Bringing Customers Back Again Only Requires One Ingredient

Dear Ethical Business Owner.

I got a text message from a health product business I’d bought from six months ago and hadn’t heard from since. And it prompted me to highlight the momentous blunder they made so you don’t do the same thing.

It’s not that the they shouldn’t text me. I don’t have a problem with that. I wish they’d done it sooner. It’s just the way they went about it that that made me shirty.

But before we talk about what they did wrong. Let’s just have a quiet little chat about the far bigger mistake the vast majority of businesses make. Chances are you are a customer of hundreds of businesses who cheat you out of things you wish you had because they continue to commit this monstrous crime.

Data collected and published by business and marketing research companies across the globe clearly show that it cost about ten times (often more) the price to acquire a new customer as it does to sell something to an existing customer. You have to pay far more in marketing and advertising to gain the trust and pry the hard earn dollars from someone who has never done business with you before than it does to get someone who has already reached that level of trust.

Given that’s common knowledge. Why would any business owner in their right mind not have a system in place for collecting customer and prospect details? It’s getting harder and harder to win new customers (and even more so in B2B) in every sector of business because consumers are becoming more jaded and skeptical every day.

If you are not collecting customer details – names, emails, mailing addresses and past purchases and interactions – the punishment for your crime will be death. The death of your business and the rise of your competitors because you’ll be constantly chasing new customers in a limited pool. Living in hope your past customers remember or care that you exist.

The reality is they don’t. They’ve got other things on their mind. They’ve moved on.

Let’s face it, we want them to come back. We want to see our customers money more than just once. We want them to give us money every day if possible.

So collect their details and train them to come back repeatedly and often. If it is for their benefit, it shouldn’t be a problem.

In the case of this health product company (a popular brick and mortar chain across the country) they actually do collect customer details. But then they totally stuff it up.

Which I suspect is the main reason a lot of businesses don’t collect customer details or choose not to do serious marketing to those contacts. It’s the I-tried-that-once-but-it-didn’t-work syndrome. It’s never the fault of the media you use to do your marketing. It’s the way you use the media that really counts.

There are always an infinite number of variables you have to consider in any promotions. But usually you’ll stay in good favour with your customers if you just follow these four simple rules. All of them must be infused with the one special ingredient revealed later.

This Health company could have added value to me very easily. All they had to do was send me a text message two days prior saying something like “We’ve been neglecting you. We’re so sorry. From now on we’ll keep in touch to partner in your well-being. Regards [name of business].”

Instead, after six months of nothing they interrupted my day with a hard sell. Two lines long. It basically said “Buy this goop you’ve never heard of before because we’re broke and trying to squeeze you for money.”

Which brings me to the next point.

Being personal is easy. Just imagine your audience is just one person right in front of you. What would you say to them to PROVE you are concerned about them personally.

Well one very powerful way you can do it is to remember some personal details about them.

The health company in question was sending me an obviously automated text message. So I can deduce from that they have text messaging software to do it with. And I know from experience these types of software packages allow you to drag data from a database and insert it automatically into the message. I do it with my email software. Even the most basic contact databases have a mail merge function.

Just five minutes of critical think, and an hour or so of set up time and they could have sent me an automated message telling me the Vitamin C I bought from them was due to run out in a week. Which would be brilliant on two counts.

1. It would let me know they are switched on to what I am personally interested in
2. It would make me feel guilty about not taking the Vitamin C regularly and cause me to commit to my health

Especially if they had sent a previous message about being committed to my health. They’d then show up as more concerned about my health than I am. Of course I’m going to go back to them when it actually does run out.

No-one cares if you are using automated software to message them if you are using it in a way that HELPS them.

Imagine if your mechanic knew when your car was due for a service and contacted you to express his concern about the health of your engine. Or the Tire company called to state their fears for the safety of your children in the up coming rainy season because it’s been two years since you changed your tires.

The timing can be difficult to get right but a basic rule is to get in the face of your customer just before the last thing you sold them is due to expire, run out or be otherwise no longer applicable.

And I also recommend being in contact with your customers at least once per month adding value to their lives in any way you can.

Not everyone is going to respond right away. And often it’s hard to express your commitment to your customers from just one contact. Think about that. The people who really matter in our lives are the ones who show us they are in for the long haul. Regardless of how much attention we pay them.

We often don’t give our parents anywhere near the attention they deserve. And yet they keep calling us to let us know they love us and they have our best interests at heart.

Highly successful business have a multi-step systems for getting their customers back through the door. Sure, a really good one-shot effort can produce some good results. But studies show repeated communication about the same offer can bump up responses by and extra 50% on the second run.

Even more powerful is to ask them why they didn’t respond the first time.

And it expresses a deep commitment to your customers if you try to contact them more than once (in the right way). Pestering and pressuring of course won’t help your cause one little bit.

The real ingredient to remember is that people need a reason to come in. You have to provide them with a legitimate reason why you are contacting them and provide them with a reason why they should make an effort to take action. That is to say… Why should they care?

It’s called Reason Why Advertising. And it’s been used very successfully since John E. Powers time in the late 1800′s.

Today this style of marketing is even more relevant because we live in an environment where everywhere you turn someone is trying to screw you. Show just a little bit of concern about your customers in most markets and you will stand out like a lighthouse in a frightening storm.

As always I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Remain Awesome.

Scott Junner
The Unlikely Ad Man

P.S. You may notice I’ve removed the facebook comments. I’m interested in hearing which you prefer and why?