National Clothesline

If you’ve read any of my columns, then you already know I’m an avid fan of direct response marketing and especially direct mail with postcards.

It’s an easy, fast, low-cost way to see just exactly how effective an ad or promotion has been. Best of all, it’s easily measurable so you can quickly and accurately calculate your return on investment for any given project or campaign.

One of the keys to maximizing a high rate of return is to regularly maintain the condition of your lists. Do you actively keep your lists up to date? Do you clean them regularly and have you set up individual lists for separate functions?

There’s really no great mystery to using your customer list to reach your full profit potential. All you have to do is mail regularly and frequently and feature a solid offer.

At the very least you should be mailing out an offer every two months. The really successful companies mail out once every month. I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering if your customers won’t get sick of seeing your offers so frequently. The answer is, “No.”

American Express has a powerful back-end campaign of one or two mailings every month to its customer base. So does Nightengale-Conant. You can be certain that mailing this frequently is very profitable. If it wasn’t, companies couldn’t afford to continue this practice year after year.

A great offer is the key to increasing back end sales and repeat business.

A great offer can make or break your back-end campaigns. There are a number of ways to structure an offer so it has strong appeal to your customers. Here are some ways to induce your customers to do more business with you.

1. Make a time-limited offer.

Putting a time limit on an offer increases the urgency to buy. Personally, I prefer short time limits of seven to 14 days although 30 days can also be used successfully. In general, however, the longer the time limit is, the less urgent the appeal will seem. Also, the longer the time limit, the easier it is for your customer to misplace your piece or otherwise forget your offer.

Always tell your customers why the time limit is in effect. For example, your offer may be tied to a holiday such as New Year’s, in which case the cutoff date would be the first of the year. Recently, cleaners have run Short Week Specials on weeks when they lose a day of business. In such cases, the cutoff date would be accepted as Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.

Try your best to abide strictly to the time limit otherwise the sense of urgency is diminished and customers quickly learn that they can come it at any time and their work will automatically be taken with a discount.

2. Make a limited availability offer.

If you take the time to segment your list, you already know where the majority of your business comes from. It comes from your big spenders. These are the people you should be working your hardest to keep happy.

A simple way to recognize these individuals is to regularly make offers specifically to them. The pieces you mail out should state something to this effect: “As a preferred customer, you are entitled to…”

In our cleaning business, we would target our top tier customers with a “3 for $3.33” sweater cleaning offer. (Don’t panic… that was 20 years ago and prices were lower then).

The approach worked because the recipients recognized that it was a limited offer, which was not available to everyone and, in addition to sweaters, they would bring in large orders of regular cleaning.

Another variation on limited availability can be tied to a specific offer or service. An Early Bird Suit Special, for example, would limit availability from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. while a Wild Wednesday Special on pants would be limited to a typically slow day of the week such as Wednesday.

3. Pamper your regular customers.

Offer them special prices, special discounts, free delivery, holiday specials and incentives, uncompromising service, friendly advice, and anything else that makes them feel special. That’s the key to building and keeping a loyal base of repeat customers.

Everybody loves to feel special, including you and me. A friend of mine, for example, has gone to the same service station for years because of special treatment he received. He was having his battery charged and the mechanic put a rubber holding ring on his muffler to keep it from rattling. The guy did it for free.

Actually, my friend was going to do the job himself since it only takes two minutes and the rubber ring costs about a buck but he never got around to it. Because of that one kind gesture, however, he has given this service station all of his business for over six years. And he’s also recommended the business to many of his friends and neighbors.

Treating people in a special way has multiple positive effects. Your customer feels great, you feel great, and it’s great for business. With all of that going for it, this powerful tool deserves a prominent place in your marketing plan.

4. Take the time to thank your customers for doing business with you.

This isn’t really a technique as much as it’s just good manners and common sense. After all, your customers aren’t just a source to be pumped again and again for more profits. They’re the people who make your good fortune possible.

They deserve some thanks every once in a while. And some sincere thanks at that. There’s nothing I hate more than receiving a birthday card from some insurance agent preprinted with “Dear Client,” and signed in typeset print with the agency name. It’s cold, uninviting, and a complete turn-off.

If you’re going to send a thank-you note or greeting card, take a few minutes to sign it yourself.

Another way of thanking your regular customers is to periodically give them something for free. The method I like best is to give your customers valuable printed information. I prefer printed information for a number of reasons.

• It demonstrates your expertise.

• It’s inexpensive to produce.

• It gives your customers something to keep, refer to, and constantly remember you by.

Valuable printed information is readily available through the IFI and NCA or you can produce your own based on the experiences you encounter in your cleaning business. The variations are endless. All it takes is a few minutes to come up with a number of winning ideas.