When you’re running a business, or any sort of organisation, you need to really look after your clients and visitors, making them feel valued and high on your priority list. One of the easiest ways you can do that, which you might not have considered previously, is through well-crafted email autoresponders. In this blog instalment, I’ll explain to you just why you need to include them.
#1: Consumers Want a Response, Quickly
When we’re talking about email replies, people are becoming much more impatient, as each year passes. According to an article by Fast Company in 2014, up to 80% of customers were happy to wait four hours for a reply and by 2015, the number of hours had dropped to just one. That number continues to fall. These days, your typical consumer expects a first-class service and simply isn’t happy to wait hours, or even a single hour, for a reply.
You can tell that it is therefore really important that you don’t miss a trick. Even if you fully intend to reply to emails as you receive them, you’re only human. There are any number of reasons why you might not be able to do so. One thing you can be sure of is that the consumer doesn’t care what that reason is. They want a quick response. That’s where autoresponders come in. It doesn’t matter whether you’re asleep, jetting off on holiday or even just buying some apples. An autoresponder will ensure the consumer hears from you quickly, keeping you in their good books.
#2: Saving Time and Stress
Whether you’re running a business, charity, blog or anything in between, you can be sure you’re going to be busy. That means you could, however innocently, forget to communicate with your clients or visitors. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have your own, virtual, personal assistant, to make sure nothing is forgotten?
With automatic emails and email campaigns, you can plan everything in advance. If, for example, you regularly send out marketing emails or newsletters, you’ll be able to plan these in advance and schedule their sending, to ensure they’re perfect, without even having to click ‘send’. In addition, whenever you receive a new enquiry, you’ve just made a sale or anything in between, you only need to write the email once. Imagine how much time that would save you!
#3: Gain Consumers’ Familiarity and Trust
In a world saturated with data, from emails to tweets and everything in between, you need to make sure people don’t forget you. The more you communicate with the consumers, the more you will remain in their memory and gain their trust.
Have you ever been into a shop where the proprietor pays attention to you, talks to you and offers to help you where they can? Well, it’s that behaviour that the general consumer looks for online. Every consumer wants to feel special and to feel like they matter to you personally. If you only ever demonstrate to people that you want their money and nothing more, you’ll quickly lose them. However, if you start sending automatic thank you emails for every sale, birthday wishes, tips on how to use a product they’ve bought or anything in between, you’re developing a much more positive relationship between the customer and your brand. That will help secure long-term future custom, which is exactly what you want.
#4: Maintain Relevance of your Brand
As the name suggests, ‘auto’ replies are sent after a particular trigger. For example, that trigger could be when someone has just sent an initial enquiry email through your contact form, or when they’ve just subscribed to your services. When you’re scheduling autoresponders to these events, you can make sure you include things like comments of appreciation and special offers, helping your brand to stay relevant.
According to Epsilon, trigger email opening rates were 76% higher than standard marketing emails. Now you may be asking, if standard marketing emails and trigger emails were (for example) both to include special offers, why are trigger emails opened so much more often? Well, the answer is simple – timing. Whatever the content of the email, if it is sent at the right time, it is more likely to be opened. For example, if an autoresponder with special offers is sent in response to an order being placed, then you’re catching the consumer before they become distracted, in the period of time when they are expecting you to confirm their order. If the same offers were to be sent at an entirely random time, the email would most likely end up unopened in the junk folder.
How will Digital Lychee Help You?
At Digital Lychee, I understand that the success of your business or organisation is very important to you. If you have simply used this information to further your business, then I hope you have found it very useful. If you are looking for me to help you build a website, or improve a current website, then I will be only too happy to help. I will provide you with all the advice and information you would need about which autoresponders are important to you and how you should set them up. You can get in touch with me here. I am looking forward to hearing from you!
Manual 5.0
