by Janine Popick If you’ve got customers that have never left you for another competitor good for you! But I don’t believe you. It ha...
by Janine Popick
If you’ve got customers that have never left you for another competitor good for you! But I don’t believe you. It happens to the very best of businesses. Business should always be focused on getting new customers but winning back customers from days gone by could be very beneficial (and cheap!) for your business.
If you’ve got customers that have never left you for another competitor good for you! But I don’t believe you. It happens to the very best of businesses. Business should always be focused on getting new customers but winning back customers from days gone by could be very beneficial (and cheap!) for your business.
The first thing you need to do is assess your customer’s behavior. Off to the data you go! If you’ve got your customer purchases in Quickbooks, Salesforce or your ecommerce platform, see if you can run a report on all of your customers to find out the last date they’ve purchased. If it’s more than a year, you may want to get on it!
Here are a few ideas you can use to win those customers back now.
1. Call Back Campaign – Get a list of phone numbers and get to the phones! Develop a script because 8 out of 10 calls you’ll probably get their voicemail. Make sure you address any issues you may have corrected or products newly launched and tell them you want them back! Give them a coupon code, or something free with an expiration date. Carve out 30 minutes a day for you, or an intern to start calling.
2. Surveys – You might want to find out first why your customers have not come back to you. Send them a link to an online survey with a few questions you may want ask about their satisfaction with your company. Make sure you leave a box where they can include “other” information in a freeform fashion so that you can read through the comments. You might find that you now offer something they were looking for and you can follow up with them and let them know via phone or an email marketing campaign. Check out How to Create a Great Survey.
3. Email Marketing – Create a version of your regular newsletter and include an introduction telling your forgone customers that you want them back! Give them a special offer, and if you know the particular reason they may have left and you’ve corrected an action or now offer different products or services, tell them you heard their request. You can even personalize it by the last product they purchased and give them a special offer on a complementary product or service.
4. Direct Mail Postcard – Go old school and send a “We Miss You” postcard campaign. Then get them back in your store, restaurant or site with an offer they can’t refuse. A postcard campaign is also great as a lead in to a phone call as well.
5. Send a Gift – If you have samples of a product you sell, that’s a great way to get your customer’s attention. But if you don’t, or you sell services you can also go a bit zany and throw a bunch of fun things in a box to get their attention too. Include a postcard with an offer that’s sure to get your customers back.
Getting a customer to come back is a lot cheaper for you than getting new customers, so give this a try and make it an ongoing campaign! Any ideas of your own for getting a customer back?
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