15 years ago, when I first started out as an entrepreneur, a coach told me that one of the best ways to increase and sustain revenue is to find ways to KEEP a client once you engaged one. Customer For Life – that’s the Holy Grail.
Now you’re also hearing the advice of narrowing in on just one target market, niche, specialty, etc. If I only provide one thing or focus on one type of customer, keeping them for life might seem extra complicated, nearly impossible. So I’ll show you: let’s see a few examples of clients I have worked with.
Evelyn is making a name for herself specializing in transforming playrooms so the kids do the straightening up at the end of the day, not the parents. So if her “customer” is the average 5 year old with a mountain of toys, and she comes in to transform the room once, how can she keep that client? Easily! The toys of an 8 year old will be quite different, so Evelyn follow up with her clients (the adult kind) and offers a Tune-Up.
Carmen specializes in taking care of every detail of a newlywed’s honeymoon so all they have left to do is have fun. And once they return? Carmen keeps in touch because the couple wants to have annual vacations that turn into family vacations that turn into family reunions and she handles all of that, too.
I just began working with Brenda, the owner of a business that provides party décor for special occasions, especially “Sweet Sixteens” and “Quinceañeras” (sweet 15). We talked about the goal of customer for life and how to take her teenage customer (and the wallet-holding mom) on a long-term journey – for more special parties to bridal showers and baby showers.
How do you accomplish this? Put it on your to-do list to call each customer every 6 months? Would be cool if you had the time or staff to do that. Personal emails and hand-written notes cards are awesome but take almost as much time.
The easy yet extremely effective way to touch back to all of your clients at one time is with professional email marketing. So let’s talk about cost, because I know that’s on your mind.
If you can keep a customer for life, how much would that be worth to you? Get out your calculator and imagine one customer coming back to you and booking your service once a year. Got that number? Good. Is it higher than $240? Probably. $240 is the cost of using Constant Contact for one year – 500 email addresses, one $20 payment per month. In fact, if you pre-pay annually (highly recommended) it would be even less. And most businesses don’t really need 5,000 people in their contact database, 500 really great prospects and top customers is typically sufficient to make an impact on your revenue.
So – if one customer for life brings in more than $240 each year, wouldn’t it be a no-brainer to go ahead and begin using a professional marketing tool that has a team of experts on-call to help you any time you have a question?
Email marketing – used correctly – is not for pushing advertisements in front of your customer’s faces. It’s used to build and sustain a relationship by providing VALUE. Educate your customer with tips, advice, news, upcoming changes in your industry, success stories, etc. Give them what you know will interest THEM not you. Develop a reputation as a “sharer” not a taker.
And most importantly, stay in their minds every month. A brief email once or twice a month – consistently – will go a long way toward booking repeat business.
It’s incredibly straightforward. It takes a few minutes of your time for each campaign. And it’s going to pay off, I can assure you.
If you’re not email marketing at all, please start today! Social Media ALONE is not going to create the Customer For Life. Every day that you DON’T embrace email marketing as one of your tools is an opportunity wasted.
If you’re email marketing with another product, you owe it to yourself to make sure you’re using the BEST tool. So use Constant Contact for free for 60 days and compare it to whatever you’re using now. No credit card needed for the free trial.
In either case, Constant Contact has a full customer support team located in the U.S. You also know a local Constant Contact expert – me. I’m just an email away to answer questions or give a bit of advice or help you get started. Start your 60 days free right NOW and focus your business growth mentality on winning customers for life!