Here at Leapfrogg, we run a panel consisting of more than 700 premium retail consumers. We engage with them on a regular basis to help us understand their customer needs and expectations from the brands and retailers they buy from.

Every month, we question them on a range of areas from buying behaviours and brand opinion, to emotional purchase triggers and their recent shopping experiences.

The Insight Edit is our weekly bite size edit of the insight we gain from our panel in our search to truly understand the mind of the premium customer.

This week we are focussing on the factors that make emails from brands & retailers the most engaging for our panel.

We asked our panel to pick three reasons why they frequently open emails from brands & retailers and why they enjoy reading them.

Discounts and offers

With 72% of respondents selecting it as important, emails that offered discounts and offers to the reader came in head and shoulders above all factors.

This reinforces the shopping behaviours that we have seen in recent years – that there has been a shift in buying behaviour and across all sectors of society and consumers have become more price conscious and constantly looking for the best deal or discount.

We drilled our data down further into gender and age group specifics, and found that only 30% of male respondents chose this factor opposed to 6 % of women. This highlighted how women are far more price conscious than men. The highest proportion of those that selected offers (27%) were in the age category 31 – 35. This is generally the age at which disposable income is squeezed the most as consumers have young children, mortgages etc.

Many retailers have struggled with the offer and discount culture and the effect it has on their brand and profit. Therefore to retain a premium and profitable customer base we recommend rather than cutting prices and offering deals on a regular basis, brands should focus more on exclusive offers for loyal customers that provide added value to their purchases.

Timing is everything

The next most important factor in creating engaging emails was related to the timing of them rather than content. 52% of people felt it was important that they were not inundated with emails. Therefore a crucial part of a good email campaign is to test and refine your send times and frequency, particularly within the premium sector.

Again, drilling into gender shows a marked difference with 70% of male respondents selecting it vs. 45% of women.

Curate specific products to suit your customers

Showcasing new and recommended products came a close third and fourth place. This highlights the importance of understanding the buying habits and behaviours of your customer base and being able to curate specific products to suit them.

Apart from product content, providing other types of content was only of medium importance across the board. This does not mean that it isn’t important for retailers not to have this type of content within their emails to engage and inspire, rather that it is a nice to have after getting the basics of product, offer and timing right.

Mobile optimisation

Interestingly, only 4% of our panel believed that mobile optimised were important. This is likely due to a lack of understanding of how the emails they are viewing on their mobile devices have already been mobile optimised to allow for easy reading.

The key takeaways from this week’s edit is that it is crucial to understand the type of customer you are sending your email to as there are large differences in how email is read and received across different genders and age groups. A ‘one size fits all’ email strategy will not provide high engagement rates and conversion and could end up alienating your customers instead of retaining them!