Small Business Development Blog

Small Business eMail Marketing

How To Run Effective Small Business eMail Marketing Campaigns

eMail Marketing Is A Powerful Way To Educate, Communicate, Build Trust, And Solidify A Relationship With Potential And Existing Customers. Start Using It Today!

Why aren't more SMBs using eMail marketing? It is one of the most affordable, easy to understand and effective ways to drive more sales for any organisation, yet the relative take up is poor compared with the possibilities. The answer is more a question of time. Where are you going to get the time for another task in an already busy day?!

At mimosaPLANET we've considered this and we have got some useful recommendations that will have your business running regular effective eMail Campaigns no matter what your situation, check it out...

So Here Are Our Recommendations?

1. Harden Up: Please, you can't find an hour or two once a month?! Come on! Heck, I do it weekly. If you're serious about getting leveraged results, block out regular time in your diary for the next 6 mths ahead to execute campaigns. You'll also need to select a provider or platform to use, as regular eMail doesn't have the tracking and reporting that you will require to be successful. There are many excellent providers out there, they do offer slight differences better suited to different businesses and situations, so contact us and we'll be happy to recommend a provider that suits you.
2. Outsource It: Ok, I get it, you really are busy. That's cool, sometimes it's easier to just get someone else take charge who knows what they are doing, right? So, LET US DO IT FOR YOU. We can work with you on a number of different engagement models that will have your business successfully running eMail marketing campaigns;
• a. Setup eMail Marketing: We setup an account for you with the best provider for your needs, upload your logo and select a format/template. You supply us some content, then we launch your first campaign for you and train you or a member of your team in the process. We'll even schedule a calendar of events and tasks for you to follow to take over from there.
• b. Managed eMail Marketing: You simply supply the content and the mailing list and we do everything else. We can do this on a per campaign basis or per month basis.
• c. Professional eMail Marketing: We handle everything, we plan a promotion or campaign strategy, we organise a copywriter for excellent content, a graphic designer for a custom banner, manage your mailing list, launch campaigns and provide campaign reports, whatever is required to make it successful with-in your budget.
• If outsourcing sounds like it could be the option for you, contact us to discuss further.
3. Delegate It: If you have an office administrator, a PA, a marketing or sales manager or assistant, or a spouse who handles stuff like this... get them on to it. So executing will be just like recommendation 1 above, but instead of ‘Harden Up'... it's ‘Smarten Up'! Get them to contact us for a recommended provider.

So, What About The Campaigns?

You can send an eMail Campaign about anything really, just be sure to follow regular marketing principles of TARGET, OFFER, COPY.... See previous marketing articles for more details. The easiest place to start by far is the monthly newsletter, simple yet effective. 12 eMails a year... that's easy right? Other campaigns might not be so scheduled, they might just occur when required. But the most effective ROI is gained from a calendar planned schedule of campaigns. i.e.

1) Monthly Newsletter on the first Tuesday of every month at 1pm.

2) Monthly Promotion, 2 eMails per month sent on the 1^st & 3^rd Thursday at 7am. Promotional product changes each month, so does the offer.

If you are worried about "being a pest by sending too many eMails", people will tell you when you are sending too much, they'll unsubscribe, so then you scale it back. There are some companies that send many each week, it's more about relevance, make your content relevant and interesting and you're onto a winner. Here are a few ideas for campaigns;

• Monthly Newsletter
• Weekly Tip / Advice
• Special Announcement (new product, new team, new service, new area, milestones reached, birthday)
• Event Promotion (workshops, seminars, trade shows, expos)
• Special Offer
• Product Promotion

One more thing; if you are unsure about the Unsolicited Mail Act / Law in your country and how to compile, we recommend you read a short guide or report specific to your market to answer all your legal questions about eMail marketing. But in short; 1) no permission - no eMail. 2) Give option to "Opt Out" of receiving further eMail communication.

This week's Action Points...

Make a decision which of the 3 options will work best for your business, then make it happen. Small Business eMail Marketing; you won't find a quicker, more cost effective marketing solution to increase your revenue. The ROI is a complete no brainer.

 

Open Days, Information Evenings, Closed Door Sales - Put On A Special Invitation Only Day/Evening

If You Have The Right Incentive & Promotional Campaign Your Customers Will Come, Giving You The Opportunity To Deepen Your Relationship With Them...

Fact; if you're in business you are trying to sell your product or service. Deepening your relationships with your best clients is vital for continued business success. So is nurturing relationships with your B grade clients that have the potential to become A grade. It doesn't matter if you operate in a B2B or B2C environment, running an invitation only event in the form of an open day, information evening or closed door sale is a great way to strengthen relationships and get introduced to new leads if you get your current clients to bring a friend. Learn how to pull this off successfully...

What Are The Different Types Of Events?

Open Day: Good to bring customers together where there is a benefit to be had from your customers meeting each other, i.e. A grade clients talk B grades into becoming A grades. Also great way to get your customer to bring a friend to receive ‘xyz' free gift, your customer gets a gift, you get introduced to a new prospect, most likely in your target market, and the prospect gets introduced to you and your company (and you can give them a gift too if you like).

Information Evening: Great for product/service launches or specific topics of discussion or a focus on particular product/service offering.

Seminar: 20 + people in theatre style seating. This is really more of a new lead generation strategy, long the domain of Property and Business Services firms. Why? Because it works. I've really just included this here to explain the difference between a seminar and a workshop below.

Workshop: 5-20 people in more of a training/classroom environment that is more giving and interactive than the seminar model which can reek of ‘hard sales pitch'. The workshop is about helping people and giving huge value. It is a great value add to your customers. You can run it as an expert in your product or service or get another industry expert to add value to what you do, showing you care more about a long term successful relationship with your client than a quick short term sale. The dollars you'll bank in your customers' emotional bank account will provide you with lots of loyalty and repeat business.

Closed Door Sale: This is a straight loyalty reward strategy. Basically what you are saying is... "because you're a past/current client we are going to offer you these extra savings or benefits to ‘Mrs Smith' off the street, come in and take advantage".

VIP Evening: Closed Door Sale meets Information Evening. Target a specific group of your customers who, for example, already use 1 product from a specific product line. Invite them to learn more about the other products in that line and receive a special offer. Your goal is to deepen the relationship so the customer purchases now 2 or 3 products from that line and gets more benefits than just purchasing 1.

How Do Make The Initial Decisions On What Type Of Event?

The Value: The event itself needs to provide value beyond the ‘promotional offer', that's just the bait to get some there. Without real value being offered no one will turn up. Ask yourself the following questions;

• What do my clients value?
• What do they want from me?
• How can I help them?
• How can I add value beyond the basic product or service I provide?

Answering these questions helps you build an idea of the type of event you will run and the benefit to your clients coming along. No benefit to coming along, no attendees. Here are some examples...

 

What Our Clients Need, Want & Value	Type of Event & Client Benefit
Our clients just want to make savings on purchases of our products.	Run an invitation only VIP client evening or closed door sale with event limited special promotions i.e. Buy 2 get 1 free on all products from the ‘abc' brand line for 3 hours only at this invitation only VIP customer evening.
Our clients want to get more value from the products & services that they have with us already.	Run an educational workshop on how to get the most out of ‘xyz' product. Clients get the the benefit of getting the most from their investment in your product or service.
Our B grade clients want to understand more about the product or services we offer before they can commit to more.	Run an Information Evening to advise on the current products, services, solutions they are using and the different outcome with the features and benefits with the upgraded solution. Get a current user (an A grade client) to also come to the event and share their experience and/or a third party Subject Matter Expert (SME) in the industry to provide solution insights.

How Do I Market It?

The Offer: Like any successful marketing campaign you need to have a powerful offer to get your target market to take action. i.e. each person will receive a free t-shirt on arrival.

Send A Direct Mail Post Card Invitation: Send either a Letter or a Post Card (best) as a personal invitation. People respond more favourably to an ‘invitation' than they do to ‘marketing'. Make sure you communicate the value or benefit gained from coming to the event, and more importantly the offer just for coming. You will get a much higher response if you send a postcard voucher for 1 free t-shirt redeemable on attendance of the event than if you simply send a letter saying "come along to my event it'll be great".

Promote At Each Client Touch Point:

• At normal sale time, on the phone or face-to-face interactions.
• At fulfilment time, i.e. when you finish delivering a product or service.
• With invoices and statements.

Send eMail Event Invites:

• 3 weeks out - First Mailing, target those likely to come (i.e. those who live in the area).
• 2 weeks out - Second Mailing, re-mail to those that didn't RSVP, give them a deadline, i.e."RSVP by [Date 4 days from mailing]".
• 1 week out - Third Mailing, communicate urgency to act now, i.e. "RVSP Now - We only have room for the first 40!"
• 2 days before - Reminder Mailing, remind your guests 2 days before the event.

Phone Reminder:

If the numbers are small enough and you have the resources, I strongly recommend calling everyone that RSVP'd the day before the event. No shows are normally as high as 50% for events like this, but if you make a personalised call to person you are likely to reduce no shows to 20%. Make sure you prove value on the call, and to get this value the client just has to come!

The Event

Just keep thinking and asking yourself when you are planning the event... "am I'm giving great value at this event, will people rate it a 8 or 9 out of 10 or only a ‘take it or leave it' 5 out of 10?". Deliver value and you will deepen the relationships with your current customers and they will become more loyal and spend more with you. This whole strategy is about increasing the life time value of your customers through giving them more value. Life time value extends beyond how long a customer stays with you; it incorporates how much they spend each transaction or each year and keeps extending to how many new customers referrals they bring you by becoming an advocate for your company. The goal.... Increase the % of your customers that qualify as advocates. If you have an army of customers out there telling the world just how wonderful you are, that's about the most powerful marketing you could ever have.

To make your event a success, run an internet search under ‘running a successful event' or similar. You'll find lots of checklists and tips.

This week's Action Points...

Setup a regular schedule of events, start by having a quarterly event and you can assess if you need to increase the frequency once you have a few successful events underway. Good luck, ps invite me and I'll give you an honest feedback on your marketing.

 

Product of The Week or Month - Educate And Communicate About All Your Products

Have A Product Of The Week Or Month To Increase Repeat Business...

This is a really simple way to begin to systemise your marketing approach. After all, marketing is basically just educating people about you, your company, what makes you different, why I should use you, and your products & services. Education needs to be done through a communication channel or medium. With an ongoing product of the week or month campaign you can keep your customers informed at every touch point. Here's how easy this is to setup...

First; Desired Outcome

What is the specific reason you will launch this campaign? What is your specific target?

• a) 10% increase in the overall revenue
• b) 10% increase in the number of overall transactions/orders/visits
• c) 10% increase in the number of unit sales of each product highlighted

Second; Pick A Starting Product To Highlight

If you sell heaps of one product but not much of another, is it because your customers don't need it/want it or do they just not know you sell it and actually do buy it, but from someone else? This is a big question, and it's quite different to the sales strategy of cross-selling other products when making a sale. Product of the Week or Month is a Marketing Promotion strategy designed to educate people (mainly customers and prospects) about your other products and services they may not know you have.

Now, you can get really good at this over time with improved technology and systems to send specific ‘product of the week/month' communications to a specific group of your database based on segmentation criteria. But, heck day one, let's keep it simple and start by communicating one highlighted product or service two all of your customers and prospects. Pick a product which is likely to have high appeal to your customers but you don't sell many of them.

Third; Educate What?

Move from Features to Benefits... and ultimately toward describing the Experience the product or service creates. Here's an example of the difference between features, benefits and the experience.

Example Feature: This car has Independent Rear Suspension (IRS).

Example Benefit: IRS will ensure your vehicle stops faster and has superior handling making it the safest car in its class; that means you and your family can be assured and safe in all driving conditions.

Example Overall Experience: A luxury family sedan that for the first time brings style and safety together without compromise, making the ‘XYZ' Zoom a desired vehicle that'll have style setters in a class of their own on safety... You'll turn heads and hold cutting edge conversation.

Of course, you'll not present is in this headings fashion, but you get the idea of what to either talk to customers about or use as copy for written communications.

Fourth; Select Communication Mediums & Frequency, Create Collateral

The more the merrier could never be true. Cross-platform is the technical term, the idea is to link marketing communications from different mediums to drive the message home to effect a positive action like a purchase. i.e. Communications using an eMail, a Direct Mail piece, in-store promotion stand, flyer with invoice, in-bound call waiting message, flyer with sale call, in the monthly newsletter, website home page highlight, etc...

I'd recommend using each of the above platforms, or as many as possible, this way you can communicate with your customers at each normal touch point, about ‘the product of the month' (like a flyer with invoice) and in other more proactive direct ways (like a specific eMail ‘Product of the Month highlight'.

The great news is, you can use much of the same content for each medium. This content will form collateral and you or a member of your team can create basic collateral, but if you want to represent your brand in the best way use a graphic designer for best results. Make an attractive Offer for maximum response.

Fifth; Test Campaign ROI

Is this going to work or are you wasting your time and money?

At the start you won't know at all what the response will be; you'll build stronger projection power in time... at first just run the numbers and ask is this likely or not?

Parent Campaign Name:                       Product of the Month
Campaign Name:                                 Product of the Month-Aug08
Company Name:                                  ‘XYZ' Ltd
Month:                                                Aug08
Product of the Month:                            XYZ' Blah
Communication Mediums & Freq:            eMail:                        3x500 (1^st week, 3^rd week, 4^th week)
                                                          Direct Mail:                 1x2000 (1^st week)
                                                          Flyer with Invoice:        300(based on average # of inv pmth)
                                                          Website Page Update:  n/a
Total Investment:                                  $2000
Product Price:                                      $395
Product Gross Profit:                            $235 ($395 - cost of product at $160)
Break Even Units:                               9 ($2000 / $235 = 8.5 = rounded to 9)
Desired Outcome:                                10% increase in total # of XYZ Blah units sold in Aug/Sep/Oct
Last Year's Aug/Sep/Oct unit sales:      160 (previous period XYZ Blah Sales)
Target Unit Sales:                              16 (160 x 10%)
Target Campaign GP:                            $3760 (16 x $235)
Target Campaign ROI:                           $1760 ($3760 - $2000)
Target Campaign ROI%:                        88% ($1760 / $2000 = 0.88) 

So the question then becomes is it likely that you will hit 9 extra sales to break-even? If so the campaign is an investment. So let's look at some possible outcomes based on conversion rates;

Direct Mail Responses:                                  20 (at 1% x 2000)
Direct Mail Sales:                                          5 (at 25% x 20)

eMail Open Rate:                                          225 (55% x 500)
eMail Click Through Rate:                              45 (20% x 225)
eMail Response Rate:                                    5 (11.1% x 45)
eMail Sales:                                                  3 (60% x 5)

Flyer with Invoice Responses:                         12 (4% x 300)
Flyer with Invoice Sales:                                 3 (25% x 12)

Website Page Responses:                               2 (0.2% x 1000 unique visitors pmth)
Website Page Sales:                                       0 (20% x 2)

TOTAL Responses:                                         39
TOTAL Conversion Rate:                                 28%
TOTAL Unit Sales From Campaign:                   11
TOTAL ROI:                                                   $585 ((11 x $235=$2585)-($2000))                                             

Sixth; Implement Campaign

Talk to your team and make it happen.

This week's Action Points...

This is a quick process to maintain each week or month once it is setup, and even the initial setup is quick, so set a launch date for week/month 1.

 

Subscriptions, SLAs and Preferred Supplier Agreements - Increase Repeat Business With Contracts

How To Effectively Communicate Subscriptions, Service Level Agreements, & Preferred Supplier Agreements To Your Customers & Prospects...

There is a very good reason larger organisations do not follow the same guideline range that small businesses do to determine the value of the business (normally a multiplier between 0-5 x EBIT = goodwill). Larger organisations can be seen ranging from 5-50 x earnings. Why?

The higher the multiplier, the more likely it is that the future profit of a business will be solid. One very effective way you can increase repeat business and the multiplier, which influences the value of your business, is by getting your customers to commit to a contract. Here's how...

Just About Every Person or Business Is a Customer On a Contract With Someone, I Bet You Are, ... So Why Don't You Sell Them?

Hey look, maybe you do sell them already, but there is probably room for improvement, right? The point is, most people or businesses have a contract with another business, i.e. a mobile phone provider for 12/24/36mths, a landlord for 5 years, a utility company in perpetuity, computer or car lease for 36mths, software for 24mths, a newspaper for 12mths, etc.

All these situations are just common place and accepted normal business practice. What it provides each of these companies with is guaranteed repeat business. They make the sale once and get paid each month for it, or all upfront for a whole year sometimes. They don't have to try and entice the customer to come back and make another sale. This is a very profitable way to do business.

With larger organisations, no matter what their industry is, they realise the value in having certainty about future sales, profits and cash-flow. This certainty can be delivered by; Subscriptions, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Preferred Supplier Agreements (PSLs). Even if your business is retail, you can't discount this approach. It can be a little obvious to see how this works for the big service based companies above, and I can understand how sometimes it's a little hard to believe that people would commit to your business in a similar way. Especially for retailers, but even retailers solidify their companies future earnings through repeat business in the form of loyalty and reward programs.

Here are some examples of what different industries can do;

Retail/ Wholesale/Distribution/ Manufacturing:

The lines between what is retail, wholesale, distribution and manufacturing can be blurry with many doing two or all of these classifications using direct channels and merchant channels, but here are some basic examples;

Subscriptions; Most people have a subscription to something. Magazines, newspapers, virus protection.

Preferred Supplier Agreements; stationery, photocopiers, mailing. A PSA is a contract that limits the customers options, if not removes them all together, from using another provider.

Service Level Agreements; firms that manufacture products can look to greatly increase revenue and ensure repeat product sales if they have a "Services Division". At the lowest form these are sold as ‘product warranties' i.e. 3 yr warranty, where the regular warranty of a product is just 1 yr. Think the consumer appliance market. Other examples include products sold to other companies that often have the option of a support package.

A SLA outlines quantified levels of service a company is promising to give to a customer, for a set rate, for a fixed period with xyz conditions. The benefit to the company is ongoing repeat business from the one sales effort for 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 whatever years... giving predictable future earnings and cash-flow. Often in larger B2B situations a condition is the customer has to use the company/provider exclusively. The benefit to the customer is guaranteed better service at a lower rate and predictability to cash-flow.

Trade Services (Builders, Electricians, Plumbers):

Maintenance Agreement; regular scheduled preventative maintenance servicing to a site or group of sites or installed equipment or client owned equipment.

Professional Services (Lawyers, Accountants, Consultants):

Service Level Agreement; agreed levels of service delivery like time frame acknowledgement, response & turnaround. Plus the amount of work covered, extra work at reduced rates %. All covered by a fixed monthly amount to make cash-flow easy and predictable for a set term. e.g.  A customer or prospect of ‘abc' law firm that signs a 12mth fixed fee agreement of $3000pmth, will get direct and unlimited phone calls and emails to a partner in the firm and a guaranteed same day response, and priority turnaround on all work, plus receive up to $3500 billable hours per mth.

Find The Value In Your Business?

In truth, there are no rules, you can take a concept from one industry and apply it to another. You can take a common practice from large firms in your industry that deal in a different market space and apply them to your market space.... Or you can keep your existing offering to your current market and target the next market up the ladder (bigger dollar value sales) with a new contract offering (SLAs, etc).

Look for the value, in what you do! The value is not in the product or service you provide, the value is in the outcome it achieves. Write out the outcome from your products or services. Write out the desired outcome, check with customers to make sure you have this correct. If there is a difference you have work to do to close the gap.

How To Communicate An Agreement?

To achieve a desired outcome, you need a solution. Move from selling products and services to providing solutions! This is not just a play on words, it is a company and brand; strategy, direction, and position. To achieve this position start by making solutions simple for yourself and your prospects or customers by ‘packaging' these solutions for different situations. i.e.

• Regular Support; $45 per month for people that are light uses of your product that want to have peace of mind that they can call when the odd hard situation arises they can't deal with.
• Premium Support; $75 per month for heavy users of your product that want to be able to get priority help for complex issues that arise often.

Notice how each solution has a name, it has a fixed price (it will also have conditions on what you get for that... let people compare the two options), it highlights the situation light or heavy users, and it explains the outcome the solution provides. This is how to effectively communicate your agreement.

Obviously for many businesses and customers such a relationship for an agreement will need to be customised and is likely to be different and often negotiated. The key word is RELATIONSHIP! I can just hear some of you now saying "I already have a relationship with my customers and many use us every month, and others just use us ad-hoc, when they need it, we can't lock them into a contract, they just won't sign it". Yes, true... but what does this mean as a relationship? It means each customer you have sits on a relationship scale, a loyalty ladder if you like, at the top of the ladder are customers that have you have signed agreements with that get great value and are raving about you. At the bottom customers you've sold to once and don't have their details or keep in touch with and you'll probably never see them again..... and everything in between.

Your goal is to drive customers to the top of the relationship scale where in B2B you become partners in their success. In B2C you become vital them living their life how they want.

B2B: Solutions for business success.

B2C: Solutions for need, desire and want fulfilment.

Position your solution appropriately.

Closing An Agreement?

Read some of my past articles on sales and go and buy a few sales books (they all teach similar principles). The only way to ‘close the deal' or ‘make the sale' is by understanding why people buy and why they don't buy. Learning about sales psychology is not deception and trickery, it's smart business sense. If you're alive, you're a sales person, why not be a good one?

This week's Action Points...

FIND YOUR BUSINESSES TRUE VALUE to unleash the better business you've promised yourself and family.

 

Communication Campaigns Timetable - How Regularly Do You Contact Your Past Customers?

 

Stop Attrition & Boost Your Customers Annual Spend

I know that you've heard you need to keep in contact with your customers every 90 Days or you risk losing them through indifference. You will probably agree that it would be a good idea to run with this strategy in your business, in some way of another... i.e. letter, email, phone call, event, meeting, or visit.

The real issue is executing this strategy. Setting it up and most importantly maintaining it. Learn the keys to making this work for your business to stop customer attrition and increase annual customer spend...

What Are The Options?

Contact Channels:

• Post
• eMail
• Phone Call
• Fax

Communication Reasons:

• Happy Holidays (New Year, Easter, Christmas, etc)
• Happy Birthday
• Thank You for being a client
• Thank You for paying on time
• Company News
• Company Events
• Special Offers and Promotions

Some Common Communication Strategies:

• Regular Newsletter (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly)
• Direct Mail Letter (Monthly or Quarterly)
• VIP Client Day (Quarterly, 6mthly)

Campaign Success Considerations:

• Target: Who are you sending this to? All past clients you have details of, only clients from the last 2yrs, only those you haven't heard from in 1 yr or more, etc?
• Offer: What is so valuable that a past customer just has to respond? What is a powerful offer?
• Copy: What are you going to say? What are you communicating? With what purpose?
• Call to Action: What do you want them to do specifically?

Desired Outcome:

• Inform (on company, on products, on services, on case studies, on industry)
• Educate (on niche)
• Build Relationship by Helping, Assisting, Congratulating, or Thanking
• Response to which channel (ph, return post, fax, email, website)
• ‘x' number of new opportunities to make a sale from camp
• ‘x' number of new sales

Create a Simple Plan Using a Calendar & a 1 Page List

The easiest way execute regular communications to your customers is to start with a small number of communications campaigns on a regular timetable; Just start with 1 campaign type, once you've nailed the basics just add more campaign types. Ultimately you can start to communicate more relevant information... I'll tell you how to do this in an upcoming article. From day one though this is the process...

1. Get your calendar out and set a ‘launch date' for the first campaign 3 weeks from now.
2. Decide on the details of this 1 campaign.... what channel, reason, strategy, frequency, campaign considerations, and outcome. Use the above information to help. Start with the desired outcome first, as each other option is determined from your desired outcome. Write this down... you are now creating a simple document to support this campaign for the next time you do it.
3. Then mark out the next date on the calendar, and the next, etc... for the next year. Tip: Use a computer and /or phone and mark a 3 week reminder for each of the next campaigns.
4. Make a decision; who will create the content (i.e. direct mail letter, newsletter template, newsletter articles, phone scripts, etc whatever is required by your selection of options from step 2 above. For each part required, who will it be? You, a member of your team, a graphic designer, a copywriter, a business development specialist, etc...). You will find you need to do two things to make sense of this;
   • Write a list of tasks.
   • Write a name next to each task.
5. Now that you've figured out who is doing what, you simple create deadlines for each task and communicate to all involved. 

This week's Action Points...

"Time" is an easy excuse to use for not doing this, we're busy, right? But doing this could actually save you time; the time that you might be using to find new business. By focusing on maximising the relationship with existing contacts you can have a very profitable business in a short amount of time. So set the date and proceed.

 

Repeat Business Tactics - 8 Top Techniques

Did You Know It Costs About 6 Times As Much To Get A New Customer To Purchase From You As It Does To Get An Old Customer To Come Back? 

So, just what are you currently doing to ensure you keep your current customers and get the old ones to come back?

Learn how to do the most important marketing your business could ever do! Helping you get more and more repeat business...

 

Imagine this... You're tired... (probably not so hard for some of you to imagine right), you've just got home, and you feel there would be nothing better than a long hot bath. You walk to the laundry and fill a bucket of hot water then walk to the bathroom and empty the bucket into the bath. You're starting to feel better, I mean just look at that... 10L all in one go. Rushing off to fill another bucket madly you return and straight away throw in the next 10L, wow more water, this bath will be full in no time. The phone rings, so you get distracted for a minute, just a minute, you return to the tub with your next 10L bucket and throw it straight in. It's not until you look at the total result, how much water is in the tub, you realise that it's only about 10L. What happened to the other 2 buckets?

Is the above scenario absolutely ridiculous?

Heck yes! Why would you fill the tub with a bucket for starters, wouldn't it be better to use the tap? Of course! When marketing your business do you have a system (tap) that produces a constant flow of repeat customers (water), or do you simply rely on a non effective system (bucket)? Have you forgotten to put the plug in the bottom of your business (bath tub) so all your hard efforts and cash investment to get your customers (water) simply never return (go down the drain)?

I realise it's hard, hey... if it was easy everyone would be awesome at it right, but you are going to get distracted (the phone rings) by the day to day running of your business... that's the point! The only way to truly break through to a new level from where you are today is to have a sure fire way to ensure ... a marketing system (tap) that predictably delivers you repeat customers.

Makes sense right, but what can we do to get you there?

Here's a short list of my top simple strategies to increase repeat business...

1. Printed Newsletter: This is not that hard people, and it's highly effective. It is incredibly leveraged... do the work once (setting the template up) use it for years. How often depends greatly on your business... either monthly, or quarterly at a minimum. Either do it yourself, or get a graphic designer, copywriter and printer involved for maximum result with minimum effort. I have the names of three excellent people for this, if you want them just ask me.
2. Email Newsletter: Again very easy to set up, but I realise it's an issue... technology... for many of you out there so, I'll be coming to the party with a solution for you all soon with mimosaMAIL^TM. This so cheap and so effective that the very rules of business have changed, not the core principles, but the rules. Why don't you send all your customers a letter or card every month... probably two reasons, hassle and cost. Now you can, the rules have changed. You and your business will need to embrace change or face becoming obsolete!
3. Subscriptions/service agreements/preferred supplier: Make the sale once up front for the next 1,2,3 years! Get an agreement or contract signed.
4. Maintain a database: If you invest your time, money and efforts in this... and when I say ‘you' I mean, either you personally, a team member or outsource it... you will then be highly likely to want to use it effectively.
5. Timetable of Communication: Either a simple generic calendar (Sept I phone everyone, Oct Qtrly newsletter printed and sent, Nov pre xmas promotion offer eMailed out, Dec xmas cards posted, etc...). Or you could use a rolling timetable of communication, this is best but a little more time involved to setup but hugely worth it, i.e. (1week after first purchase complimentary product offer eMail, 1mth after that ... a referral voucher and offer posted, etc....).
6. Do whatever it takes: Go the extra mile for people, and they'll reward you with repeat business and tell everyone else about you!
7. 90 Day Contact Rule: I don't care what you choose to do, written or verbal, but you need to be in contact with your customers at a minimum ever 90 days. Do not waste, rapport, trust, and the relationship you have invested time, effort and money to build.
8. Measure: Your average customers lifetime value (total spend) and length. If you measure it, you'll naturally want to increase it.

This week's action points...

You have probably heard much of the above before... but what have you done about it! Pick one and go for it, I mean really commit to doing it. Write the route to it down then simply follow it.