With growing competition within many business industries, each brand is trying to distinguish itself in this battle. Some focus on product quality, some on sales, but some companies are doing everything they can to provide their customers with the best experience and service possible.
Once issues or questions arise, consumers need support that is effective and efficient – this is where a contact centre becomes a central point of interaction. Clients expect help that will be provided to them, enhancing their customer experiences. However, with changing technology and demands, a contact centre is now expected to be available on multiple channels besides the telephone line, such as web chat, social media, emails.
The changing consumer needs and demands push businesses with contact centres to find new communication methods and develop them further besides providing support. These new channels also allow building a relationship and communicating with clients even further, besides sorting out their queries.
One of the most significant chances here is to develop marketing while using the contact centre to its greatest potential. In order to succeed, and save time and money, email marketing should be considered to help further improve the customer experience.
Let’s find out how you could supercharge your organisation’s contact centre with email marketing to fulfil consumers’ demands.
Why Use Email Marketing?
It is no secret that email marketing has been growing in its importance and credibility as one of the best marketing tools. It is beneficial when the company is trying to stay in touch with its clients and build further relationships.
Whether the purpose of the email is sales or to deliver newsletters, it has to provide the content that will provide value and benefit the recipient. If done right, email marketing will be able to reach large audiences, attract new customers, and increase sales and brand visibility. To ease your email marketing experience and increase the chances of getting noticed, don’t forget to use an email marketing platform, like Sender that will provide you with multiple tools to create and design the best emails in the industry.
If we haven’t convinced you to use email marketing yet, let’s look at some impressive statistics which won’t leave you hesitating:
- The expected growth of email usage by 2023 is 4.3 billion users.
- By 2022, the expected number of emails sent per day is 347.3 billion.
- If done right, email can bring you an exceptional return on investment (for every $1 spent, the average ROI is $42).
- 9 out of 10 marketers use emails when delivering content organically.
- 80% of businesses use emails as a primary marketing channel.
The results look stunning, right? That’s not it yet! Let’s dive deeper and find out how email marketing can help call centre businesses.
How Can Email Marketing Help Your Contact Centre?
Now you’re aware of the statistics and impressive results which can be accomplished with the help of email marketing, let’s look at some further reasons to start adapting it for your organisation:
It provides accessible communication
Once email marketing is used wisely, your company’s success rate will increase fast, as every customer will want to read your emails.
Most contact centres use transactional emails, which are automatically sent to inform the clients about order summary or payment. This is a huge chance to use these details for further marketing!
By developing the knowledge of what your customers are ordering and collecting data about it, your brand will be able to deliver the content consumers are looking for, and benefit your business further with increased sales and revenue.
It provides advertising opportunities
With the details you receive from your customers, you can create promotional material that could be sent regularly.
You will keep your clients updated and remind them about the brand. With consistent and developed emails, your company will be able to convert potential clients into paying customers.
It is cost-effective
Emails are the cheapest way to advertise your business. It doesn’t involve a lot of budget, but for it to be effective, you have to think about content and design exceptional emails, which will lead to openings, improved click-through rates, and conversions.
It provides an ability to reach a large audience
Emails help reach huge numbers of people in a short time. You could send your brand’s promotions and updates to millions of subscribers in just a few seconds.
Social media could also be used when collecting email addresses. Absolutely everyone who has a social media account must have an email address to register, so collecting your target audience’s data on social platforms and converting them into email subscribers could bring you a lot of potential value.
Metrics To Use When Composing Contact Centre Emails
As email marketing helps to stay in touch with the customers, some measures have to be considered to ensure that these emails achieve the final goals.
So, before you start composing, let’s check some key metrics which you need to know before utilising email marketing to provide better customer experiences.
Length and Formatting
Many call centres struggle with keeping email information short. Try to use succinct and engaging phrases that imply the same meaning as longer text, but look less complicated and more attractive to readers.
You might also want to add some pictures which will showcase what the email is about. No one likes long and lengthy emails, as it might stop your audience from reading the full body.
Look how well Coach presents the topics the following email contains! By emphasising it with pictures, the reader can easily understand the main topics of the newsletter. The minimal text covers the primary information, and a pleasant design attracts attention, so it is thoroughly read.
Convincing and Attractive
Besides ensuring that your email contains just enough information without being too long, you should convince your target audience why your brand and the emails you send are advantageous. Use warm, clear, and persuasive wording so the audience are comfortable.
Birchbox perfectly attracts attention by providing incentives. The recipient can participate in the game and win a free prize. The email is convincing people to give it a try and persuades them to visit the website.
Value Adding and Eye-Catching
Above all of the things mentioned, your emails should focus on providing value to customers. They have to introduce and tell a story about the product or service your brand is providing.
Besides just being promotional, the email’s tone should be warm and the content itself should be colourful, so it won’t look dull. The aim is to provide customers with information that would positively reflect their further experience when using the contact centre and business in general.
Take a look at how Emma Bridgewater combines a customer service email with promotional content. Besides showing that the company cares about its clients and offering the contact centre’s information, the email also features recently viewed products. In that case, the recipient gets value by receiving essential details and is encouraged to purchase the brand’s products.
Providing The Best Customer Experience
Customer experience can be identified as an impression you give your clients, which helps them formulate their opinion about your organisation and shapes their feelings towards it.
When providing a positive customer experience, the aim is to stay relevant and be remembered. You need to engage your target market and develop a continuous conversation.
Here are some facts: 69% of customers would recommend the company if they had a positive experience. Furthermore, 50% would intend to use the brand more often. However, if the experience was negative, 58% of people will never use the business again. To stay and compete in the market, your company has to gain and develop brand loyalty, and to do that, focusing on customer experiences is crucial.
Types of Content
When utilising emails for contact centres, the aim is to create content that will develop a positive view and build brand sentiment towards your organisation. Once you use the content that is taking your customers on a journey, satisfaction rate and further purchases are likely to increase.
Here is a list of email examples you can send as a contact centre to develop your relationship with the audience, and contribute towards a more positive experience.
Welcome Emails
Confirmation Emails
Survey Emails
Thank You Emails
Promotional Emails
Reminder Emails
Further Improvements on Customer Experience
Besides the actual content you send your recipients, it is essential to deepen the relationship and take the customer experience to the next level. Here is how you can do it:
Hear Your Customers
Apart from providing a great product or service which satisfies your clients, you should ensure that your customers can contact you quickly.
Most of the time, brands arrange their FAQ page with no further options to contact the company directly. And even though some businesses direct the clients to web chat or call centres, customers want individual care and support.
Consider offering direct email support and provide options where the issue could be solved uninterrupted. It will boost the positive perception towards your organisation and avoid the poor reviews and testimonials that might destroy the trust towards your company.
Here an example of feedback form you can create on your website:
Content Personalisation
Serving your customers by using their data to target them individually will definitely attract attention. If you want to develop further relationships and increase customer experience and loyalty, ensure that the content of the email you send is customised.
Starting with the subject line, which contains their name, moving to their purchase history or location, you can create an email that will be opened without any doubts.
Providing Your Clients With Options
To show that you care and your customers’ opinions matter, you should allow subscribers to choose what they want to receive from your brand and its frequency.
Consider developing a preference centre, so it prevents your brand from bombarding your clients with the information they are not interested in. It will also allow you to customise the content as you will receive further details about the recipient’s needs and choices.
Let’s Summarise: How Can You Utilise Email Marketing For Your Contact Centre?
There are many ways you can improve the customer experience in your contact centre. One of them is the utilisation of email marketing. With the growth of emails as a digital marketing and communication channel, you should not miss the chance to benefit from them.
Let’s recap the most important parts of this article and sum up why email marketing is a good fit for your business’ contact centre.
Email Marketing Benefits:
- Email marketing can help to provide better communication. Use this chance to send further details about your company, rather than transactional emails only.
- There is an increased advertisement opportunity – use customer details to approach them with promotions they won’t be able to refuse.
- Emails are considered one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your audience, so why not save some money and increase sales?
- The ability to reach large audiences is another excellent benefit of emails. You can get in touch with millions of people within a few seconds.
Metrics:
- Make sure your email is not too long. Use short and informative sentences, add some pictures which could present the main message so the reader could be captured straight away.
- Ensure that the content of your email is providing value and is beneficial for the recipient. This will help to increase the opening rates.
- Besides valuable content, the email should be eye-catching so you capture the readers’ interest. Consider content that would aim to increase the customer experience.
Customer Experience:
- Customer satisfaction is essential to any business. Contact centres have to develop creative ways to get in touch with their clients and pay attention to them so the experience can be positively affected.
- There are many types of content you can send to your customers if you are looking to build a relationship and keep the customer experience level high: welcome emails, confirmations, surveys, thank you emails, special offers, and reminders. For these emails we recommend you use the Sender email marketing platform.
- Besides capturing content, you should also aim to apply further techniques for your email to be more successful and appealing:
- Make sure you hear your customers and your contact centre support doesn’t stop with the FAQ section. Enable the ability to reach your customer service office via multiple communication channels so each customer can choose their preferred contact method.
- To attract attention to your emails and ensure that they are being read, use the data collected to personalise them based on different segments. Also, make sure you use the person’s name.
- You should also provide your clients with options on how and when they want to receive the information from you. In that case, you will enable the kind of choice that can only increase the customer experience. Based on the client’s decision, you will also be able to personalise their content further and successfully maintain the relationship.
Originally published Jun 16, 2021, updated Jan 17, 2023
