Monday, March 12, 2007
Make a Million With your Mailing List
Author: Lori Feldman
Got customers? Then you're perfectly positioned to grow your business with one of the easiest, low-cost marketing strategies available—leveraging your customer database. If you've ever said, "I wish I had 100 more customers just like X," then you intuitively understand the principle of database marketing. Think about it: Your customers listen to you; prospects are skeptical. Customers regard you as an authority; prospects think you're "just a salesperson trying to sell something." Customers return your phone calls; prospects…well, you get the picture.
If it's true that it's 10 times easier to sell a customer than to find a new one, and if 20% of clients are responsible for 80% of sales, why wouldn't you do everything in your power to sell more to customers who already love you and then leverage their happiness into word-of-mouth referral business that doesn't cost a dime?
Here are Lori's 11 steps for making a million with your mailing list:
1. Enter your "entire world" into a marketing database like ACT! (customers, prospects, vendors, friends and family—why work so hard to find what you need when you need it?) You must have a way to automate your efforts to maximize your time.
2. Add 3 critical fields: Contact Source, so you can track successful advertising/networking strategies; ID Status, to categorize contacts into marketing groups; and Last Update Date, so you can't forget to follow up.
3. Clean it up! Add missing data, eliminate dupes, update new movers through the USPS' change of address service. It's unconscionable to have less than 100% of your customers' email addresses! If you're guilty as charged, hire some high-school kids to make phone calls to get them.
4. Using your bookkeeping records, identify your "top 20%" based on sales purchases in the last year or 2 years, depending on your customer lifecycle. These are your "A" accounts.
5. Send your "A" accounts an online customer survey with a tool like SwiftpageEmail, which uses an outside ISP to deliver the messages (instead of yours) and tallies answers electronically into nice pie charts and spreadsheets.
6. Use the answers to create a "brag book" of testimonials. Post them to your website; add them to your company bio/brochure. Hold a staff meeting to brainstorm customers' suggestions and/or create new products.
7. Call one "A" account everyday and ask for referrals
8. Put your "A" accounts on a monthly drip-marketing plan
9. Put your brand-new customers (from your referrals!) on a 6-month pampering plan, so you get even more referrals and no buyer remorse
10. Go to www.referenceusa.com and do in-depth research on your top 10 customers. What do they have in common? Why are they buying?
11. With these results, buy a prospect mailing list and send out 1,000 letters each month and include your testimonials on the mailing. This will keep your pipeline filled as a secondary strategy.
The proven way to make a million with your mailing list is to find out what people want and give it to them. It's quicker and more profitable to do this with your customers than with people who don't even know you!
Got customers? Then you're perfectly positioned to grow your business with one of the easiest, low-cost marketing strategies available—leveraging your customer database. If you've ever said, "I wish I had 100 more customers just like X," then you intuitively understand the principle of database marketing. Think about it: Your customers listen to you; prospects are skeptical. Customers regard you as an authority; prospects think you're "just a salesperson trying to sell something." Customers return your phone calls; prospects…well, you get the picture.
If it's true that it's 10 times easier to sell a customer than to find a new one, and if 20% of clients are responsible for 80% of sales, why wouldn't you do everything in your power to sell more to customers who already love you and then leverage their happiness into word-of-mouth referral business that doesn't cost a dime?
Here are Lori's 11 steps for making a million with your mailing list:
1. Enter your "entire world" into a marketing database like ACT! (customers, prospects, vendors, friends and family—why work so hard to find what you need when you need it?) You must have a way to automate your efforts to maximize your time.
2. Add 3 critical fields: Contact Source, so you can track successful advertising/networking strategies; ID Status, to categorize contacts into marketing groups; and Last Update Date, so you can't forget to follow up.
3. Clean it up! Add missing data, eliminate dupes, update new movers through the USPS' change of address service. It's unconscionable to have less than 100% of your customers' email addresses! If you're guilty as charged, hire some high-school kids to make phone calls to get them.
4. Using your bookkeeping records, identify your "top 20%" based on sales purchases in the last year or 2 years, depending on your customer lifecycle. These are your "A" accounts.
5. Send your "A" accounts an online customer survey with a tool like SwiftpageEmail, which uses an outside ISP to deliver the messages (instead of yours) and tallies answers electronically into nice pie charts and spreadsheets.
6. Use the answers to create a "brag book" of testimonials. Post them to your website; add them to your company bio/brochure. Hold a staff meeting to brainstorm customers' suggestions and/or create new products.
7. Call one "A" account everyday and ask for referrals
8. Put your "A" accounts on a monthly drip-marketing plan
9. Put your brand-new customers (from your referrals!) on a 6-month pampering plan, so you get even more referrals and no buyer remorse
10. Go to www.referenceusa.com and do in-depth research on your top 10 customers. What do they have in common? Why are they buying?
11. With these results, buy a prospect mailing list and send out 1,000 letters each month and include your testimonials on the mailing. This will keep your pipeline filled as a secondary strategy.
The proven way to make a million with your mailing list is to find out what people want and give it to them. It's quicker and more profitable to do this with your customers than with people who don't even know you!
About the Author:
Lori Feldman is The Database Diva of Aviva. She teaches sales executives and business owners how to profit from contacts they already have using ACT! Software as a sales and marketing tool. The company also offers targeted mailing lists. She is the recipient of the Direct Marketer of the Year award from the DMA of St. Louis and is the founder of the St. Louis ACT! User Group. To get Lori's free special report, \"Make a Million with Your Mailing List,\" go to www.TheDatabaseDiva.com
