How to Master Your Retention Email Strategy

Sending a well-crafted email at the right time can be that push your clients need to re-engage with your business. The right retention email strategy will increase engagement, re-ignite interest, highlight your value, and reduce churn. When your members feel appreciated and happy with your services, they are more likely to stay with your business for the long term.

As marketing evolves to include social media, chatbots, and SMS, you may wonder if customer retention email strategies really work. Good news—it’s still the best bang for your buck, generating $38 for every $1 spent (that’s a 3,800% ROI)!

What is an email retention strategy?

It’s a campaign specifically designed to retain your customers. The key is to focus on connection by giving it a personalized feel, addressing pain points, and celebrating your clients’ successes. Research suggests that personalizing email content can boost your open rates to 29.95% (an almost 9% increase from the fitness industry average of 21%). If you want to keep clients, you need to reach them, so make your content interesting and relevant to get your emails read.

Here are the tips and tricks you need to help you master a successful retention email strategy:

What are the benefits of retention email marketing?

Did you know it costs 5-25x times less to keep a great client than to attract a brand new one?  This is why a smart email retention strategy is crucial to your business’s success. Here are some of the benefits of a winning retention strategy.

• It’s cost-effective: It helps you reach a large number of targeted clients on a small budget, connecting with each client segment specifically as frequently as it makes sense.
• Improve member experience: People like doing business with people they like and regular, relevant communication builds that connection. It shows you know what your clients are interested in and want to deliver value.
• Increase lifetime value: Engaged members will stick with you, likely increasing their investment and referring others to your business.
• Boost repeat business: A relevant email will keep you top of mind and keep them focused on your business. Research indicates that you are 60-70% more likely to sell something to an existing customer, so staying top of mind will result in repeat business.
• Increased sales: Businesses using segmented, targeted email marketing are reporting up to 760% in boosted revenues, so get personal with your content for best results.

What are the types of retention emails?

You may have an email newsletter, and that’s great for your members, but it isn’t necessarily part of a retention strategy. Sending emails at specific times with the intent to foster client relationships is how you’ll reduce churn and keep your best clients. In fact, 75% of people are more likely to open emails that are part of a targeted campaign. There are several different types of retention emails, here are a few ideas to consider.

• Welcome: Get off to a great start by getting acquainted with new members, setting expectations, and building that relationship from day one.
• Thank you: Make them feel appreciated and recognized by thanking them for their support—they stay loyal when they know you care.
• Celebration: When you think of them like family, connecting for holidays just makes sense. This could mean a birthday message including a voucher or free gift, recognizing milestones or celebrating holidays with your community like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or any other holiday throughout the year.
• Education: Teach them something to keep them engaged and remind them they rely on your expertise to reach their goals. Think videos, blogs, daily tips, and more!
• Motivation: Strengthen your connection and inspire clients to keep reaching those milestones with stats on their progress, class totals, and goal tracking so you can cheer them on.
• Notice: Put clients on notice and remind them when memberships and credit cards about to expire. This is also an opportunity to encourage renewals or shift them to a more robust program.
• Feedback: Ask customers about their recent visit. They’ll feel heard and you’ll get some great insight to improve your business.

Retention Email 101: What should it include?

You can’t keep them coming back for more if they aren’t reading your emails, so nail your email retention strategy with a few important, must-have details. How can you maximize retention and boost engagement, along with your open rates?

• Give it that personal touch by mentioning their name or their company name.
• Grab their attention with a short, compelling subject line that tells them what to expect when they open your message. Don’t mislead them or that’ll be the last email from you they open.
• Keep your content specific. Sending them content they’re not interested in will result in them unsubscribing or leaving you unopened.
• Include links to other relevant content. The more time they spend learning and engaging with your business, the more likely they are to stay long-term.
• Include a call to action. If you don’t ask, you don’t get—it’s a simple way to increase a client’s investment in your business.

Tools to enhance your retention email strategy

Don’t tackle your email retention strategy alone! With WellnessLiving’s all-in-one software, we have the tools you need to raise the results of your retention strategy:

• Automated marketing suite: Create custom templates to win back clients who haven’t visited lately, launch a new class, notify them of remaining classes, or remind them that a credit card or membership is about to expire. Get the message out easily and consistently with automation.
• Expert reporting: Always be in the know about your business with data like engagement rates, attendance, billing info, and more. The more insight you have, the better you can target your email campaigns.
• Campaign data: Don’t guess whether your emails are effective, use hard data like open rates to see what’s working and where you need to tweak your approach.

Retain more clients with the right email

You need to stand out with interesting, relevant messaging to keep your clients engaged. How do you master your customer retention email strategy? Send the right content at the right time. This will help you build relationships, stay top of mind, and keep your clients for years to come.

Don’t forget to get help from the experts with the tools to save time, maximize results, and track your successes. WellnessLiving can help with automated marketing and powerful reporting.

Want to know how else can WellnessLiving help manage your business? Book a free, no-commitment demo today.