Crafting the perfect follow up email for your sampling campaigns

‘Thank you’ letters aren’t just for birthday presents.

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They’re a crucial way for brands and agencies to develop meaningful relationships with their customers, learn more about them and drive engagement.

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But thank you emails aren’t something to be quickly dashed off - they require careful thought and attention.

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Let’s take a look at how to launch the perfect thank you email campaign.

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What are ‘thank you’ emails?

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Thank you emails are emails sent to customers after they have interacted with your brand in a significant way: for example, if they have claimed a product sample, made a purchase, or given feedback.

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And they’re a powerful marketing tool, enjoying strong customer engagement with high open and click-through rates.

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A thank you email marketing campaign can also include prize incentives for consumers. For instance, a brand may send a discount code to customers who have claimed a sample to incentivise a full-size purchase.

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Or they may offer a reward to customers who provide feedback.

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It’s up to each brand to decide how many customer touchpoints they want. They can thank a customer for claiming a sample and ask for feedback in a single email or time these emails separately.

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When to send a thank you email to a customer

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And timing is everything when it comes to a follow up email marketing campaign.

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For product sampling campaigns, thank you emails are normally sent after a customer has received their sample.

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Although timing varies according to brand preference, brands will typically allow enough time for a customer to have tried their sample before they email them for feedback or encourage them to make a purchase.

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With Odore’s tracking tools, brands can pinpoint exactly when samples are delivered to individual customers. This means they can ensure they’re correctly timing their thank you emails.

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Benefits of sending thank you emails

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Thank you email marketing brings with it a range of benefits.

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Firstly, it establishes a personable brand identity, making consumers feel valued and connected to a brand. This is an important part of the customer experience that, in turn, helps with building customer loyalty.

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Brand loyalty and customer experience are inextricably linked: according to research published at the end of last year by Salesforce, 8 in 10 shoppers will abandon a retailer after three bad experiences.

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Follow up emails are also an opportunity to introduce new customer touchpoints and so increase brand awareness. However, brands must remember that there’s a balance to reach between increasing customer contact and incessantly chasing them. Thank you emails are a fantastic way to grow and deepen customer engagement but ten follow ups for a single sample will turn a relationship sour.

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As discussed earlier, thank you emails are a great way to encourage consumers to leave valuable sample reviews as well as providing them with more information or driving them to a purchase. And the way consumers interact with an email campaign gives brands additional data insights into their priorities and preferences.

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3 tips for your thank you email follow ups

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So, what does a good thank you email sample look like?

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Here are 3 tips for the perfect follow up.

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1. Have a clear call to action and drive to purchase

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Good marketing has a clear call to action and this extends to thank you emails. An email that does nothing more than say ‘thanks’ is a wasted opportunity.

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Ultimately, brands want conversions so a drive to purchase is a key component of any follow up to a sampling campaign. Are customers encouraged to buy a full-size sample or directed towards similar products they may also like?

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With the right marketing tools, brands can personalise product recommendations to each customer and therefore increase the likelihood of a sale.

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2. Pay attention to visuals

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Just because thank you emails enjoy higher open rates doesn’t mean brands can afford to get lazy with their layout.

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A thank you email still needs to be designed well, with eye-catching graphics and a subject line that makes customers want to click ‘open’. The visuals and tone of a thank you email should also be consistent with the overall brand.

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Luckily, a platform like Odore can help with this. Our drag and drop campaign builder makes it easy to create and edit striking email campaigns, whether you’re a global brand or pioneering startup.

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3. Have a structured timeline

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We’ve talked about the timing of thank you emails and how it’s crucial that businesses get this right.

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As such, it’s critical brands have a structured system that means they don’t launch follow up emails too early or too late.

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Again, Odore is built to support this: through our platform, brands can track sample deliveries and easily launch their follow up email campaigns.

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Analysing email metrics

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Every customer interaction is a goldmine of consumer data if brands can properly collect and analyse it.

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When it comes to thank you emails, brands can learn more about their customers through open rate, click-through rate, feedback received and whether discount offers are claimed.

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This not only gives them a clearer understanding of the behaviour of their overall audience, but helps them learn more about the preferences of individual customers. All this information enables brands to fine-tune their hyper-targeting and better serve customers in the future.

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Additionally, Odore allows brands to conduct A/B testing on their thank you email campaigns. This allows brands to see which visuals or subject lines, for example, are most successful in getting consumers’ attention and these insights are invaluable in shaping future campaigns.

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Following up with Odore

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Follow up emails don’t just work in theory.

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Our clients have been using our platform to achieve strong engagement and build meaningful customer relationships.

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For example, we recently worked with a global beauty brand to launch a sampling campaign for one of their perfumes.

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Our follow up email to customers, encouraging them to leave feedback, achieved an average open rate of just under 70% and a click-through rate of over 30.8% in some regions.

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