take the action you want them to take, such as buying goods or services from you.

But sometimes an email may arrive at a really inconvenient time when your subscribers have so many other pressing things going on that your email gets overlooked.

This is why we introduced RocketResponder Resend which will automatically send the same email again to those subscribers on your list who did not open it first time round.

When To Resend An Email

If you are in the habit of sending an email to your subscriber list every day then it is probably not a great idea to automatically resend them all a couple of days later.

In fact if that is how you email then you might want to make very sparing use of this feature. Think of it as like using a highlighter pen.

If you highlight a couple of the most important phrase of concepts on a page of text, it will really make them stand out.

If you highlight nearly every word then you are left with a confusing mess which defeats the whole point of the exercise in the first place.

So if you are a regular email sender then only use this feature to highlight those emails which are so important that you don’t want your subscribers to miss your message…and leave it at that.

In resending an email you are targeting those people who either did not see your email first time round or were not motivated enough to open it when it first arrived.

Sometimes a second ‘nudge’ is all it takes to get the email opened. And again, if you use this feature sparingly, your subscribers may well think that if you have gone to the trouble to send the email again, then your message must be important.

Of course some of your subscribers may just think you made a mistake and hit the ‘send’ button again by mistake. This is not a problem because they may go on to open it anyway now that their curiosity has been piqued.

Time Intervals

You can experiment with this to see what works best for you.

If you are emailing your list on a weekly basis, or thereabouts, then you certainly might benefit from sending your most important emails out after two or three days.

If you send a monthly newsletter or something similar then you might want to leave a longer interval, five or six days for example.

Email marketing agency Alchemy Worx tried the resend technique for their own subscriber list on an email campaign to get signups for a subject line prediction tool.

On the initial send they got an open rate of 23.6% and a click through rate of 4.3%.

When they resent the same email five days later they got an open rate of 11% and a click through rate of 3.5% – lower than the original email but these are all opens and click throughs which would have otherwise not have happened.

But something else happened which really took them by surprise…the number of sign ups generated from the resent email almost doubled as the graph below shows.

Resending key emails can be a very powerful tool indeed. Give RocketResponder Resend a try for yourself and see how it works for you.

 

When To Resend An Email To Boost Your Open Rates