Customers still want to call you. But when you want to tell them something, this is how they prefer you do it.

More than 70% of customers prefer companies use email to communicate with them, according to a recent Marketing Sherpa report. And the results ran the demographics gamut — email was the preference from millennials to retirees.

Studies continue to show that customers prefer to call companies when they need help or have an issue. But according to this new research, they’d rather keep the experience less personal and interact at a time that’s convenient for them when hearing from a company.

Customers will open your email, regardless of whether they reached out to you first or you send it because they opted in at some point. But the message has to be beneficial and interesting.

Providing fast, thorough responses when customers reach out to you is the first rule of email.

Great ideas to use now

When you do reach out to them, use these commonly well-received content ideas:

1. Top FAQs. Scour two sources for these — your customer service department and online forums. Find out what customers ask about most online, during phone calls and among each other. Chances are, that will make outstanding email content.
2. Success stories. Tap your salespeople for these frequently. Even better, work with the sales manager and make reporting success stories a regular part of their duties so you have a steady flow of stories. You can turn longer stories into quick tips that focus on one aspect and give a link to the full story.
3. Most common customer objections. This is content you can pull from your road warriors: Ask them to share the objections they hear most. If it’s price, for example, create a message breaking down why your products are priced at certain points.
4. Top website content. Look at the pages that got the most traffic on your site in the last month. Those reflect the most current interests and probably deserve some email attention while they’re still hot topics.
5. Inspiring quotes and stories. Goodwill content is a good idea to nurture relationships. And we can speak from experience at Customer Experience Insight: Despite being small features, content with quotes and feel-good stories have always been highly-rated features on our website and in our sister online and print publications. People love quotes and stories that are inspiring, even if they’re not industry related.
6. Top posts on influential blogs. Again, not every email needs to be about you, but every email should be about your customers. So share or direct them to content that exists on another website and is valuable to them. Look for content that has lots of social media shares, and feature it in your content.
7. Upcoming industry events. Promoting your events is a no-brainer. You can also give some buzz to your industry’s events that your customers will or might want to attend. Even better, give them a list of upcoming events so they can compare and decide — without much effort — which is best for them.
8. Industry news. To get the most traction out of industry news, include pertinent information on how it affects your customers — not just the news itself.
9. Popular LinkedIn groups. Look at the groups where you and your colleagues belong for the top topics being discussed and questions being asked. Play off the questions you see posted. Turn them into your email subject lines and have your own experts share answers in your email.

Copy from Internet Resources