3 Ways To Successfully Stay In Touch With Your Customers

There are three ways to increase your bottom line: get more clients, get each client to spend more during the purchase process, or get your clients to buy from you more than once during the year.

By far the easiest sale is to an existing client. They know you. They love you. Yet this is often the most underutilized tool of a small business. Use this list to jumpstart your own marketing strategy, and begin bringing back your existing clients.

1. Create a database of all your clients. Sort them by the type of client they are and their purchase histories. Then mail to them periodically based on their buying patterns.

Sample Mailing Plan:

• Entire list receives newsletter in January, April, July, October.
  
  
• Entire list receives special promotions postcard once a month.
  
  
• Client list receives "thank you for being our client" bonus mailing in March and August.
  
  
• Potential client list receives "new client promotion" mailing in May and September.
  
  
• Holiday buyers receive holiday promotion in September, October, and November.

The main goal here is to keep your entire contact list in the loop for receiving regular mailings from you. This will establish a pattern that you want to stay in the lives of the people you do business with.

2. Convert your mailing list to an email list. Mailings can be very profitable; but don’t forget about the power of email. Mail out postcards directing people to your website for different promotions.

• Try giving a percentage off coupon to entice people to sign up for your ezine.
  
  
• Offer a free report to lure people to try your new service.
  
  
• Present special promotions to your online subscribers – and be sure to tell your walk-in clients all about it.

By combining a snail mail and email campaign, you can be in constant touch with your clients. Some prefer traditional displays; some prefer the convenience of an email. Either way, you provide the content in a format ready for them. And stay in their minds.

3. Stick to your plan. No matter how you choose to stay in touch with your clientele, the most important aspect is to remain consistent.

Establish a system within your office to make the entire process easy. For instance, a number of years ago I produced a quarterly newsletter that I snail mailed out to more than 500 clients, vendors and prospects. I built it from actual client work, and devoted a page of my newsletter to each client I worked with during the quarter. Rather than waiting until the end of the quarter, and spending hours on production, I created it along the way. I created a file on my computer at the beginning of the quarter, and would post photographs, stories, testimonials, and other pertinent information as I worked with a client. I would create the page, attach it to my newsletter format, and save it along the way. Then at the end of the quarter, my work would be limited to a small amount of production to get the file over to the printer. Making the entire project much more manageable.