Do you have customer contact systems in place to ask your clients
to return and do more business or do you spend all of your marketing dollars
on advertising for new clients?

A new client of mine is an auto shop that was spending his marketing
dollars in the local shopping magazines like Reach and Super Shopper.

His ads were pretty similar to all the other auto shop ads in the magazines
and offered discount oil changes and similar services. Most of the ad responses
were from people looking for cheap oil changes for $19.95. Very few became
long-term clients and there were no systems in place to cross-sell, up-sell or
follow-up to promote different services.

I’m in the process of implementing a marketing system that focuses on
existing clients.

It includes

• A client welcome procedure
• A service checklist
• Up-sell and cross-sell training
• Thank you notes
• Referral incentives
• Monthly email and direct mail specials to clients
• And more

We just completed a customer reactivation mailer to past clients
that cost $1,240. At the same time, he was already committed to
two magazine mailers that cost him over $1,400.

The first week results?

The two magazine mailers, each dropped to approximately 30,000
households have brought in two customers for two oil changes.
Total sales: $39.90

The customer reactivation mailer, mailed to 1,500 past clients
has brought in twenty-six customers and over $4,000 in sales.
The deadline on the offer is still two weeks away so we will continue
to get more business from the mailer.

These results are typical and will dramatically improve as we implement
the complete marketing system.

You may have heard the saying the money is in the list – your customer
list. Before you spend a fortune on cold mailers or advertising, be sure
you have a plan to keep in touch with your existing clients.