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5 Reasons to Personalise Your Email Messages

Personalise Your Email

There has been a significant shift in eCommerce over the last few years with customer expectations demonstrating a preference toward personalised experiences. It goes back to the old days of shopping in your local, where everybody knew your name. That human element was lost in the early days of online shopping, but is now coming full circle with the ease of online communication. The majority of eCommerce sellers are neglecting to recognise the value of creating a personalised customer support experience. Personalised emails deliver six times more transaction rates than generic communication. The long-term benefit is the customer loyalty that arises from offering a great experience to your customer. The prevailing reward that is common throughout is the increase in company revenue. Unfortunately, 70 percent of brands are failing to personalise your email from them.

5 reasons to personalise your email messages

1.Delighted customers increase revenue

The Neosperience Team, experts in digital customer experience, forecast that customer experience will overtake price by 2020 as a brand differentiator, with 64 percent of people valuing the customer experience over price and product.

In order to create a successful personal response, you must get to know your customer.

Personalise Your Email Tip: Humanise your response. Refer to the customer by name and reply with the agent name. The customer wants to identify with a real person rather than an elusive company.

Researching your customer base and developing buyer personas can help you to identify with your target customer. Address your customers by name, and share your own name with them. Humanising your response will leave a positive impression on your company.

The most effective way of developing a mutual relationship with your customer is to listen. You need to understand their problem, so that you can work towards a positive resolution. Read their message carefully, and don’t be afraid to ask questions if you need to clarify an issue. Use your response as an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customer.

Remember that you have a focus group at your fingertips – social media empowers online sellers to learn, communicate, analyse behaviours and engage with customers. Focus on your customer social streams – begin by listening, ask questions and engage them in a conversation. Show that you care and that you intend to resolve the issue they have brought to your company.

Mutual appreciation is developed like any other relationship. Look after your customer and they will happily look after you in return

Dale Carnegie, author of ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ advises, “be interested in other people and they’ll be interested in you”.

2. Personalise your email to Build customer loyalty

Returning customers account for one third of all online shoppers. A study by RJ Metrics reveals that the top ten percent of customers for the average online store, spend three times more than once-off shoppers.

Personalise Your Email Tip: Treat your customer like an individual. Be aware of customer order information and interaction history. Consumers expect that you will have all their customer order information at hand in the hope for a speedy resolution.

Personalization is not a one-way street. To get personal with your customer, you need to build a mutual relationship with your customer. Shared experiences will attract your most loyal customers. Get people behind you by creating a positive experience – make it personal.

Loyal customers are returning customers. They can also be advocates for your brand.

There are many clever ways to generate customer loyalty, but it is fundamental that you treat your customer like an individual. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, and empathize with their situation. By understanding their problem, you will be able to communicate more effectively. The customer will expect you to know their order history, and to be aware of any previous interactions that they may have had with your team. Ensure that you have all the necessary details to hand in order to gain their trust and resolve their issue quickly.

When you develop a relationship with your customer, they are more likely to identify with you personally, rather than a nameless support agent from a faceless company.

3. Get better feedback

Research from Parature reveals that 65 percent of customers said they would cut ties with a brand over an isolated negative customer support experience.

Personalise Your Email Tip: Keep your company tone of voice consistent so that your customer can recognise your brand personality, and identify with any point of contact. Consistency breeds confidence and establishes a trust with your customer.

Build a foundation of trust to inspire your customer’s confidence in your brand. Customers appreciate an honest interaction with brands. It is useful to build a level of transparency to establish authenticity and develop mutual trust with your customer. Transparency will help you and your agents to speak with more confidence. Maintain consistency throughout your customer interactions.

Characterising your tone will humanise your brand and allow your team to have natural flowing conversations with your customers. A consistent tone gives your customer a unified impression of your business’s personality across all channels. It allows the customer to engage with your brand on a deeper level, and they will feel an affinity towards the company.

Inject your personality into the message, while maintaining the company tone of voice. The more personable the agent, the harder it is for a customer to leave negative feedback. When you involve the customer in a personalised interaction, they will recognise you as another human being, and will be more likely to empathize with you and want you to succeed.

Always be polite, thank the customer for their query, ask if they are happy with the solution you have provided, and offer further help in other areas of their experience. If you want to go one step further, offering additional support content can help you to get positive feedback.

4. Grow your business internationally

Xsellco Email

Personalise Your Email Tip: Localise information for international customers. Include localised information for international customers that offer the details they recognise in terms of measurements, language, currency, delivery and local returns.

Creating personalised responses for international customers will help you to expand your eCommerce business internationally. Although it is essential to treat each customer like an individual, first you need to know your customer and recognise their needs. When selling on international marketplaces, it is integral that you acknowledge the customs and culture of the country that you are selling in.

Assumptions about how to provide an excellent customer support experience can vary from culture to culture, and this often poses a challenge for eCommerce sellers. Observe national and religious holidays. Be aware of variances in communication, whether the customer expectation of support is for a more casual response in the US or more formal in Japan. Remember to be there for your customer at an appropriate time to their timezone.

Localise your listings by translating your product descriptions, using the local measurement system and currency. Where possible, use a local delivery service as you will be more likely to win the sale over your competitors. Make the experience easy for your customer by providing a simple and transparent return policy that can be handled in their area. Avoid any political references and never use colloquial language, as this can cause misunderstandings.

For customers to feel an affinity with your brand, they want to know that you share their values. This means grasping an understanding of where they come from and asking how their needs might differ from your own. Your future success rests on your customer happiness.

5. Empower your agents

The happier your customers, the happier and more productive your agents will be. Empower your agents to offer a great support experience for your customer, and allow them to focus on expanding the customer base. No one knows your customers better than your support team.

Personalise Your Email Tip: At XSellco, we and our customers, use SmartTags to quickly and easily personalise our responses. With these tags, you can also automate details like order numbers and addresses.

At XSellco, our agents use Fusion SmartTags personalise your email responses and to share information with the rest of the team. There are pre-defined SmartTags that automate a customer’s name, order information and much more. You can also set up custom tags that suit your own customer needs. The SmartTags immediately insert localized information, product details and any elements needed for personalising your responses.

These tags not only personalise your email messages, but they also speed up your customer response times, and allow agents to find the necessary information quickly. For example, if there is a query about product features that cater to a particular international marketplace, the agent can quickly enter a hashtag followed by the name of the feature into the body of a message, and they will immediately have the required information at hand.

Personalised Responses Drive Revenue Growth

The trend to personalise your email has evolved so much so that customers will no longer respond or engage with a generic email that has not acknowledged them. Customers want to feel invested in a brand that they shop with, and online sellers need to engage them on a personal level in order to develop a relationship, maintain a happy customer base and increase sales.

XSellco have crafted five customer support templates, which you can download for free, to help you tackle the most common customer support queries.

Download the five Free Email Templates Now:

Email Templates for Customer Support

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