Future Customers & Communication

Your best future customers, are your current customers

future
(Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

I was in a meeting last week when I heard this phrase from Jeremy Floyd, and I love it. It captures exactly what most of us use digital marketing tools for – we want to stay in touch with our customers.

Why? Because customers who’ve already spent money with you, know you, trust you, and most likely would be willing to do it again when the time came around. Unfortunately, their buying cycle doesn’t always match your messaging cycle and they end up purchasing products and services from other companies because you slipped their mind. You weren’t there to remind them that you could handle the work for them again.

This is the worst type of customer churn, because you never know why they dodn’t come back – they just don’t buy again. If you do follow up, you may hear the dreaded, “I just forgot about you” – so hopefully this motivates you to talk to your customers today.

The good news is that you’ve got lots of options to keep your customers close. You could write a handwritten note to each customer who hasn’t bought from you in six months, send them a postcard that says you miss them, or just drop them an email. These authentic measures would without a doubt, help them remember you, but boy would they take some time. Even at just a few minutes per note, you could easily be at hours a month in writing.

Personally, this is why I recommend for all my clients to do an email newsletter, it maintains the customer contact, but won’t take hours of writing, addressing and sending. It’s certainly not as personal as the individual notes, but it could have the exact same outcome in added sales to your business.

What’s your favorite method of staying in touch?