Don't damage customer loyalty before they even buy

Companies send really odd emails sometimes.

Yesterday I got an email from a service I tried out two weeks ago. It's subscription-based and comes with a free account.

This is second email I've received from the service. The first was a basic onboarding email two weeks ago.

The most recent email was asking if I had questions about the service (great idea) but then offered a 40% off coupon code for life. Okay... that's silly incentive to offer to a new customer right away.

Except the incentive would "expire" in 24 hours.

Okay... so now there's some time scarcity.

But the code is just a generic 40_OFF code. Something anyone can use.

Okay... so how is that generic code going to expire? Or is the expiration just made up?

This isn't the first time I've seen this sort of pushy tactic. I'm sure you've seen it too.

They create an automated email, send it on a schedule, and hope the reader sees the time scarcity and reacts before noticing that time scarcity is fake.

This type of manipulation poisons the customer relationship and prevents any sort of customer loyalty. The customer asks "if they are willing to lie to get me to be a customer, what else will they lie about?.

Even if the lie was a mistake, they're training their customer in ways they shouldn't be:

Not a great job building relationships or any positive customer behavior at all. With this sort of system in place, I'd bet the company struggles to retain customers and there's no signs of customer loyalty.

I don't want to just rip on bad emails (way too many for even me to write about). Instead, here's a few things they could have done differently that you can steal for your own customer relationship building:

Your customers and potential customers want to hear from you. They want to see your offers, deals, and new products. If they didn't, they'd unsubscribe.

Use tactics that burn customer loyalty and make the relationship into a transaction and you'll going to wonder why customers don't stick around.

If you'd like to have your customers analyzed, segmented, and then explore specific advice on how to build their loyalty, Repeat Customer Insights can do all of that for you.

Eric Davis

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Topics: Repeat customers Customer loyalty Email marketing

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