5+ Effective Customer Retention Email Examples: Easy Customer Retention Strategies

Customer acquisition is quite costly these days. New customer acquisition requires more money, effort, and time.

As a result, most businesses shifted their focus to customer retention these days.

However, customer retention isn’t as easy either. The second your customers don’t feel validated, they’ll start looking for alternatives.

So how can you do this?

No, marketing or promotional emails won’t work. They’ll rather push your customers away! Think about this, your customers are in limbo. They have already made purchase(s) and if you try to oversell them, they’ll simply walk away.

What you need to do is establish a relationship with your emails. Email is the best tool to develop a relationship and by using email marketing the right way, you can develop a customer retention email strategy that not only keeps people coming back but eager for more!

Well, that’s what we’ll discuss in this article! You’ll get everything in this piece, from the best practices of writing customer retention emails to examples from market-leading brands.

Before we start, let’s familiarize ourselves with customer retention emails and why you need to send these.

What are Customer Retention Emails?

Customer retention is a widely used and popular term. The main purpose of customer retention emails is to ensure customer satisfaction and engagement. Businesses send out offers and opportunities to their audiences through such emails with a view to:

• Re-engage old customers
• Enlighten users about how to get the best out of their services and products
• Highlight the audience’s importance to a business

Customer retention emails help turn your audiences into loyal fanbases by helping you form everlasting customer relationships. Needless to say, your business in several ways by having loyal customers as they are more likely to refer your brand to their friends and families.

Why Should You Send Customer Retention Emails?

Customer retention emails fall under the category of re-engagement emails but require a tad bit different approach. Sending customer retention emails is undoubtedly the cheapest and easiest way of retaining customers, as email is the most cost-effective and recognized way to connect with your audience.

Customer retention brings way too many benefits other than the one we mentioned earlier. Here are some statistics to show why you should prioritize customer retention:

• Acquiring new customers costs 7x more compared to retaining customers (source)
• Chances of selling to an existing customer are 60-70%, while only 5-20% of your new customers are likely to make a purchase (source)
• Nearly 65% of the overall revenue comes from existing customers
• A 5% increase in customer retention rate can increase your profit by up to 95% (source)

Almost 80% of retailers believe email to be the best channel for retaining customers. Besides, most email marketing tools allow you to automate emails.

How to Develop the Perfect Customer Retention Email Strategy?

Customer retention emails should be approached differently than regular emails. Your first priority is to figure out potential customers who’ll likely escape your business. Then, you need to develop a customer retention email strategy that aims to keep them in business with you. Here’s how you can approach this:

Identify Customers in Limbo

Keeping a customer hooked throughout different stages of his buyer journey is possibly the most difficult task for a marketer. Not to mention, it’s even harder to identify the right customers to reach out to. Since a vast majority of your email marketing’s success depends on identifying the right audience, you need to identify these customers first.

Consider your user’s previous engagements, orders, order values, frequency, etc., to determine who qualifies for a user retention email campaign. Once you identify which customers to reach out to, your job is half done!

Be Creative with Your Subject Lines

Whether you’re sending a retention, cold, or follow-up email, you’ll always need a catchy subject line to grab your audience’s attention. Of all the types of emails, customer retention emails usually have a lower open rate in general.

That’s why it’s super important to write a creative subject line. Here are a few tips on writing catchy subject lines:

• Introduce humor in your subject lines
• Write about the offers
• Address users by their name
• Put something in the subject line that the receipt will find interesting
• Highlight your discount or offer in the subject line

Showcase Positive Reviews

Your existing and satisfied customers are your biggest strength, especially when you’re aiming to retain customers. If they vouch for you, it’ll be the most credible source of recommendation for customers in limbo.

Now, how does this work?

Let’s say a customer who bought a bag from your website also viewed a shoe but didn’t place an order. Your next email should include customer reviews of that shoe to increase the probability of that customer placing another order.

Since user reviews boost conversion, this email will likely increase a customer’s lifetime value and will help you retain the customer in the long run. If you’re in need of customer reviews, there are some nifty ways to acquire them.

Tailor Personalized Offers

Even if you forget all the statistics, data, and strategies, we know personalized offers work like magic regardless of the situation. That’s also the case when it comes to retaining customers through emails.

But, a single offer won’t help you retain all sorts of customers. If we refer to the previous example, offers on bags won’t help you retain someone who has already purchased a bag.

What’ll work, though, is if you send him an offer on the shoe they viewed. So consider what’s personalized for your audience to maximize conversion rates and boost customer retention!

Create FOMO

Creating FOMO through emails is an excellent and popular approach, especially for customer retention. FOMO stands for fear of missing out. Using this technique, you can create urgency in your customers, so they re-engage with you. Emails like the ones below are some of the best examples of emails that create FOMO:

• Last hour offer
• Buy something within a day 
• Buy this and get that free if you order today 

These emails can potentially convince customers who are getting away.

A word of caution: Be careful when using FOMO as it might also look like you’re trying to oversell. The key is to strike the right balance between your customer’s needs and your offer.

5+ Proven Customer Retention Email Examples

Customer retention emails are very common regardless of the industry. Truth be told, assembling a list of the best customer retention email examples wasn’t a piece of cake. Yet, we did our best and compiled a list of versatile customer retention email examples.

1. Grammarly

Here’s an email that demonstrates exactly how a customer retention email should look like and when the customer should be approached.

Grammarly is an online writing assistant and they send this email to those who stopped using their platform for a certain period. They makes their customer feel valued by saying they noticed their customer’s absence and approach the inactive customers politely. And the humor they added by saying “wrinkle” in the time badge was the cherry on top!

And guess what? The CTA is a very creative one too—asking the customers to go write a few lines when they’re ready.

So, what should be the takeaway from this example? 

Polite approach, humor, and design —focusing on all these three can help you produce a highly engaging customer retention email.

2. Apple

We told you that offers work for retaining customers, right?

Well, that’s what Apple used to retain its customers. Whether you buy a Mac, iPad, or iPhone, you’ll get free wireless headphones. Who wouldn’t want to grab this offer if they’re an Apple fan?

That’s what happened. This email made more sales than usual and helped Apple retain more customers!

3. Starbucks

Starbucks didn’t shy away from giving offers as well. Given that big companies are relying on offers to retain customers, safe to say that emails with offers will work the best for retaining your customers. Here Starbucks offered 50% off on their coffees on a specific date. 

This also works as a FOMO as the customers know they won’t be able to avail of the offer once it ends. Thus, this email creates urgency and boosts engagement. 

4. Codecademy

You don’t always need offers or a creative email to retain customers. Sometimes the simplest emails can do the trick if they are motivating enough. That’s what Codecademy has done.

Codeacademy sent a plain email but with a hook. They motivated their users by informing them how many people have benefited through Codecademy and asking others to jump in right away.

What to take away from this example? 

Even if your email is not an ideal customer retention email, addressing users’ pain points in your email can sometimes work better for customer retention.

5. Trello

Trello has shown that sometimes letting people know about improvements can help retain customers. They have sent emails informing their audiences about their new update, so they know what they are missing. That’s an excellent approach for convincing the customers in limbo. 

6. Uber

Uber has focused on providing a personalized offer to retain its customers. In their customer retention email, they have targeted a group that often travels between specific places. The offer says their customers can enjoy a flat rate by getting a pass. It’s an offer most can’t pass out; thus, their customer retention email serves its purpose. 

Wrapping up

If you have noticed, every email you send is a customer retention email at the end of the day. From the welcome email to follow-up emails, the ultimate purpose is always to retain customers. That’s why when you send emails dedicated to retaining customers, they should maintain a standard.

Hopefully, after reading this article, you know how customer retention emails are supposed to be. If you have any ideas or tips on writing effective retention emails, don’t forget to let us know in the comments section!