Email marketing automation and Cialdini: the perfect match

With email marketing, you are constantly influencing and persuading. No matter what the purpose of your mail is. Go figure: for generating more sales, you use an upsell flow to influence your customers to order more products. When sending a review invitation, you might use a discount code to influence your customer. At the same time, you use your customer's review to persuade potential new customers. But how are you most effective at influencing? That's where Cialdini's help comes in.

Who is Cialdini, and what are the principles of influence?

Cialdini, Professor of Marketing & Psychology, states that there are 7 different principles of influence. When you apply one (or more) of these principles in your e-mail, you increase the chances of enticing the customer to make a new purchase, for example. The great thing is that every person is sensitive to at least one of these principles. Whether they are aware of this or not.

We explain all 7 influencing principles for you below, including examples of how you apply these principles in your e-mail marketing automation.

1. Reciprocity

One of Cialdini's most widely used principles is capitalizing on reciprocity. Cialdini argues that when you get something, you feel obligated to do something in return. So you are capitalizing on someone's sense of guilt. When you give something, the trick is to make this gift as personal and/or unexpected as possible. This way, you make your customer want to give something back. He or she does not even realize that you are consciously capitalizing on reciprocity, but instead feels appreciated and unique.

How do you apply the principle of reciprocity in your e-mails? We will give you a few examples:

Give a discount for newsletter subscriptions. You don't have to immediately give away your product range at half price (although this is of course allowed). A small discount of 5 or 10% is often enough. Apply this principle, and you will gain new subscribers in no time.

Share your valuable knowledge in exchange for an e-mail address. Make a white paper or put together a webinar, for example. To obtain this knowledge, first let your customers fill in an e-mail address. This way, you can email (and influence) this group of customers again at a later date.

Set up a mail campaign purely to share knowledge with your customers. By offering your knowledge for free, your customers will soon feel obliged to do something in return. Make sure the information you share is truly valuable and unique.

In the dark days of December, the webshop Plantje shares tips to help your houseplants survive the winter. How handy is that! Further down the mail are some more handy accessories to help you get your plants through the winter. So you can easily rake in some extra sales.

2. Sympathy

According to Cialdini, the favor factor plays a big role in people's decision-making process. The more likable customers find you, the more they favor you. Whether customers like you depends on 3 factors: you have to like them, you have to compliment them, and you have to work towards a goal together.

In a physical shop, it is easier to come across as sympathetic. After all, as a retailer, you speak to (almost) every customer in person, at least at checkout. How different it is in a webshop. You are 'just' a website and often only have personal contact with a customer when the customer contacts you himself. To change this, you can start by literally showing off yourself and your staff. Add photos to your 'contact' page and put a nice text (or more fun: let your staff do it themselves) on your 'about us' page. Next, you can apply e-mail perfectly to make yourself more likable. Some examples:

• Give your e-mails a personal touch by mailing from an individual. Fill in 'Francine from Reloadify' as the sender of your newsletter, for example. Complete the picture by actually putting a photo of the colleague in question in the footer of your newsletter. This way, you introduce customers to the faces behind your mail.
• Send a newsletter in which you give a look behind the scenes. Or go a step further and set up a mail flow in which, after ordering product X, the customer is sent a video showing, for example, the product's packing process. How fun is it as a customer to see the steps your order goes on through!
• Show that you value your customers and think of them. For instance, e-mail them on their birthday. You score extra points when you also add a discount code to your congratulations. ;) Didn't your customer fill in a birthday? Then celebrate the anniversary of a customer's first order.

A new (and bold) mail strategy in which you capitalize on the favor factor is to deliberately make mistakes. This involves deliberately making a mistake in your newsletter, only to send an apology e-mail after it. In this apology e-mail, you show that you are not afraid to admit your own mistakes. Your customers will recognize themselves in you and see the people behind the website. After all, making mistakes is human. Because customers identify with you, they are more likely to come back to you. An unusual strategy that can work well. Our tip: watch out for these emails, though. Before you know it, you'll make too big a mistake or (worse) your customers won't believe you anymore. In that case, your strategy will only backfire and scare people away.

What I sometimes see myself is that the company itself has a birthday and sprinkles discounts. Also, a kind of sympathy, right?

Tip: do you decide to add photos to your website? Do not use stock photos of staff for your images. This is a real waste of time. Even though the models in stock photos sometimes look like real people, the fake quality often drips off these photos. Get out of your comfort zone and take pictures of yourself and your real staff. This comes across as more credible and therefore works better.

Invest in building a good relationship

The above principles of Cialdini, reciprocity and likability, are ideal for building the relationship with your customer. A relationship is an indispensable foundation that ensures repeat customers. Did you know that retaining customers is many times cheaper than continuously attracting new ones? Reason enough to invest in the relationship with your current customers and thus to start working with triggers based on reciprocity and sympathy.

3. Authority

Almost everyone is sensitive to authority. When someone with a lot of prestige claims something, it will soon be true. After all, he or she is the expert. The same goes for celebrities and influencers. They have so many followers for a reason that what they say must be the truth.

In e-mail, you can use the influence principle authority in different ways:

Is your company praised by a professional magazine in an article? Has your campaign been picked up by a (local) newspaper? Send out a newsletter and shout it from the rooftops. And no, it doesn't matter in this one whether you had the article posted yourself. ;-)

For inspiration, send an expert's stories, experiences and tips with your product. You can apply this in your newsletters as well as product-related triggers. For example: your customer bought an item of clothing from a particular brand. Then you send an email with advice from a well-known stylist, with matching brands or garments.

Do you use a review site like Trusted Shops? Share your widget with your overall score in the footer of your emails. This way, you show that many customers trust you.

4. Social proof power

Besides people being sensitive to authority, Cialdini states that people are also very sensitive to social proof power. Of course, you can say about your own shop that it is absolutely great and that everyone should buy from your shop. We are all familiar with the slogan "We recommend WC-Eend". But everyone knows it doesn't work like that. Recommendations and reviews, on the other hand, do work. As soon as a potential customer sees and reads that other customers are satisfied with your products and even recommend your shop, this customer is inclined to buy from you as well.

You can add social proof to your e-mails in several ways:

Send invitations to leave product reviews. In this invitation, you can obviously capitalize on your customers' reciprocity. Then add product reviews to your emails. Through product reviews, you actually let your customers do the work for you. It is clever, isn't it?

With your products, put in your email how many customers have preceded you in purchasing the particular product. The higher this number, the better.

Add a dynamic row with the 10 most popular products of the moment. These products are so popular for a reason, they must be the right choice.

Tip: for social proof, though, it is hugely important to maintain good relationships with your existing customers. Because just as a positive review can work for you, a negative review can work against you in a big way. That is why you should do everything possible to avoid negative reviews. Is a bad review still posted by a dissatisfied customer? Then do everything you can to make this customer happy again. This way, you also score points on your conflict management.

5. Unity

We humans like to belong somewhere. Even the biggest loners eventually want to belong to a group. We can't help that, we are and always will be group animals. Take advantage of this! There are several ways to do this. We will explain two of them for you:

• Let your customers join your club and offer them discounts, send them newsletters with interesting facts and let them save points. Customers love to save, especially for free products. This is an easy way to keep your customers coming back. Rather not start a separate club? Then set up a nice welcome flow for your new customers. Introduce them to you and make them feel welcome. This way, you turn your entire customer base into a club and only have 1 group of customers who need your attention.
• Removing any uncertainty. The 3 principles of authority, social proof and unity go one step further in influencing the customer. You show them that you are the right choice for them and that they no longer need another webshop. You don't just tell them that; you prove it! Furthermore, you take away any uncertainties and doubts your customer may still have.

6. Scarcity

One of the basic rules of economics is: the higher the demand, the higher the price. In other words, the scarcer a product is, the more people want it. People get greedy at the sight of a good deal and are quick to fear missing out. You can perfectly capitalize on this FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). A few email examples:

An email in preparation for the sale, including a countdown timer. With the timer, you make the countdown visual. This in turn contributes to urgency: your customer needs to find himself to your webshop quickly. You can take this a step further by sending several such emails around your sale, with the last email being: "You only have 2 hours left to buy in the sale!".

Looking for a less garish way to capitalize on the principle of scarcity? Then add this simple phrase to your mail: in stock=out. These 2 words + punctuation do wonders. This is because you are reminding your customer that there is no infinite supply and he or she needs to hurry. Otherwise, the customer will miss out.

Use language; texts such as "our last sale sold out in no time, be on time this time" always work.

Add a sentence to your newsletter 'only X in stock left'. Sometimes it also works well to put a sold-out item in advance in your newsletter.

Do you apply scarcity in your emails? Then make sure you always communicate honestly. Let your sale actually end when you said it would. Nudging is allowed, but lying and cheating are not done. Customers quickly see through this and then stay away from your shop.

7. Consistency & Commitment

Cialdini's last principle is all about enthusing and maintaining attention for your brand. You warm up your customers in phases to eventually buy from you, and then keep these customers satisfied. This way, you increase the chances of your customers coming back to you.

You did it, your (potential) customer has signed up for your newsletter. Now it's all about keeping your customer's attention. How do you go about that? Again, a fitting example:

Set up an email flow for aftercare. Right, aftercare and not necessarily after-sales (although extra sales are a nice bonus). For example, send an email asking if everything is going well with assembling the wardrobe you ordered, or ask if the order is still satisfactory. Let it be known that the customer is still welcome and not forgotten, even if the purchase has already been made.

Instructional videos also do well. Make visual how your customer assembles the ordered cupboard or give extra tips on product maintenance. You score bonus points when you show the specific product ordered in your video.

Driving the customer to action

With the last principles, scarcity as well as consistency, you capitalize on the last two factors that can help your customer tie the knot as well as stay a customer with you.

Remember: influencing and convincing your customer is part of your customer's decision process. Timing is also a very important part. So always keep testing, fine-tuning and closely monitoring your emails. Good luck! 🙌