bring past customers back
|

How To Bring Past Customers Back To Life

Bylori

Somewhere out there is a group of people who’d happily buy from you and even refer more business to you … if only they remembered you exist. Those people are your satisfied past customers.

If you haven’t established a system for maintaining relationships with these buyers, you’re losing out on a gold mine of repeat sales, cross sales and referrals.

Mail delivers results
You may be surprised how easy it can be to get some of your best customers active again. To start, focus on those who haven’t contacted you in around six months. Running a customer satisfaction survey could help you find out why they haven’t been in touch.

Chances are they just forgot about you and the right kind of contact can draw them back into your sales funnel. Phone calls aren’t always practical and while sending newsletters helps, it doesn’t establish the two-way communication you need. Your more effective options are:

  • Thank you cards
  • Evaluation surveys
  • Targeted self-mailers
  • Postcards
  • Letters
  • Greeting cards
  • Newsletters

These give you an affordable way to promote special offers, make announcements, and deliver other messages. Communicating by mail also allows your past customers time to think about their response, so they’re more likely to consider related products you’re cross selling or come up with referrals for you.

By sending postage-paid, pre-addressed material, you make it easy for customers to respond, which keeps the lines of communication open. You’ll also be reinforcing your brand image when you use mailings customized with your photo, company logo and other details. Don’t forget to include ways for your past customers to connect with you on social media, and sign up for your e-mail list.

Systemize and profit
If you’re like most business owners, you know you should be reaching out to past customers, you just haven’t gotten around to it. And you haven’t gotten around to it because you haven’t established a system of multiple, scheduled contact times and response tracking. Get the right system in place, though, and you’ll have an effective, hassle-free way to build a consistently growing base of loyal and active customers.

If you’ve tried mailings to reconnect with past customers, what kind of results have you seen?

Image via Shutterstock.com