Two years ago I had a custom closet built in my bedroom. The closet company did a great job and finished promptly. So I asked them to give me estimates on two more projects. My thought was to do one custom closet per year.
Well, as you know, life happens. But this year, when I was finally ready…I couldn’t remember the company’s name. I couldn’t find the receipt from the job they did for me. And in all this time, they never called! They never wrote! I haven’t heard so much as a peep from them.
I don’t get this. Is the closet organization business the only one that is booming during this business downturn that’s affecting everyone else? Is there such a backlog of overflowing closets belonging to women-entrepreneur workaholics that this company doesn’t feel the need to do any marketing?
The truism that it costs significantly more to get a new customer than to sell additional products and services to existing customers is TRUE.
The closet company already had given me estimates for my new projects. I was pre-sold. Yes, I was a “not now” customer at the time, but I was their not-now customer! All they would’ve had to do was send me a postcard or call me up and say, “Are you ready now?” and I would’ve been theirs. No big ad campaign; no salesman site visit for measurement. I was as close to low-hanging fruit as it comes.
If you own a business or you’re in sales, it should be in your DNA to do whatever you can to continue long-term relationships with customers. The profit is in the second and subsequent sale! Why?
There’s no advertising cost!
Why wasn’t I at least invited to receive an email newsletter from this company? I wouldn’t mind seeing pictures of other perfect closets (especially since I have two other ones waiting for makeovers). I’d have opted-in to get special sales info or any coupons they have. In fact, a coupon might have motivated me to pull the trigger on my next order sooner.
As a CRM consultant, this lack of follow-through drives me crazy. That’s because there IS one more thing you can do to attract new business to your company during a downturn, instead of waiting until the economic tides turn on their own.
All this closet company needed to stay in touch were two inexpensive tools: 1) a customer database (like ACT! Software) — for under $350 and 2) an email service provider.
The email marketing service I recommend is Swiftpage. There are hundreds of excellent email service providers but this is the only one that integrates with ACT Software. That means there’s no need to export and upload lists, an extra step that prevents a lot of businesses from sending consistent marketing campaigns.
Swiftpage also rates as my top email service because starting this fall it will automatically be part of the new version of ACT Software, known as ACT! e-Marketing. The cost to send 3,000 emails is about $55/month.
Swiftpage comes with ready-made templates or you can create your own. Deliverability is higher with Swiftpage than sending through Outlook because Swiftpage works with the major ISPs who recognize them as a professional service and not some untraceable spammer out of Nigeria.
Swiftpage also monitors opt-outs (the service is entirely CAN-SPAM compliant, which is a law, not an option). Best of all, it shows who opens your email, who clicks on your links (so you see who’s interested in what) and it generates call lists of hot prospects to hand off to salespeople for follow up. Salespeople can see the contact’s readership score “diary” by looking in the ACT marketing database history.
Swiftpage’s Team and Pro versions also allow you to ”schedule send” or “send as,” so you save time by programming a month of messages in advance to be sent out under the sales rep’s name (instead of a spammy “from” address like sales@company.com).
Once you’re comfortable sending basic emails, move your business up to the next level of sophisticated (and time-saving) stay-in-touch marketing messages with Swiftpage drip marketing. Drip marketing lets you string together a series of email templates based on business triggers–in the case of my closet company, they could’ve sent me a reminder or a coupon once a quarter and then scheduled a sales rep to call me if I hadn’t called the company by then.
Like everyone, I get a lot of spam. I delete messages on vitamins, sex aids and stock tips. But a nice newsletter from a company I’ve done business with before would be fine. It may even remind my failing memory to place another order that I meant to do anyway.
So don’t let good customers forget about you. The replacement cost of losing a good customer is far more expensive than a $55/month drip-marketing follow-up system.
P.S. At the end of July I’m holding my 4th DripMarketingCamp. In under 30 days, I teach you how to professionally design, write and launch one customized follow-up campaign for your company’s “not now” customers and prospects. Check it out; just one drip marketing campaign could plug up a major black hole in your sales follow-up process.
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Is that what’s called “closet marketing”?
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