How to Create Email Campaigns That Speak Directly To Your Customer Pain Points

Ever written an email your customers couldn’t relate to? If you have, you’ll agree it wasn’t fun. This kind of email copy doesn’t stick. When it doesn’t stick, customers fail to engage with it, when they don’t engage with it, conversion rates drop.

How can you solve this problem? Any good marketer can tell you that the key to improving your messaging is knowing your customer pain points. It’s up to you to ask the right questions and uncover customer pain points as quickly as possible.

In this article, you’ll learn what customer pain points are, how to identify them and use the insight to create email campaigns that address customer problems.

Table of contents

1. What are customer pain points?
2. Types of customer pain points
3. How to identify customer pain points
4. How to create emails that address customer pain points
5. Wrap up

What are customer pain points?

Customer pain-points are persistent problems that customers or potential customers of your business are dealing with. In other words, they are unmet needs that they experience along their customer journey.

Any type of customer can have pain points — they can be completely diverse, it all depends on the individual and company involved.

Let's take a look at some common examples of customer pain points.

Types of customer pain points

1. Financial pain-points

A common customer pain point is financial costs attached to using a particular product. If your product is cheaper than most solutions on the market, show your customers how. If your solution is not, show your customers how it is better than other solutions and will eventually save them money in the long run.

Typical examples of financial pain-points include:

• "We have sign ups but they don't convert to paying customers."
• "We have a high cost of recurring subscription plans."

2. Customer support pain-points

One thing that can lead to customer churn is poor customer support. Even though customers have paid for your product, they still need the attention of your customer support team.

When customers don't get this chance, it causes them pain which can lead to a negative sentiment about your brand.

Typical examples of customer support pain points include:

• "It takes too long to get assistance from a support team member."
• "My questions were not answered clearly."

3. Onboarding pain points

When someone signs up for your product, you need to give them some hand-holding so they don't fall through the cracks. This is crucial especially if your product is a bit complex and has a higher learning curve.

If you don’t provide onboarding resources to help trialists and new customers understand your products and get the best use of it, then they experience pain.

Typical examples of onboarding pain-points include:

• "It's too complex to understand."
• "There are not adequate resources to help us understand how the product works. "

4. Productivity pain-points

Are your customers spending too much time using your product? If your customers find your product too complex to use, it can affect their productivity. They get stuck in complex processes and become victims to inefficiencies that cost them time.

Typical examples of productivity pain-points include:

• "Quality issues with the product have led to costly customer churn."
• "We spend way too much time on using the product."

How to identify your customer pain points

1. Talk to sales and customer support teams

Your internal team like the sales and customer support departments have access to common customer problems and questions.

Your job is to talk to them to uncover the pain points that customers are dealing with. You can ask questions like:

• What is the most common objection from prospects?
• What are common customer questions during discovery calls?

2. Read comments on review sites

Review sites are a goldmine you can use to uncover customer pain points. Go on review sites like G2 crowd, Trustpilot, Capterra etc, to know what people are saying about your product and also your competitors.

This can help you to discover loopholes and know where you need to adjust. Negative reviews can help you learn where your business is failing to meet your customer’s needs and reduce the barrier to entry.

3. Conduct one-on-one interviews

Apart from review sites and talking to the internal team, you can simply ask your customers through one-on-one interviews. The key is to ask open-ended questions that require a specific answer so that you can get a bird’s eye view of the issue.

For example, you can ask questions like:

• What’s the biggest challenge you’re currently dealing with?
• What particular product feature have you gained the least value from?
• What do you not like about our product?
• What do you think is preventing you from achieving your goals?

While these questions can lead to answers that may not make you feel great about your product, think of the end goal. You can use the insight to improve your customer experience and product usability.

4. Conduct surveys and analyze feedback

Another way you can learn about your customer’s pain points is by conducting surveys and analyzing the feedback.

Design a short survey that asks specific questions with suitable options customers can choose from.  This will help you to identify what customers don’t like about your product.

How to create emails that address customer pain points

Once you identify customer pain points, you can use it to create email campaigns that highlight common customer problems. Before you begin, it is good practice to group customers based on their pain points. You can achieve this by creating customer segments.

With Engage, you can track how customers interact with your product (platform or app), and use that data to create unique customer segments. This way, you can send targeted and personalized emails that address their pain points.

Now, let’s move on to how you can create emails that speak directly to your customers.

1. Use your prospect's language when talking about pain

Using your customer’s words is a powerful psychological technique that can make your emails more meaningful to customers. You may have a great idea, but the problem is how you will communicate your message in a way that customers will connect to.

Rather than using jargon only your colleagues will understand, you can use your customers' words and terminology. This not only shows that you pay attention to your customers but it’ll also make the copy stick to your customer’s minds.

Here's an example of how Wistia uses it's customers words in a nurture email:

2. Frame your offering to reflect the prospect's dilemma

As you gain a better understanding of your customer’s pain points, you have to tailor your solution to each of their personal needs.

If your product has several features, send a nurture email sequence that explains how each feature can help your customers succeed in their business. You can include resources like:

• User onboarding checklists
• Templates to help new customers and trialists more efficient when using your product
• Articles and videos

Take a look at how HubSpot uses a nurture email to address it’s customer pain points:

You have to personalize your product solution to help your customers get the best use of your product.

3. Share Solutions Through Customer Testimonials & Case Studies

Don’t expect prospects to pay for your product just because you say that it can solve their pain points—you need to provide proof. A prospect will be more likely to sign up for your solution if they hear feedback from real people.

In fact, a study has shown that 91% of consumers read at least one review before purchasing a product.

This is an opportunity to use customer testimonials and reviews in your email campaigns. You can share an email about a case study on how a customer achieved XYZ by using your product. Or how your customer saved X amount of time by using your product.

You can send this email to prospects based on the specific pain points they have in the buyer’s journey.

Here is an example of how Typeform uses customer case studies in it's email campaign:

4. Tailor your solution to their business

With the right customer segmentation, you’ll be able to identify different customer segments.

You can use the insight to personalize your message and present your solution in a way that solves their pain points. Address their names, company names, and include details that describe their problems.

Wrap up

If you don’t know your customer’s pain points, how will you be able to create email campaigns that highlight your customer problems? The first step in creating emails that  speak directly to customers is to identify core customer pain points. Conduct surveys, talk to your internal teams and customers.

When you figure out your customers' problems, then you’ll be able to map out their buying journey, and build accurate customer segments. This way, you can create email campaigns and personalize your product features as the right solution to their needs.

At Engage, we have made this process easier for you. With our powerful segmentation feature, you can create customer segments and build workflows for your email campaigns.