Professional emails help you build meaningful customer relationships. Here’s how.
As a small business professional, you talk to customers every day. Day in and day out, from conversations around business to troubleshooting technical issues, you’re always communicating with people. You know that good customer experiences are key to building lasting relationships, especially in the early days. Happy customers spread the word and bring in repeat business, right?
Right. But a lot of this “talking” happens through email. From that all-important first interaction with your brand to pricing negotiations to order invoices, even support requests, it’s email all the way. You spend a lot of time on email already, but how do you use email to build meaningful customer relationships?
You set the tone and value your customers’ time. You offer value and follow-up like nobody else does. You focus on prompt communication, sharing relevant information and solving customer problems while demonstrating professionalism. In a hyper-competitive market, providing delightful customer experiences over email is essential to building trust and strengthening customer relationships.
Let’s unpack that real quick.
Do you sound friendly, honest, and approachable in your customer emails? Or do you sound like a Nigerian prince ready to send them money?
How you write to your customers is how they perceive you as a business.
Don’t try to lure in potential customers with false promises. Much like you, your customers are inundated with emails. The only way you can cut through that noise is to stand out. So design flourishes in your emails help (HTML emails, custom signatures, etc.), but it’s important to let your brand shine.
When it comes to the content of your emails, there’s no body language, no vocal inflections, and no gestures (emojis don’t count). Tone is everything. It’s your choice of words, the structure of your sentences, and the order of the information you present. That’s how you show empathy and convey understanding. You want to be friendly, approachable, and professional, so you write in active voice, keep it concise, prioritize key points, use personal pronouns, and create appropriate greeting and closing statements.
Nobody likes being sold to. Nobody likes spam either. So ask yourself this every time you send an email: “Will my customer find this useful?”
I might sound like a broken record, but your customers are busy. They receive too many emails already. You want to add value, not aggravate them. That is what happens when every message from you ends with a product pitch. You sound “salesy,” your emails go unread, and customers walk away.
Sending pushy, irrelevant emails is the easiest way to lose customers.
Good relationships need nurturing, which means offering customers relevant information to move the conversation forward. Emails with order invoices, project updates, blog posts, infographics, FAQs, or even how-to videos—all types of content—should always have your customers’ needs in mind. Make your emails engaging and useful, and you will cultivate trust and become a partner for your customers instead of yet another hawker with something to sell.
Is a prospect asking about your business? About 78% of them buy from the company that responds first. Do you have an existing customer with a billing issue? About 71% of them end their relationship with a company due to poor service.
Poor follow-ups can make or break your small business.
New leads need quick responses. Prospects need timely follow-ups. Customers need quick solutions. Unfortunately, you can’t sit around replying to emails all day, every day. Neither can you afford to lose a deal because you forgot to get back to that prospect with a revised quote within the promised time. The solution? Scheduling.
Scheduling time for follow-ups in particular is an effective way to ensure you never miss one. One way to show customers that you respect their time is by delivering on promises and building trust. Think of it as setting aside time each day to nurture customer relationships.
Email takes up as much as a third of your day, and most of that time is spent in some form of triaging. That is when you are sorting and filtering through your inbox, determining what needs to be deleted or archived and what needs your attention. It’s a necessary evil ‘cuz a cluttered inbox can mean critical emails go unanswered.
An email triage is not inbox zero. The goal is to help you gain control of your inbox and act on what needs attention. From that initial “what’s in my inbox today?” assessment to prioritizing what you can do and scheduling the rest, here’s time management guru Laura Vanderkam on how to do an email triage.
Now you know where to start when it comes to building meaningful customer relationships with professional emails. The tone you use, your vocabulary, the value you offer, effective follow-ups, the customer experience . . . it’s easier said than done, but we’ve got you covered.
Your email signature is your virtual business card, but it can do so much more. Besides info on how to reach you, you can use it to promote an upcoming feature or service, to survey customers for feedback, or to direct them to your social media channels. Better yet, you can use an email signature to help your customers put a face to your name so you stand out from all the automated emails flowing into their inbox every day.
Emailing prospects? Quickly set a reminder, and Titan will nudge you to follow up if there’s no response by the right time. No more manually trawling through your inbox to figure out which emails need follow-ups. No more missed follow-ups either. It’s a win-win.
The only thing better than following up regularly is doing so right on time, right when your customer is reading your message. With Titan’s Read Receipts, you know exactly when your emails are viewed so you can follow up when you’re top of mind. No fussy email tracking or extensions to set up. Just a click and you’re done. Hello, better customer conversations!
Intros, pitches, follow-ups, order confirmations . . . most business emails are repetitive. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Choose from one of a dozen email templates baked into Titan to quickly fire off the perfect email for every outreach. You can also easily create your own templates so you respond to customers faster and more professionally than ever.
Off on vacation? Don’t leave your customers hanging! Configure your holiday responder in Titan to automatically reply to incoming emails during your time away. A click or two, and you can set the right expectations with customers and route them to available resources until you’re back in action.
For privacy or productivity, businesses have individual emails for various departments, even when there’s only you handling all emails. Think sales@yourbiz.com, support@yourbiz.com, and, of course, your own inbox. You need all of them, of course, but managing multiple email apps side-by-side is a pain. No one wants to constantly log in and out of accounts or switch tabs either. So Titan makes it easy to manage multiple email accounts in a single view.
You want to develop meaningful customer relationships from the first interaction, and professional email is how you do it. From setting the right tone, offering value, and following up like nobody else, Titan helps you delight customers and build trust while saving time on emails.