Keeping in Touch with Your Customers — Without Annoying Them
15 Apr 2014 Leave a Comment
in Inspirational, Marketing TIPS, offers Tags: Loyalty Programs
When you’re trying to build your business, it’s easy to get caught up in the thrill of the hunt — for new customers, that is. However, as studies from the Harvard Business School show, focusing attention on existing customers and increasing retention rates by just 5% will increase your profits by 25% to 95%!
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes: How many e-mails do you want to receive every day? How many phone calls do you want to take? Sure, persistence is important in cultivating your customer base, but overdoing it can prove counterproductive by annoying the very customers you’re trying to reach. Here’s how to find the right balance.
Make it Personal
Who doesn’t like to receive a personalized card or handwritten note in the mail? There’s a world of difference between sending out an impersonal flyer or form letter and a customized note printed on attractive card stock. Which would you be more likely to open and read?
Send personalized updates on the “regular” occasions — clients’ birthdays, anniversaries, major holidays, and the like — but also consider spicing it up a bit by sending a note or card when they don’t expect it. After all, most businesses send appreciation cards and letters during the winter holidays, so that’s just par for the course. Stand out by also picking a random date to surprise them.
Loyalty Programs
And speaking of dates, choose a day with significance for your customer — like their birthday or the anniversary of their first major purchase from your business — and use that occasion to automatically enroll them in a loyalty program. All you have to do is send an email letting them know you’ve enrolled them into your “VIP” program, or whatever you choose to call it.
Why automatically? Because a key to successful loyalty programs lies in making it as effortless for your customers as possible, without requiring them to take any extra steps or actions.
Artificial Advancement
The other key to successful loyalty programs lies in creating what’s known as “artificial advancement” toward a goal or milestone. A 2006 study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that customers who received punch cards as part of a loyalty program were more likely to become repeat customers if they were given a head start toward reaching a goal. For instance, many coffee shops offer loyalty cards that give a customer a stamp for each coffee drink they buy, then reward them with a free drink once they’ve accrued 10 stamps.
Researchers found that customers were almost three times more likely to use their punch cards — and spend money at a business — if at least two stamps were already present on the card when they first received it. Apparently, customers like to feel that they’re already well on their way to receiving awards!
Make Contacts Worth Their While
Whether it’s in an e-mail, through a printed newsletter, or on a sales call, providing customers with information they can use adds value to your communications and eliminates the annoyance factor. Offering industry news, community updates, or other data that’s relevant and useful to your customers goes a long way toward transforming the way they perceive your marketing efforts. A professionally written and well-designed direct mail piece sent a few times a year that’s packed with info they can use is always welcome.
If you keep your communications relevant, concise, respectful, useful, and personalized, you’ll never have to worry about being too persistent.
The Secret to Selling to Someone Who’s Not (Yet) Ready to Buy
25 Jan 2013 Leave a Comment
in offers, Services Tags: golf, sellilng advice
There was once a man named Charlie who sold insurance for a living. Charlie was a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy who enjoyed what he did. Charlie had a friend named Steve. Steve was in his late thirties and happily married, with a wife and two kids.
Charlie and Steve would play the occasional round of golf with some friends. Charlie would tell Steve about the importance of having life insurance for someone in his situation, but without being pushy.
Steve had his reasons for not buying at the time and would always put it off. Charlie, being the good, persistent salesman that he was, would bring up the topic regularly without being annoying.
One morning while Steve was at work, a colleague who was about the same age, with two kids and in seemingly good health, had a sudden, unexpected heart attack and was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
Guess who Steve called that very afternoon to get the paperwork started for the life insurance policy he had been putting off for years?
What’s the moral of our story as it pertains to your business? You can have the greatest product, the best service, and a great price, yet some of your prospects will still not buy. The reasons are many, and some are a mystery that you won’t be able to solve right away.
While you’re scratching your head trying to find those answers, your real job is to continually market your services by educating your target audience about what you can do to help them achieve their objectives. Why? Because one day soon, your prospect will be ready to buy, and she will remember the persistent, but pleasant person who has been looking out for her best interest all along.
Charlie knew that secret, and now you do, too.
Flash Sale Marketing Tips
25 Dec 2012 Leave a Comment
in offers Tags: flash mob, offers, Sales
Flash sales have become one of the marketing industry’s hottest new ways to not only grab attention but also boost web traffic and create front-of-mind awareness. While email is typically the key driver of flash sale campaigns, social media is a close follower. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your next flash sale marketing campaign:
- Create urgency with a short time window for your sales. These can range from a few hours to a day or two maximum. The longer customers put off buying, the less likely they are to make a purchase. Studies show that flash sales with a three-hour window have the best transaction-to-click rates. Most purchases are made within the first hour.
- Be sure your inventory is adequate for a flash sale, and alert customers if supplies are limited.
- Consider a flash sale with an open-ended coupon promo to increase foot traffic. For example, you might offer a $150 salon coupon for only $75 from 11am-1pm.
- Use multiple avenues to spread the word quickly. These may include email, texting, mobile coupons, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social sites.
- Encourage recipients to share or forward your message to their friends.
- Create an attention-grabbing subject line or header, and follow through with a concise message that communicates the necessary details of your sale.
- Consider sending a reminder. Light a fire under the feet of customers who are interested but dragging their heels, and remind them that your offer expires soon.
- Remember that timing is everything, so determine the best times to blast your recipients. The most common times for a flash sale revolve around lunch or evenings, making the sale accessible to buyers who work during the day.
- Monitor your social accounts closely during a flash sale, since customers will want immediate answers to any potential questions or concerns before the sale expires.
- Consider mailing postcards for big weekend flash sale events to grab attention and give customers a little extra time to prepare for your sale. For example, grab attention with an oversized postcard that says “Save 40% off everything in our store for four hours only on Saturday!”
- Consider offering a live online counter to show how many “deals” have been purchased. Popularity sells, so if XX other people thought it was a good deal, many others will think they need to buy one, too.
- Suggest that shoppers follow you on Facebook or Twitter to ensure they don’t miss out on your next exciting sale!
Making Connections
13 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in creative offers, Design, Inspirational, Marketing, offers, Services Tags: budwiser, chevy cruze, hallmark, You Tube videos
Inside every human being is a desire to connect in real and tangible ways. This desire for connection permeates everything we do and every decision we make: even our decisions of what to buy and when. We respond to ads because we connect with them somehow. A spokesperson, scene, or catchphrase resonates with us and makes us laugh, or cry, or both.
- A soldier sits down in a quiet moment to listen to a recordable storybook his child sent from home.
- A team of clydesdales pulls an iconic wagon into New York City, then bows silently before the Statue of Liberty in reverence.
- A couple drives frantically to the top of a parking ramp. The man jumps out and signals his confused girlfriend to follow, just in time to… miss the airplane banner flying by, asking her to marry him.
Each of these commercials (and many others like them) tells a story that, at first glance, has little to do with the product they’re selling. Instead, they show the product (or in the case of the clydesdales, a symbol of the product) in real-life situations that make it far more relatable than a simple product shot or feature list ever could.
Here are links to the three commercials I mentioned in this post. A quick warning: If you haven’t seen these, you might want to have a box of Kleenex nearby for the first two. Feel free to list some of your own favorites in the comments at the end of this post.
“Active Duty” Hallmark Commercial
Wherever Life Takes You (Chevy Cruze ECO)
