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As a retailer, you're probably constantly under a lot of pressure to increase sales and contribution margins. New customer recruitment most likely dominates your budget discussions, but the truth is that the real opportunity lies in how you communicate with the customers you've already earned.
Email is still one of the most cost-effective marketing channels, being a lot cheaper than, for example, paid ads and text messages. However, that doesn’t mean it’s completely free. You still need to cover software licensing fees and invest in resources to manage and optimize email send-outs. More importantly, irrelevant communication can damage your brand by eroding customer trust, leading to unsubscribes, spam flags, or, in the worst case, blacklisting.
Some companies still think that the best way to engage customers is to send out a frequent stream of emails. This is definitely not the case. What works is the precision of your communication and how relevant those emails you send out are. That is what makes the real difference and where great customer relationship management (CRM) becomes a strategic asset.
Turning Attention into Revenue
Think of your own email inbox. How many messages from companies do you ignore, delete, or mark as spam daily? We can promise you, your customers are no different.
Modern CRM is not about sending one-size-fits-all messages to your whole customer base. It's about understanding what each individual customer needs and meeting that need with accuracy. But how do you differentiate yourself, cut through the noise, and turn attention into revenue? And how do you actually keep your customers engaged with your brand or re-engage customers that have fallen off the wagon slightly?
The retailers we notice seeing results when it comes to email marketing are those that are applying what we at Avensia have coined “The 3W Relevance Model”. The 3W’s stand for why, when, and what:
- Why are we communicating?
- When are we communicating?
- What are we communicating?
These are questions you need to ask yourself as a company or a marketing team before deciding what kind of emails to send out and to whom. When you get this right, you’re no longer just sending emails, but creating something with actual value that will drive business outcomes.
Relevance Is Precision, Not Volume
Being relevant when it comes to CRM is crucial. You need to be relevant not only in content but also in purpose and timing. It’s about designing communication that aligns with a customer’s context, intent, and behavior and sending it at the right moment. In practice, this means moving away from general assumptions and instead using insights to build personalization.
Simply inserting the customer's first name in the subject line won’t do the trick. For example, if you’re sending the same message to someone who bought something yesterday as someone who hasn’t engaged in months, you’re not being relevant. Instead, you're playing a guessing game with your customers, and with the increased competition companies face in the online retail world, modern customers expect a lot more. They expect effort.
Examples of making an effort include product recommendations based on previous purchases, sending reminders at the optimal time for replenishment, and tailoring offers to lifecycle stage and channel preference. This kind of relevant communication is what drives higher open rates, increased conversion, and ultimately, revenue growth.
In short, relevance is personal. If your message doesn’t feel relevant, it won’t be read, and if it’s not read, it won’t convert. To be on top, you need to actively take the time, resources, and courage to use all your customer data and purchase history to create insights. It is with these insights that you, with the right data and strategy in place, can nail personalization and answer the 3W’s when creating customer communication.
The Role of Data in Building Relevance
Retailers who are leading in CRM aren’t necessarily sending fewer emails to customers. They are most likely just sending more focused ones to selected target groups by using first-party data to track behavior and make informed decisions. They are the ones who make sure to look for patterns in purchase history, seasonality, response rates, and preferred channels.
If you also want to start being a leader in customer relationship management, the first thing you can do is start by asking yourself:
- What does the data tell you about this customer’s preferences?
- What content have they engaged with before?
- What buying patterns can you identify?
Why Relevance Pays Off
As we’ve mentioned previously, it is relevant communication that drives positive business outcomes. But the benefits of focusing on relevance go far beyond conversion when your emails are personalized, timely, and valuable:
- Your customers are less likely to unsubscribe from your marketing communication
- You avoid being blacklisted or flagged as spam.
- The ROI on your CRM tools improves as conversions increase.
- Your existing customers return more often, reducing acquisition costs.
- Your customers stay happy and let others know they’re happy. Word-of-mouth recommendations are a great way to bring in new business without added costs.
Retailers often underestimate how much money poor CRM execution actually costs them. The simple truth is that relevance is efficient, and irrelevant messages are ineffective and expensive. Making sure that you are relevant is, in fact, a simple way to do more with less, to deepen relationships without discounting your brand, and to drive margin growth through smarter customer interaction.
The Bottom Line
The future of customer relationship management belongs to those who understand that customer attention must be earned through communication that is timely, purposeful, and personal. When powered by data and guided by strategy, CRM becomes an engine for growth for any business looking to be at the forefront of retail.
At Avensia, we help retailers create seamless customer experiences. With our modern commerce expertise, strategic guidance, and best-of-breed technologies, we empower businesses to use CRM as a tool for measurable, sustainable success.
