Internet marketers tend to do it too much. Offline businesses don’t do it often enough.
I am talking, of course, about keeping in touch with previous clients.
If you do business with an internet marketer, you might possibly receive three emails each and every day from that person for the rest of your natural life.
If you do business with an offline business, you may be lucky to ever hear from them again. Depending on the industry, you may get a calendar at Christmas.
The key to developing customer loyalty and building relationships is constant communication, but not so much that it gets annoying.
Many businesses do not even e-mail their customers, which is a shame. Those that do keep in contact with their clients only do so to sell to them. They e-mail about special offers, discount coupons, and anything else to try to get the customer to buy something more. Which, in itself, is not a bad thing, it just should not be the only thing.
I suggest you also communicate with your existing customers in a way that adds value. Send them a handy tip on a new way to use the item they already purchased. Send them other news related to their interests (which obviously include whatever they bought from you.)
In all of these ways, you are adding value to what they already purchased. You are giving more to them, and asking nothing in return. By doing this, you eliminate the stigma of “Every time Company X contacts me, they are trying to sell me something.” Your communications are much more likely to be opened and read and acted upon because you are proving that you are putting the customer first, and not just trying to make a sale.
So if your sales are lagging, shoot an e-mail out to your list of current customers. Or mail them an actual letter.
“But Brent, if I do that now after having ignored them this whole time, won’t it seem like I am just trying to sell them something?”
Good point. So don’t sell in this communication. Wish them a happy new year, send them a handy tip, give them some value, something besides selling.
Even this time, it will remind them of who you are and what you offer, just by contacting them. It may remind them that they need your product. Even if it doesn’t, contact them again next month, just to make contact. Don’t sell.
Then in a few months, after you have established a pattern of contacting them to add value, then you can try to sell. I recommend, at most, a ratio of 3:1 of value-adding correspondence to sales attempts.
Once you establish a pattern of keeping in contact, then you can earn the trust of your customers, and it becomes much easier to sell them again later.
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