Why You Should Mail A Customer Newsletter...
Imagine this: You're in the midst of your typical slow season. The phone's collecting cobwebs. It's only 1:00 p.m. and you're already done for the day. As you head for home you drive through one of the nicer neighborhoods in town. Rounding a corner near a favorite clients home you see another cleaning companies van in her driveway! How could she?! You arrive back at the office and muster up the courage to call Mrs. Jones. When you ask why, she tells you, "I didn't know you cleaned upholstery too, I thought you just cleaned carpeting. I wish I'd known that before we hired XYZ to clean our furniture."
Don't Let That Happen To You!
That actually did happened to me! For 9 years, I falsely believed that we provided such an awesome service that our customers wouldn't even THINK of using anyone else. I thought 6-month reminder cards, our referral program and refrigerator magnets would be all we needed to insure customer loyalty. I was wrong.
We launched our customer newsletter in the January, 1995. Winters in the Pacific Northwest are very slow. That winter, our sales were the highest in nearly 9 years of business! A 57% increase over the previous year! Since starting our own customer newsletter, here are some of the results:
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Over 19% increase in sales for repeat and referral customers as a percentage of gross sales. Repeat and referral sales increased to 86% of our total business.
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Net profit increased by double digits.
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Our average sale increased by over $32.00.
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We were able to slash our ad budget by double digits.
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I got a nifty tan, since I was finally able to afford to take my wife on a Caribbean cruise.
It's a Dog Eat Dog World Out There and You're Wearing Milkbone Underwear
Your competitors are constantly spending big bucks, secretly attempting to "steal" customers away from you. Marketing experts recommend that you keep your name in front of your customers by mailing to them consistently - a minimum of 6 times a year. Don't wait for them to go to the yellow pages to find your number. All of your competitors have ads there! If you ignore them, they will become someone else's customers. In my carpet cleaning business in 2000, it cost me an average of $48.77 to attract a new customer through Valpak, newspaper ads and yellow pages. That's outrageous. I bought those customers, I'm not about to let anyone else have them!
How many customers do you have in your database? 1000? 2000? 8000? More? If every customer in your database had their carpets and upholstery cleaned just once this year, you would have all the business you could possibly handle. Think about that!
6 Reasons Why You Should Have Your Own Customer Newsletter
A well written customer
newsletter will:
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Encourage repeat and more frequent sales.
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Encourage more referrals from your current customers.
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Offer special promotions that bring in more business.
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Inform, educate and entertain, further ingraining in the mind of your customer that you are THE expert.
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Promote all of your other services. "Farming" your customers for future services and larger average job size.
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Personalize your service, so that your customers feel that they have a "friend in the business."
Too busy cleaning carpets, training crews, putting out fires or doing the books to write your own newsletter? Who isn't? It takes a lot of time to write a professional looking newsletter. Save yourself the aggravation. Order our CD today!
Printing and Mailing Available Too!
Don't want to hassle with getting it printed yourself? No problem! We've negotiated a super low, low price for you with a printing service! They'll print the newsletters for you and ship them to your door.
