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Acres of Diamonds
By Ken Varga | April 25, 2009
Can you imagine acres of Diamonds? Well, everyone has them. I call them Lost Customers. Because of today’s economy, being as bad as it is, it is imperative that you have a system of mining these Lost Customers.
Here are some ideas.
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The first and most important thing I can tell you is this…Figure out ways to Prevent Lost Customers from becoming Lost Customers in the first place. Find out Why they are leaving you. Can you be more in touch with why they are leaving you, so that you can catch them before they fall through that hole? There are certain times of the year that people drop thru the holes in your buisiness, and when you recognize that period, you can set up a system to gift them something just prior to that period of time. Let’s just call this “Being Preemptive.”
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Create a sales letter, that you can send to them, and remember the most important item in the letter is an apology from you that you didn’t meet their expectations and that you will rectify this and make doing business with you an experience that they will cherish for the rest of their lives. And then, don’t disappoint them.
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Devise a system to periodically reach out to all of the customers you’ve lost over a period of time. You can offer them a great discount, but you want to make it an “irresistible offer” that they can’t possibly refuse. Many of you are in the restaurant or cleaning business. Those of you who aren’t can still use this next idea. Make a totally FREE offer. A free dinner on you on their birthday. All they have to do is to present their Drivers License. Do you think they are going to come alone? Of course not. Or offer a suit or shirt cleaned FREE. If you are in the medical profession, offer a complete free exam or treatment. What I’m saying here is, “Bribe" them to come back and be your customer again.
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When you do re-capture that lost customer, be sure that you WOW them with their first experience back…and all of your follow-up to this experience.
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Lastly, make sure that you go back as far as you can to reactivate lost customers. You might get a lot of return mail because of people moving, but the results are more profit for you and your business. You must spend as much on reactivating your lost customers as you spend on getting new ones.
I have seen companies jump sales by 50% from their old lost customer files.
Do not let this be a whenever-you-think-about-it event. Set it up as a consistent yearly thing you do to reactivate lost customers. Let me know your thoughts and what systems you’ve created to reactivate lost customers.
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
April 25th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Hi Ken
We met at sang, your advice here is top notch. Especially for someone like me in the web hosting service industry. I was just about to do a massive winback campaign with all my lost customers.
Thanks for the great advice, Ill definately be using it in my campaign
Joel Therien
–President
Kiosk.ws
[Reply]
April 27th, 2009 at 12:13 am
You’re welcome Joel. Good luck on the campaign.
Ken
[Reply]