Grow your start-up by connecting with customers using email

Grow your start-up by connecting with customers using email

The Perpetual Relevance of Email

It's the perfect customer engagement tool for start ups that’s hidden in plain sight. The humble email – in use continually since 1965, yet still the number one preferred communications channel amongst consumers when engaging with their favorite brands. Discounting the effectiveness of email to build your customer base can be at your peril.

Why is email still #1 after all this time?

Email has numerous characteristics in its favor that are often taken for granted:

• Great at growing and maintaining customer base relationships
• Easily used on and formatted for multiple devices
• Enables genuine two-way communication
• Can host longer content
• Allows for use of rich media

What makes email particularly great for start ups is its immense ease and cost effectiveness. For a low cost, you can communicate directly with each and every one of your potential and existing customers in seconds. And not only is your message sent directly, it can be very easily personalized toward different recipients, vastly increasing customer engagement, and therefore the effectiveness of your communications. 

Ask consumers and they will tell you – 71% of them in fact – that they expect personalized interactions with brands, with 76% of them getting frustrated when they don’t receive them. That’s an overwhelming expectation, but the benefits to business are borne out in the 40% more revenue generated by those companies that excel at personalization. On a very basic human level, it makes sense. When was the last time you were excited to receive a message that clearly went out to thousands of people? Chances are you didn't find a lot of value in it. The difference between a product recommendation that was made to you based on your own interaction and buying behavior, versus one that wasn't individualized is night and day. And it can be the difference between someone making a purchase or going elsewhere. 

Personalization is therefore critical if you’re to gain any traction with your audience. Get personalization correct early on with good content and by following best practices, and you’ll likely see big results fast – ones that maintain deep customer relationships. 

However, personalizing means much more than just ‘insert name here.’

How to personalize your email communications

Personalizing emails when you’re sending to hundreds or thousands of recipients can seem daunting, but with audience segmentation through the likes of Twilio Marketing Campaigns, it needn’t be. Segmenting your audience by whatever data you have on them, e.g., location, gender, language, purchase history with you, means you can establish customer personas. It is to these personas you then speak and tailor your emails.

This can mean alterations in language, differing promotions, even varying send dates depending on recipients’ upcoming public holidays, for example. Whatever the differentials, it shows your audience you are speaking directly to their needs and wants, and not just sending mass emails blindly. Want another reason to segment your emails? How about that segmentation of email campaigns alone can increase revenue by up to 760%? Sounds a pretty good reason to us.