“It costs 6 – 7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.” – Bain & Company
Retaining a customer is as important as onboarding new customers. A new customer needs hand-holding in initial stages of engagement but as he moves through different lifecycle stages in your sales cycle, your emails can be the best way to nurture him, build relationship and keep him engaged. Also, sending timely reminders is not just a good way to induce him to take an important action but can increase your conversion many folds.
Here are some of the hand-picked examples of retention emails from SaaS companies. See how they are encouraging their users to do various activities and events to increase their customer lifetime value.
You an start sending a retention email as early as 1-2 weeks to your new users who have been inactive. The email can include key features of your service, stats and analytics and important actions you want them to take to actively start using the service.
1. Pinterest Retention Email
Engaging your customers is a great way to driving them back on your site.
Every time someone follows you on the social network, Pinterest sends you a super slick email like this:
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It’s a clear, simple email that really encourages you to get back to pinterest . Besides the idea is to help seed the new user’s profile with a flurry of new followers straight away, as well to expand your own network.
A campaign like this can increase your customer retention permanently.
2. Buffer App – reminding users when their buffer queue is empty
BufferApp is trying to make tweeting a habit by sending its users a reminder to add more tweets as soon as their buffer queue is empty.
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3. Eventbrite effectively uses your social connections to convince you
The email is creative & engaging, right from the imagery used on the top to the humor in the copy. Eventbrite has used its data to pick which events others in your friends circle are attending. Rather than bombarding you with their own event picks, they have smartly included one event suggestion from their side. Each event has a clear call to action with all the information you will need to help you take a quick decision and get you back on the site for some action.
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4. LinkedIn retention email shows the activity in your network
LinkedIn network updates is another great example of how to keep your subscribers engaged. The footer includes link to adjust your email preferences from daily to weekly. The header grabs your attention with a catchy phrase besides a call to action leads you to the site for more updates.
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5. Dropbox retention email is trying to build a habit
Dropbox have a great brand and the file sharing service has done a great brand building with the creative imagery in their emails to engage the subscribers. Dropbox knows that to get the most out of its sync and sharing service, you’ll want to install Dropbox on all of your computers. So, with this email, they gently nudge you to download Dropbox on all your computers, and also lists the benefits you will get by doing so. The call to action is clear and strong.