Improve Your Online Small Business Profits
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The answer to increasing your sales can be as simple as
improving your email customer service.
Recent survey's show that the most important factor to
customer loyalty is service. Good service out weighs
price as well as features when new customers as well as
existing customer make their purchase decisions.
When you improve your customer service you get more
repeat business as well as convert more prospects into
customers.
How can you improve your email customer service?
Below are 8 email customer service tactics you can use
to increase your business.
1) Fast accurate email responses to inquiries.
Provide accurate email answers to questions within 1 - 2
hours of their submission during business hours and studies
show you will increase revenue 10%.
Respond daily to questions, comments and even unsubscribes
that are sent to your mailing lists "From" address. People
will hit reply to your list mailings and they expect you
to be there and respond to it.
2) Prevent customer complaints with email notification.
Be pro-active in notifying customers of problems before
complaints occur. For example if your site will be down or
if you've had shipping delays, send an email to let your
customers know of the problem before they complain.
3) Provide self-help information.
In addition to FAQs and web tutorials, have email
newsletters your customers can register for that provide
tips and insight. Email out regular self-help material to
give your customers ideas on improving their business.
4) Be easy to contact.
Make sure your email address as well as your phone
number is clearly visible to customers.
When your prospects can contact you easily, you can
respond to them quickly and improve their customer
service experience.
5) Send HTML emails.
HTML emails get a better response, brand your company
and look professional.
To boost response to your HTML email put in rich media
(i.e. video / flash ) as well as a "search" form boxes.
You'll find these tools work to encourage prospects and
customers to take action.
6) Use the apology email.
Nothing drives higher open rates or further readership
than openly saying you're sorry.
We all make mistakes with our sites, our email campaigns,
our actions, etc.. The next time you make a mistake
capitalize on it and apologize for it.
Of course don't purposefully make a mistake so you can
apologize. But should errors occur admit it and send out
an email that has a subject line - "Oops, our error" or
"We're sorry". These messages will get noticed and read.
7) Run dollar off specials.
Coupons offering a dollar amount off, such as $25 off have
been found to out perform coupons for a percentage off -
such as 10% off. The reason is that dollar off coupons are
simpler for your customer to quickly calculate the savings.
Make specials to your email list a limited-time offer. And
be sure to send an email reminder before the sale ends.
Specials to your email list with dollar off coupons work
well to drive sales during slower times of the year. They
also are appreciated by customers as everyone loves
savings!
8) Provide free content with no registration required.
Rather than require visitors to your site to provide their
email address to get your ebook, white paper or attend
your webinar - give the content away.
Studies show giving away free content with no registration
required increases the number of visitors who access
your information by a factor of 10. You also establish
a high level of customer service by servicing those who
are not yet even customers.
Only after your visitors have evaluated the quality of
the information you provide should you ask for an
email in order to send them additional information.
This strategy gives people a taste of your goods for
free and the higher quality prospects will register
for more.
There you have it 8 strategies you can use to improve
your email customer service results. Put these ideas
to work in your business today and you are sure to
increase your sales!
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Abbie Drew
DEMC Editor
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