7 Ways to Send Special Customer Appreciation Emails
A “thank you” email is the best way to show your appreciation to the customers. But do your messages always have the desired effect? Or a small part of your customers feel insulted and unsubscribe from your newsletter after that? A thank you email to a customer is a very complicated topic, indeed. I thought that nothing can be easier than expressing gratitude to a client, especially in a letter or a marketing email. But I was wrong.
Then how should marketers send an appreciation email to the customers and not scare them away? What can we do it in this situation and where is the balance?
The reasons to reach out to your customers
Send an email with a descriptive explanation of why you have reached the client out.
There are plenty of serious excuses to write to your clients:
a) year/years spent together;
b) thank them for a purchase;
c) thank them for a feedback;
d) thank them for signing up;
e) thank them for attending a webinar/conference;
f) congratulate them on special events;
g) thank them just for no reason. You will need to also mention it in your email.
Use our templates to create a customer appreciation email within minutes.
7 ways to send special customer appreciation emails
1. Make the design special
There are many ways to design a customer appreciation email. Use your imagination here. Send a plain text, or create a beautiful email. If you choose the second option, then you may use festive fonts. They will all be displayed correctly on any kind of both mobile and desktop devices, as any text placed over banner is recognized by the email clients as an image.
Why not add special features to your customer appreciation emails? This looks nice. And gives a feeling that you have put some effort to create a special message for me.
The Allbirds even animated their customer appreciation emails for “thank you for registration emails”.
2. Photo of yours
Yes, exactly. This is a great idea to personalize your email. Add a photo of yours or of all company. Let it be a funny image, where you are having fun or a serious photo. For example, your colleagues can take a picture of you while you are packing their order.
3. Video
Of course, you could make a video where all your team says “thank you”, but you’d better keep this idea for Christmas. Take a short video where the CEO or a manager of a customer service says sweet kind words of appreciation to the clients. Nobody does it yet. Be the first. Stand out!
Note! Here you should not say the name of a client. Start it with common “Hi”. Then you will have an opportunity to send this video to some other loyal clients.
Of course, embed this video into your beautiful greeting email as done on this customer appreciation email sample.
4. Call
What can make your client feel special? A private call can. Ask the CEO of your company to call the most loyal clients. They will love to hear a human’s voice. May the conversation be short and simple. You should decide whether you want to ask the customers what you can do to improve your service. Or just tell them how much you respect and appreciate him/her. Anyway, they will remember that the CEO of a company made a personal call.
Your customers will feel appreciated and loved.
Note! A call should be followed up by a bright email where you write the same things to your clients and mention your plans for further collaboration.
5. Offer or gift
Marketers keep on offering sales in promotional emails almost every day. We receive discounts for male socks, for children’s toys, etc. But nothing is personal here. Send to your clients a special discount for their favorite items. Always good to know the company is aware of my preferences and they keep tracking my orders.
Once I received a permanent 20% discount for cakes and steaks in my favorite restaurant. Guess, where my friends and I spend all the weekends? Yes, there. Of course, we do not have a discount for other courses. But we do not care. We feel valued here. If you are not ready for big permanent discounts, then give presents.
6. Private contact information
When your clients have been collaborating or shopping with you for quite a long time, mention it. Tell the customer how much you are happy about it.
I think the best business appreciation letter to a client — is sharing your personal contact information. And let them know you are available for them at any time they need.
Thoughtful mature people will not bother you at night. Besides, you can give them your personal phone number you use at work only.
Note! Use this way to show your appreciation only to business clients.
Did you know that Bill Gates in his LinkedIn post mentioned that he is proud to be the person who knows Warren Buffet’s cell phone number? This makes him feel special and closer to the latter.
7. Make the messages social friendly
In case the appreciation email does not contain any personal information, like cell phone numbers, make it social friendly. Some of your clients may want to boast to their friends and share this email via social nets. Or send this email to the customer’s Facebook Page.
Let’s see what typical mistakes we commit to customer appreciation emails and how we can fix them
Insincerity
Everyone wants to feel valued and highly appreciated. Especially customers. You need to say thank you to them for so many things. As you work for them! Which is why it is essentially important to tell people how grateful you are. Of course, if you really feel it!
If you want to show your appreciation, then do it. Do not promote anything here. Customers can easily sniff out the hidden intentions.
Look at this beautiful customer appreciation email example:
Incorrect personalization
Once I received an email which said “Dear Mr. Hanna”. I can’t really say I found it mean or insulting. But I did not read that message to the end. Yes, I know they wanted to send a friendly email but the effect was quite the opposite. If you do not know your customer’s name or gender, because your contact base is enormous, then say just “Hello! We wanted to thank you…” That would be enough to endear a client to your company.
And also, the appreciation customer emails are a good excuse to ask for their name. Reallygoodemails inquired what my name was in a funny way. I could not help but smile and answer all the questions they asked in that email.
I wonder what they write to men
Discount for the wrong items
You wanted to cheer your client up with a generous present — a $30 discount for definite items. Make sure this is what he/she really uses. Unless your offer will have the opposite effect.
No vegetarian will like the discount for all the meat dishes, even at his/her favorite restaurant.
Late hours
Bad idea to send emails at late hours. Of course, you may have wanted to catch your clients when they are home, but sending out your emails that late may annoy or even wake people up. Stay polite.
No signature
When receiving an appreciation email, we need to know who personally cares for us. It can be either a department or a definite person. But for sure it cannot be a whole company with about 10,000 workers. I’m sure they don’t even know about me.
As a rule, customers deal with a few people from the company. Ask them to send appreciation emails to the customers or to congratulate them on a special event.
Of course, if you send these emails on behalf of your CEO or he/she does it personally, and mention it in the footer, then you do it just great.
Summary
We want to emphasize once again on the obligatory things to use in your “thank you emails to the customers”:
➢ Avoid adding any buttons
We already mentioned that people easily sniff the lie and insincerity. If you want to thank them, just do it. Do not use CTA buttons in your emails, unless they call to “Get my gift”.
➢ Signature
Adding a signature to the footer or even to the main body of an email will make it look more personal. The clients may think they are familiar with you and with other members of your team.
➢ Mention all your achievements and set plans for the future
The clients spent some time to give you an honest feedback. They highlighted your strong and weak points. They helped you grow. Dedicate some time to give them your feedback.
➢ Work on the design
Decorate your emails. Pay highest attention to the fonts. They must be legible.
Use our templates to create appreciation emails quickly.
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I wish you good luck.
