Have you invited your customers back?
During a down or challenging economy, getting new customers is very important. It is also important to get those people who have already used your products or services to come back.
How can you do this? – Want the statistics to this? Jump to the bottom of this article.
I find it so surprising that many businesses spend lots of money on getting new customers but fail to get info to invite their customers to come back in. They are the people that have kept you in business and they know what you are all about. There is no selling them on how good you are (hopefully), so why not get them to come back more often?
Just last week – I was asked if I would put my info on a form to allow the business I was in to send me offers by mail. I was surprised by this. They should have been collecting not only my address but also my email address and text phone numbers. They should also ask what way I like to be contacted for special offers.
Let me tell you about a couple of our customers. One is a successful grocery store here in the valley. They have faithfully collected mailing addresses since they first opened over 20 years ago. It has served them well over the years. They have about 35,000 names on their mailing list. Impressive. The only problem is that in order to send to all of these people, it now costs them, with production, printing and postage, over $20,000. They easily make that back but it is costly to do.
A couple of years ago, I suggested to them to begin asking if they can update their address with an email address. They thought that many of their customers would say no. To their surprise, only about 8% of all his names now don’t have an email address. They still put in time to produce the newsletter with their offers, but now they email most of them and only print and mail less than 3,000.
Another customer (a restaurant) has an email list that he has been maintaining for several years that has about 600 names. He recently changed to a text messaging system and has now over 1,200 people who have signed up.
Why does all of this matter?
My restaurant customer has found some interesting things are happening. With his email list, he would send out a message saying that anyone coming in would get a free lunch with the purchase of another lunch. On his highest response day, he got about 60 responses. With his new text messaging program, when he sent to 600, he sent out the same offer but for two days, he got 350 returned uses. That means over 700 people came into his restaurant during two of his traditionally lowest days of the week. He is switching everyone over to text messaging. He’s using this service once per month to invite his current “best customers” back in. He still occasionally sends an email but not on the weeks he is texting people. He also has split the list into several smaller groups and spreads them out over the month.
The Grocery store customer says people aren’t interested in using text messages from his company. Email kills it for him.
You can do something similar with Facebook and other social media sites. There is an ice cream store that has a fun night every Thursday that gets hundreds of known customers in on a traditionally slow night.
Inviting your customers back should be part of an overall strategy that you build your business with. Sometimes an ad in the newspaper will do this for those that have forgotten about you.
I know an auto shop owner that had a terrible problem with highs and lows and competitors taking away his business with great coupons. He started running ads to remind his clients that he was still here to take care of their vehicle’s problems when their vehicle didn’t run after the new mechanic “fixed” the problem. It worked very well for many years. The competition takes some of their business away but the message in his ad is all about inviting the customer to come back when a low price repair has gone wrong.
What can you do right now?
Start now by using these new technologies:
They are generally inexpensive and will build your business over the next year. Add information in your advertisements about how to get a free (your product here) when they add their name to the list of “Preferred Customers.” Your great customers want to be the first to know about sales, specials or new offerings. Give this to them.
The facts:
The average mailing in bulk will cost just over $65 per 100. Labor to put it together not included.
Well crafted – 17% of emails get read within 2 hours, 24% within 24 hours. Smarter email messages will get as much as 50% opens.
Text messages get read at 65% within 20 minutes, 97% within 2 hours.
Inviting your customers back by any means will bring an increase in traffic and thus profit.
Promoting a text messaging program with advertising will not only bring back past customers but get current customers engaged in finding out about your business and how they can use your services or products more..
Advertising, and doing some sort of customer invite together, will increase your word of mouth advertising by 50%.
Engaging your customers through social media will create a buzz that can be resent to their friends, especially if you ask them to do so.
Build your business by using several of these ways of inviting your current customers back. It will increase your response GREATLY! Want some ideas? Call me and we can sit down and discuss them.
There is a down side to all of these. Next week I will give you some do’s and don’ts for using coupons and discounts.
Best wishes,
Boyd Petersen
Certified Marketing Coach
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