How your loyalty program emails can be improved with real-time updates

Customers love to know what’s happening in real-time.

They want to know where their packages are, where their delivery person, when their flights start boarding, and more. It’s one facet of improving the customer experience; you can give your customers even more data so they can always stay on top of the information they want.

Real-time tracking doesn’t have to end at packages; you can do it for all sorts of stuff, even eCommerce and your loyalty program emails.

With real-time emails, you can give your loyalty program members and VIPs all sorts of information. You can cover everything from the program and their standing when it comes to points and tier levels. Plus, there are all sorts of loyalty campaign emails you can set up to trigger when members hit certain milestones.

Those are just a few of the ways you can improve your loyalty program emails, here are some more examples.

Moment of open emails

Most of your customers probably don’t know exactly where they stand when it comes to the points, miles, or rewards they’ve racked up as members of your loyalty program.

Usually, to figure it out, they have to sign in to your site and check their account.

One super-easy way to tie real-time data into your loyalty program emails is with instant points updates. There are a few ways to do this.

First, you can feature your customer’s points total in every single email you send. But, that’s only a start. Take it a step further, and have your emails update at the moment of open. That means every time your customer opens an email, even if it’s a week old, the points totals will still be correct because the data updates when your customer opens their email.

So, no need to go searching for the information on your site, they can know exactly where they stand anytime from any email.

Notification bar

Another approach you can take is using an email notification bar. These bars sit right at the top of your email and update when your customer opens their email.

While notification bars are awesome for abandoned cart notifications and package tracking, you can also set them to highlight loyalty program rewards and tier levels.

This way, regardless of what kind of email they get, from a sale announcement to a shipping confirmation, they can know exactly where they stand with points.

Rewards and redemptions

Pulling the data from your loyalty program management tool, you should be able to track how far users are from being able to redeem points or earn their next reward.

Use this information to your advantage. Set up a triggered loyalty campaign that automatically sends out emails to your customers alerting them that they can redeem their points or claim a reward.

This way, your customer is getting an email from you, in real-time, that tells them they can use their bonuses right now.

Another approach is to send your customers these alerts as soon as they are one purchase or set dollar amount away from triggering the next reward level. By sending this email while they are on your site shopping, in real-time, you could end up triggering them to buy more to hit those rewards.

Post purchase emails

Even if your customer is completing their entire transaction online, your eCommerce system triggers a receipt email. Transactional, or post purchase, emails tend to have higher open rates than many other emails, which means you can do a lot with these emails precisely because they get seen more often.

Here again, it is a perfect opportunity to use real-time updates in your loyalty program.

When you have your receipt set up to send out, also make sure you include a real-time update on your member’s standing in your loyalty program.

At the minimum, you can list their points and tier. If you want to go even further, you can also highlight how far away they are from the next level. That way, every receipt they get reminds of them of your loyalty program.

As you can see, there’s plenty you can do with real-time loyalty reward emails. These emails serve as a great reminder about your program, while at the same time, giving your customers the information that they want, directly to their inboxes.

Liz Froment

Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.

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UGC is a retailer’s best tool for conversion. Here’s how to use it in email!

Over the years, lots of research has found that some of the biggest drivers of people buying goods and services are the recommendations of people they know and trust.

It makes sense, right? If your sister tells you how much they love something, you’re going to be far more likely to trust her opinion. When someone is telling you what they think, as opposed to a brand that you don’t have much of a connection with, it can hit home.

The same is true when it comes to user-generated content (UGC). With UGC, a brand can take the content a user has made (in the form of social media, or blog posts, reviews, etc.) or tap into buying trends on their site and highlights it to other potential customers in a marketing campaign.

For a lot of brands, tapping into UGC can really help move the dial. And one industry that can see a real boost from UGC is retail. Want to learn how?

Keep reading.

Highlight reviews

One of the easiest ways to showcase user-generated content is with reviews. You’ve probably gone to a site like Amazon before to shop. Unless you’re getting something you’ve bought before, you’re probably going to take the time to read a few of the reviews and comments. When you do read them, that often will help you decide if you want to buy it.

Now, for retailers, having product reviews is a great thing. And what you should do is use them! Highlight the products that your current customers love, including what they are saying about it in your emails.

Here’s a perfect example from Bose.

When you’re sent details about a product and then also see a five-star review where a past customer is raving about it, it helps build up trust.

There’s no doubt you probably have at least a handful of great reviews from your customers, even if you’ve just started collecting them. So use them in your emails.

Do the same thing with testimonials too. You can start by sending out an email that asks your customers what they think of the product they bought from you.

It’s another post-purchase email that you can, and should, add into the mix. It can help you not only see what your customers think and help you find some ways to improve but also have a pile of user-generated content at the ready.

When you’ve got these testimonials, you can start inserting them in your emails from an abandoned cart to loyalty marketing campaigns.

Product recommendations

You can also take another approach to user-generated content and that’s looking at data.

With your eCommerce and customer relationship management (CRM) tool, you can see what products your customers are buying. So dig into the information you’ve got.

You might find that people who live in a particular geographic area are stocking up on something. Or that a new product you’ve introduced is really hot and flying off the shelves.

Use that data in your emails!

Here’s where retailers can really get personalized and segment your list. Let’s say you choose to break it down by geo-location. The fall is coming in New England, so your consumers there are stocking up on winter socks. Send a targeted email to your customers in that area that highlights the popular products that are ready to go for the winter.

You can even take it a step further and tap into weather data, sending your email about your five-star wool socks during a week where the temperature dips into the 40s.

Tap into the potential

When it comes to using user-generated content, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Retailers, especially, can dive into all sorts of different UGC concepts and ideas that can level up your emails on the whole.

So keep an eye out and see where you can continue to add this type of content in your emails and test and see what they respond to over time. Remember, it’s all about building trust with your customers; the more you do that, the better off you will be in the long run.

Liz Froment

Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.

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Why should I be using ratings in my product emails?

Think back to the last time you bought something new. You probably did a little bit of research beforehand.

Maybe you opened up your favorite search engine and typed in “best product” or “product reviews.” Perhaps you went to YouTube, checked out a few videos, or went to Amazon and checked out what people said.

After all that research, you probably came away with a pretty good idea of the best products for your needs.

Chances are they had something pretty important in common.

Good ratings and reviews.

Let’s face it; no one goes to a website and wants to check out all the products that get one or two stars. We want to check out the best, the five-star stuff, before we buy.

The same goes for your customers too. They want to get the best you have to offer the products with the highest ratings and reviews. Makes sense, right?

Now, consider making things really easy for them, right from their inbox. You can do that by including ratings in your product emails.

Here’s why it matters.

Social proof

Ok, let’s go back to that shopping example from above. Let’s say you need a new set of tires. You’ve got a few options. You can call the local tire shop and ask the person behind the counter, go on the shop’s site and see if they’ve got any highly rated tires, or ask your buddy who just bought new tires for his car.

Most people will do some sort of combination, but when it comes to swaying your opinion, two things will likely stand out; the reviews on the website and what your buddy thinks.

It’s all about social proof.

Research has shown that people are often more likely to trust the word of their peers over that of a brand. So while the tire expert behind the counter might know exactly what she’s talking about, seeing those reviews on the website next to each tire is more likely to trigger a positive response.

Those ratings, especially when your customers leave them, are invaluable. They help showcase the quality of your products, and they also help convince other customers to buy too. It’s a double whammy of positive stuff.

Spread the word

Unsurprisingly, when you get good product ratings, you don’t want to hide them away where your customers can’t see them. Sure, putting these reviews on your website is a good start. But, you can also take things a step further and include them in your product emails too.

This is a great way to personalize your emails and help establish a rapport with your customers. Imagine that they’ve been checking out some sneakers on your site but left a few options in their cart.

You don’t want any abandoned cart ignored, so you send out an email to re-engage your customer and, hopefully, get them to take action. So, why not include the product ratings of the sneakers they’ve left behind in your abandoned cart email?

Seeing that one pair has tons of five-star reviews from customers might be enough to push them over the edge and want to pull the trigger to buy. After all, if people just like them love these sneakers, there’s a pretty good chance they will too.

That’s just one example of what you can do with ratings in product emails. Here’s where you can really get creative. Use product ratings in your sales, abandoned cart, and new product update emails.

You can highlight them in loyalty emails, too. Why not entice your customers by letting them know they’re just one purchase away from a new rewards tier, oh and by the way, here are a couple of highly-rated products that can get them to that next level.

Product review emails can also work with your post-purchase emails. Remind your customers when you send your receipts and shipping emails of the awesome products they bought. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to include a few related products and their reviews in those emails too.

Are you starting to see how it can work?

Adding product reviews to your emails is just another way to give your customers the quality information they want in a personalized manner. It’s a great way to encourage action and build trust with them over the long term.

Liz Froment

Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.

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