Keeping Customers

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You have very likely invested considerable time, effort and money into finding customers for your business. Keeping customers that you already have is much more cost effective than always having to find new customers. So how do you keep people coming back to purchase from you again and again? Following up and providing outstanding customer care is the solution.

There is an old saying, “The fortune is in the follow-up.” The reason it’s become an old saying among marketers and sales people is because: it’s true. Following up with your customers and prospects can be one of the most important business actions you can take. It is certainly no secret that people lead busy lives these days and they can’t always remember to do all the things they want or need to do, including patronizing your business.

There are many ways for you to follow up with your potential and past customers, all of them being important in their own unique ways. Following up is more than simply sending out a catalog, sales flier or package of information about your business. Follow-up is everything you do in relation to a current or potential customer or recruit in order to meet your goals. Telephone, email, and postal mail are the most common methods.

There is the good old fashioned telephone, but calling everyone can be time consuming and expensive if you have to pay long distance fees. Not to mention some people may be hard to connect with or they might not welcome your phone call, especially if you catch them at a bad time. If you have thousands of customers, calling them really isn’t an option. I reserve my telephone time for business prospects as they usually have questions and benefit the most from the personal contact.

Email is great but it has it’s pitfalls as well. To send out a customer newsletter, or do any form of email marketing for that matter, it is recommended that you use an autoresponder service for reasons I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say, emailing people without their permission isn’t a great idea.

Following up with your past customers reminds them that you are still there for them and can also make them feel special and well appreciated. Offering potential customers your services, a limited time special or perhaps an incentive to buy from you is an effective way to increase sales. A fantastic way to do this is to send your customer an actual card in the postal mail.

As you can imagine from your own personal buying habits, when you feel appreciated by a business, you are more likely to buy more products from that business. When you feel ignored or unappreciated, you are more likely to forget or avoid that business.

One reason that many business owners fall behind on following up with their customers is due to a lack of time. If this sounds familiar to you, setting up a simple system to keep your follow ups flowing can make your life easier and your business more profitable. The system I’m using allows me to send handwritten cards to my customer list in less than a minute from any computer. The beautiful, quality cards are printed, stuffed, stamped and mailed out for me for about $1.50 each and the cost even less for postcards.

Send Out Cards

Great reasons to send a card:

  1. When your customer buys from you, send a thank you card!
  2. When a potential customer or recruit requests information, send a card!
  3. Three months, six months, nine months and/or a year after your customer’s purchase or a potential customer contact, send a card to remind them about your products and services!
  4. Birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions, send a card to show you care!
  5. Send a card to ask for referrals!
  6. Let your customers and potential customers know about your new products, specials, or limited time offers by sending a card!
  7. Any time is a good time to send a card as it builds a good relationship with your customers. People buy from people they know, like and trust and sending a card is the easiest way to develop that.

Once you have implemented a regular card follow-up routine into your business, it’s super easy and time efficient to set up your card campaigns with SOC, and you will open up huge potential for repeat business and more profits. Remember happy, satisfied, loyal customers buy more and will become your business evangelists!

I’d be delighted to set up a gift account for so you can send two cards for free and see how easy it is for yourself. Call me toll free 1-866-4522-6948 or use the contact below to request your gift account user name and password.

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The statements made and opinions expressed on this site are those of Melody Thacker, the Independent Watkins Associate who is the publisher of this document, and are not to be construed as the statements or opinions of Watkins Incorporated.