There is an old saying, “Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.” This holds true not only in life but in business: you need both new customers and repeat, loyal customers.
The average life span of a customer is three years. People move, die, and change their consumer behavior patterns; so you must always be attracting new customers in order to grow and to replace customers who move on.
Equally important is keeping current customers close to you. You may think that once a customer has a great experience with you they will automatically see your business as a regular go-to but that is a dangerous assumption.
Consumers are faced with a huge variety of choices every day. Also, in today's fast-paced environment, people are overloaded with information; it is easy for your business to become virtually invisible. Many businesses are competing for the same pool of customers. It is vitally important that you stay in front of and connected to your customers and use that connection to create additional repeat business.
Loyalty Programs are used to solidify your relationship with customers and to ensure they keep coming back to you. Our preferred method is email marketing, permission based, which is highly successful. Customers choose to join the program and look forward to receiving their perks. I have a client with a database of more than 7,000 customers. She mails offers once a week and if for some reason a customer misses an email or accidentally unsubscribes, we get concerned messages. “I didn’t get your email today. What happened?” Her database is now so large this is a very regular occurrence. Because she receives such a great response to her email marketing she has been able to cut back on other advertising.
Our program is state-of-the-art and uses both bi-weekly and special emails, which can contain coupons or other offers, newsletters or announcements. We have a welcome email which goes out as soon as a customer joins your loyalty program, welcoming them and encouraging a quick return to your business. In addition, we send birthday and anniversary emails, since customers are most likely to visit establishments that send them a birthday greeting and a coupon or special treat to help them celebrate their day. Our program also supplies real-time statistical analyses to measure the results of each campaign.