The most expensive kind of marketing is getting a customer in the first place. But keeping a customer is cheaper and easier, so this is where auto-responders can come in useful as a way to contact your customer.
Automatic Emails or auto-responders, are perfect for client care. It doesn’t matter what business you are in, in my opinion you need to contact your customers on a regular basis to be a leader in your industry and stay profitable because:
1. You will be in the forefront of their mind when they need your industry services
2. Relationships are what keeps strong businesses strong.
If you have database of customers already then setting up automatic emails is easy.
Here are some ideas about what to write in the emails that are automatically sent to your customers…
1. Entertain them with interesting information such as: What’s new in your industry? What’s your personal opinion on a current event? Tell them about who you are as a business owner. And overall, make the email like a personal letter to a friend.
2. Send out a series of educational info about your industry that is useful. To use an example of a plumbing supplies store, what are some things your customers would benefit from knowing about? A new product that has arrived? A new building code affecting plumbers? Basically, talk online about whatever you are talking about to people in your shop right now.
3. Write the emails like you are talking to someone, don’t be stiff and boring! You want people to stay on your list to keep them as a customer and build your reputation, so stay away from salesy or patronising talk. Just be yourself. If want to really write like you speak try recording yourself talking to a customer and have someone transcribe this into writing and edit to suit.
4. Include your business details and specials/sales/product of the week on the signature at the bottom of your emails.
More…
If you don’t want to write the emails yourself then outsource the work. (Click here for info on outsourcing.) Or alternatively have one of your staff members write the emails. If they don’t have much time, ask them to take information from your brochures and product catalogues, or sign up to Google Alerts to find out what is happening in your industry right now.
The great thing is, once the emails are written you never have to do it again and all your new customers automatically get into your automatic email delivery system.
Ideas For Collecting Customer Email Addresses
Offline
- Collect email addresses at your shop counter with a competition entry box of some sort
- Ask your customers for it when they come and go by saying something like, “Would you like to go on our email list so you are kept up to date with news and promotions?”
- Ask your staff to call existing customers and clients if you have phone numbers. (This doubles as a good opportunity to gather all important feedback from your clients about what they think of your business with a customer survey.)
Online
- If you have a website put a ‘sign-up for updates’ box on your website .Aweber is the company I use that will provide sign up boxes (commonly called Opt-In boxes) and the code to add to your web pages.
Get started by making a to-do list from the ideas you’ve gathered here, or, if you don’t want to do it yourself contact us for a quote and we’ll do all or part of it for you based on your needs.
Until next time,
Lillian
