[Offer Grid] 📬 | How to BFF Your Customer List for the Win | Issue No. 6

Let’s pull at that loose thread we found last week, regarding lifetime value (LTV) of a customer.

I’ve worked with way too many store owners (online ecommerce and offline retailers) who spent most of their allotted marketing and advertising time on getting new sales.

If 75-80% of the marketing budget goes to getting in front of cold traffic in Meta ads, then obviously this is where the time should be spent as well, right?

Nope. I wouldn’t suggest that.

I’ve seen numbers from various sources that state that it costs between five times to 25 times more to get a new customer than to take care of a customer you already have.

So if you spent $100 (realistic, or more for some) to get a new customer, you might find that it only costs $5 to $20 to retain an existing customer.

Put another way, let’s say you have 1,000 customers, and each customer is worth $1,000 per year. If you lose 10% of those customers (it happens more than you’re noticing in many cases) then you’ve lost 100 customers. That’s $100,000 revenue lost.

(Granted, what this really means is that some percentage of that customer list are spending quite a bit with you each year. But these are averages.)

It might have been worth $20,000 to take care of those people. And chances are pretty good it wouldn’t even have cost that much.

Take a look at what it costs you to get a new customer. I guarantee you you’re spending exponentially more to get a customer than to service one.

It doesn’t matter what you sell. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 customers, or 10,000 customers.

The most important sale is the next one.

Make yourself indispensable to your customer. One at a time, or at least seemingly one at a time, you can make sure she feels that you care.

One of my favorite aphorisms about business is this:

Products are what you sell. Your business is about the people you get to serve.

Take a look and see. Head over to Alibaba or Amazon and see the many millions of products available there.

We have no shortage of products.

No matter what you want to sell, there’s a way to source it and market it if you get the relationships with the audience right.

If you want to stand out in your business, even if you’re running a very large business, the future is in the relationships.

Especially the way the news is teeming with articles and videos about the power of bots to talk with people, and creating content with bots, human contact has become more valuable than it has ever been.

You can profit from the preciousness of human contacts.

Treat your customers like the gold they are.

The internet has never been as big as it is now. It’s only getting bigger. That’s more noise, more distraction, and less humanity.

One bit of evidence pointing in this direction (one of many) is this: email software is now weighing more heavily supporting replies to emails as a data point informing email service providers (ESPs) of the validity of the email conversation.

In each email you send, for example, you can encourage your reader to reply. Ask questions of your customer based on what you sell. Ask for her birthday. Ask her what the best gift was that she ever received. Ask if she lives in a city, suburb, or a rural place. Ask yourself how personal you can get with your readers to find out how you can serve them better.

Replies to your emails give you a golden opportunity to serve a customer.

There are companies, small and large, that have really mastered the goodwill methods.

The classic example that comes to mind is Nordstrom. They’ve built their brand on customer service. A friend recently went shopping there and spent nearly two hours with a clerk. She received incredible treatment. She walked in without an appointment and got the red carpet personal shopper treatment the whole time.

It’s possible that you don’t have the staff to pull this off. But could you offer “after hours personal shoppers”? Let your VIP customers book a time either when the store is closed, or when you can have a staff member there to give them the royal treatment, by invitation or by appointment?

How else can you make your local customers feel special?

What if you only do business online? Obviously you aren’t going to invite everyone into the warehouse and give each customer the red carpet treatment.

Or maybe you could? What would that look like? Personal tours and shopping sessions? Fabulous events built around hands-on how-tos with the products? Custom-made something-or-other?

Even if you don’t invite your customers into your physical space, you can give your online customers the feeling that you love them, too.

If your customer buys from you because you give the best experience, then that is better than any navy blue sweater she bought from you.

Why is she shopping? Why is she shopping with you?

Maybe you really do have the best products available.These days it’s tough to compete on product and pricing, though.

Definitely don’t compete on price. It’s a losing proposition.

Find out why your customer is shopping with you.

Is she suffering in life and practicing retail therapy for fulfillment?

Is your store her best shopping experience for top quality spices for cooking? Why does she get them from you and not the spice aisle at the Piggly Wiggly?

You have that whole, wonderful list of customers. You know who bought what. You know how much each customer spent. If your email software doesn’t segment your list for you, you can certainly determine with very little effort, who your top customers are. You might even segment them into three to five degrees of hotness.

When you sort your list this way you’ll discover that some of your customers have returned to buy from you again, even without an invitation from you.

Bless their little cotton socks.

Who are those people and how can you get to know them better?

In doing an audit of her customer list, a client and I discovered that she has two customers who have spent over $30,000 in the past three years. And she has one customer who has spent over $77,000 with her in the same time frame.

At the time we made this discovery her only emails were blasts to the whole list.

In other words, she treated her customers as a good mother would. Each customer got the same treatment. Same emails. Same offers. Same amount of contact whether the person on the list had only signed up for emails but had spent nothing, or she’d purchased $77,000 in product in the past few years.

Do you see why this is a problem?

Customers are not your children. They do not need to, nor should they, receive the same treatment.

With children, when one gets one cookie, the others had better also get a cookie. Or there might be a fight, or a tantrum, or budding trauma.

This is not the problem you face with customers.

With customers, when you give a VIP customer the red carpet treatment and she leaves you a 5-star review in public somewhere (which you asked her to do, right?), other customers will work to achieve that level also.

You can make them aspire to be a VIP.

That doesn’t mean that all of your customers will drop tens of thousands of dollars in your store. Some of them don’t even make $70k in a year.

There’s an art and a science behind knowing what to say to customers. 

Fortunately it just takes practice to learn what to say.

Give yourself a shot at learning how to talk with your customers.

You won’t say the same thing to a new customer as you would to the one who paid you instead of buying a small RV.

But you’ll get to know them all.

Are you emailing once a month? Let’s make that once a week.

Are you reaching out to your customers once a week? Let’s make that twice a week.

Ever take a run at daily emails? (It’s hard, but you will learn things.)

In another issue we’ll talk more about list segmenting. But I gave you some good pointers here today.

And best of all, when you email or call your customers directly and individually, so you get to know them, you’ll discover new vistas in your business and you’ll even make new friends.

C’est voila. Next week we’ll talk more about those list segments and creating those buckets of value even before suspects turn into prospects, and then turn into customers.

Best to ya,

Amy

P.S. That’s a wrap for another week. Could I ask you a favor? Would you let me know if you found this missive helpful? Better yet, if you plan to use any of the ideas I’ve shared, please reply to this (or any) email and tell me how it worked out when you did.

P.P.S Last week I introduced a new course, Offer Grid for Retailers. It includes a table that features 40 different promotions you can use in your business when you are just fed up with discounts. Because you should be able to sell your products and services at top dollar. And when you want to have a promotion, but you don’t want to do the same old thing, the Offer Grid for Retailers is the fast acting prescription for success. It’s just $27, and you get not only a 29 page report, but you also get two months of email support and a 100% money back guarantee. There is only upside for you with this offer. Grab yours here.