In speaking with businesses of all types and sizes, we regularly find that they fail to effectively capture existing customer information and then use it to stay in touch. Maximizing the use of its customer list is low hanging fruit to any business’ marketing effort. Customer retention offers many benefits; they include:

Greater Sales: Repeat Customers Spend 33% More
More Referrals: Repeat Customer Offer More Referrals Than Non Repeat Customers
Lower Cost: It Costs 80% More to Sell to a New Customers

Whether a business is online or offline, the benefits of customer retention, or CRM (customer relationship management), are clear. Therefore I thought I’d offer some ideas on how to grow a customer list and make it more useful:

• Capture Email Addresses in Offline Forms, Like Service Invoices or Work Orders
• Place an Email Signup Box on Every Page of a Website
• Send a Personal Note to Follow Up a Sale; Request the Customer Join the Email List
• Create a Loyalty Program Requiring Registration
• Find & Connect  With Customers Via Social Media
• Engage Existing Customers To Ask for Feedback
• Clean the Customer List Regularly
• Determine Customers’ Area(s) of Interest by Segmenting the List

These are only ideas to get your juices flowing, but the concept applies to all offline and online businesses.  With that said, be careful to follow some basic rules of thumb:

• Ask for Permission
• Don’t Ask for Information That Will Not Be Used

What is your opinion? Do you used any of these methods? Are they working for you?
Please share your experiences in the comments.

In a future post, I’ll touch on some specific ways  to use these ideas to reach out and engage existing customers.

Bill Rowland

Developing a long term, profitable relationships with customers and prospects is often a primary goal of marketing and email can be used to easily cultivate those relationships. Reading a recent article on Building Loyalty with Clients Via Email got me thinking about it. Here are a few thoughts:

• Businesses that don’t currently use email should consider it. It is still among the most productive online marketing methods.
• Email marketing is relatively inexpensive. Small business providers like AWeber, Constant Contact and others offer excellent service with reasonable pricing.
• Email marketing can be used for a variety of purposes, including generating sales, improving service and cultivating customer loyalty among others.
• Obtaining a name and email address information gives businesses the opportunity to connect in other ways, like social media.
• An email list can be promoted and grown in multiple ways: at the point of purchase, through social media (i.e. blog) or partnering with another business that offers complimentary services.

With all of this in mind, I have to laugh when I hear “Email Marketing is Dead.”

Do you use email marketing in your business? If so, how? What suggestions would you make to others?

Bill Rowland

Keywords: online marketing, email marketing, email, Aweber, Constant Contact