Relax your muscle! The art of nurturing your potential customers is not an impossible mission. Here are 3 essential things to do to help you optimize follow-up emails after the first touch with customers via live chat. Let’s dive right in!
Know what you want
Why do you want to send a follow-up email after a live chat conversation?
No matter what the reason is, first and foremost, remember to make the email focused and friendly. By “focused” I mean be specific in your message. Don’t try to stuff all marketing and sales tricks here all at once. You’ll just woo your prospects away and make yourself look desperate for a sale. That’s not smart.
There are many content purposes and messages you can covey via follow-up emails. Here are some ideas to catch up with your prospects:
- A thank-you and chat transcript note
- Introduction of the company with why you’re sending the email
- Introduction of products that customers might be interested in
- Providing personalized offers
- Newsletter signing up invitation
- etc.
Based on your marketing purpose, develop a thoughtful series of follow-up emails. A series, not just one. And each email in this series must support each other in rolling potential customers deeper down to the sales funnel.
I would suggest you to look at your marketing message first before crafting a follow-up strategy. You can try drawing a tree map of how you will deliver this message to customers. In each email, create only one message supported with a solid CTA. For example, draft an email to say “Thank you for dropping by our website”, then another one about “Signing up to our newsletter”, etc.
From my experience, after I bought some books on Tiki.vn, about a month later they sent me a short email asking “Would you recommend us to your friend?” with a vote scale from 1 to 10. When clicking on the link I also could add my review for my purchase experience. Isn’t that one great customer care?
Mind the time
Now you might wonder: when should you send a follow-up email to customer who was just ended a conversation with your chat agent?
Immediately?
Yes, if your customers tell you to do so. If not, give them some space and wait for a couple of days before hitting “Send email” button.
In case of an instant follow-up email, do it within no more than an hour and as soon as possible. If your customer needs a prompt follow-up email to recall them of the whole chat conversation or other information, be quick in doing so to reinforce your impression toward these customers. In this case, fast and well-served email content will establish firm initial steps in your connection with customers.
If it’s not a request by customer, ideally you should get back to them after a few days. This is to remind them about the conversation, your company and engage them in further activities according to your lead nurturing strategy.
Optimize your email content
Okay, we know why we send this email and when to send it. Now let’s see what exactly you have to do with a follow up email so your potential customers will actually react.
Craft a compelling email subject
Although you had a good conversation with your customers via live chat, they will not remember it more than a day (come on, be realistic: everyone is busy nowadays). Or even after they visit a few more websites, they may already forget what they’ve discussed with you.
Therefore, you have to strike another impression so customers will be more likely to open and read your email. The ideal email’s title must be short, personalized, brand-recognizable and straight to the point.
Engage customers in email content
Be friendly, not forceful – that’s the first thing to keep in mind.
The email content should be based on the previous conversation – so a thank you to recall why you’re making contact with customers is important. Then, you can offer more to entice them and motivate them to go back to your website. Valuable content like a freebie, a special discount, or the answer for the problem customer might be facing…with a solid CTA button will surely work.
Of course, there are many other things to optimize in an email like email length, layout, social sharing buttons, opt-out option… – which I think we shall cover in another article for email marketing (shall we?).
To sum up
Sales won’t be made in the initial contact. It’s a fact. You will need to build a relationship with your potential customers first before trying to sell them anything. Sending follow-up emails after a thought-out live chat interaction is one of the best ways to keep customers in track and remind them of your business. More than that, it’s a way to show that you actually care about customers and want to build long-lasting relationship with them.
That’s it. Keep in mind those things above when planning your follow-up marketing plan. And don’t forget to share this article around if you find it helpful for you!
