If you own a business that has been around for any length of time, you should have a list of customers. People who have experienced your service or product know that you work with integrity and deliver on your promises. You do work with integrity and deliver on your promises, don’t you? If you do, then you likely have customers that like you and respect you.
People like to work with people that they know, respect, and can relate to. Customer retention and customer reactivation is a huge source of untapped revenue that many businesses overlook. If you are not actively trying to re-engage your customers, you are absolutely missing out on some of the easiest sales you have ever made in your business career.
Anybody who owns their business knows that you must fill the pipeline to make sales. However, if you have been in business for a year, five years, a decade or more, then you may be missing the fact that you have a pipeline full of people that may need to be reminded that they are your customers. Finding and securing new customers through Google and Facebook ads or depending on other sources for leads can be an expensive and frustrating process for business owners. Once one finds a new customer, the sales team must educate the customer, overcome any objections, make an appealing offer, and close the sale. When the prospective customer already knows your business and your product over half of that sales process is unnecessary. The education is unnecessary, and the objections are reduced significantly. If the customer has a need, all it takes is an appealing offer to close the sale.
Customer retention can boost company profits by as much as 95% and customer reactivation marketing campaigns can blow your company profits off the charts. In fact, when a business has been in business for a significant period and they have consistently acted with integrity by delivering on their promises, response to a customer reactivation campaign can be surprisingly effective.
The purpose of customer reactivation is to re-engage dormant and disengaged customers. New technologies and tools available today allow your sales team to reach out to your customer list to make a special offer. Many of the tools at our disposal can automate much of the process through text message and email allowing your customers to take advantage of your special offer with minimal effort by your office staff.
You can continue to pour your marketing dollars into acquiring new customers, but those costs are five to seven times more expensive than working to retain and reactivate your existing customers. It is far easier to win back your inactive customers. But how do you accomplish that?
Win Back Inactive Customers
- Ask your customers to come back
- Make a special offer
- Make it easy to set an appointment
- Have someone ready to answer questions
Now, make sure that you have good systems and tools in place before you do this. People don’t want to have to call the office and wait on hold or leave a voice message to wait for someone to call them back. Through SMS text messaging and email systems, you can make an offer, have a customer click on a link to get an appointment on your calendar or whatever it takes to initiate the sale. It will help to have a reactivation specialist prepared to answer any questions that might come through. However, many of the systems can handle these automatically.
The final thing that you must do is to be prepared for the incoming business that is sure to come.