How Much is Your Customer List Worth Any Way?

Guest Post by Blase Ciabaton

If you’re not currently marketing to your customers, think about how valuable your existing customer list would be to your biggest competitor.  Your customer list would be extremely valuable to a competitor.   What would a competitor do with your list?  They’d reach out to your customers to develop a relationship and generate business.  The irony here is that while you may realize how valuable your customer list would be to a competitor, you probably fail to realize how valuable of an asset it is for your own business.  If you’re not consistently marketing to your existing customers, you’re in essence saying that your existing customers are not valuable.

So many businesses miss the point that marketing to existing customers is not just about making a sale, it’s about developing or strengthening a relationship.  Why is this important? If you’ve developed strong relationships with your customers, they will naturally think of you when they are ready to buy, or when a friend is looking for a referral.  You may not be able to control WHEN a customer is ready to make a purchase, but you absolutely can influence how a customer feels about your company and how likely they are to remember you in their time of need.

Are you guilty of communicating with your customers mainly by invoice?  In his book, Nurturing Customer Relationships, Jim Cecil says “American businesses spend billions in marketing each year to acquire new customers, only to lose them through simple neglect.   We only show interest when we want an order…and then communicate mainly by invoice.”  Do this sound like your organization?  How do you think it makes your existing customers feel if you communicate mainly by invoice?  Do you think they feel taken for granted?

What should I send my customers? The natural inclination is to send customers special offers and solicitations for more business.  While it’s fine to include this in your customer marketing mix, this should NOT be the only type of communication that you send to existing customers; they will get tired of you quickly.  If they are signed up to an e-newsletter they will most likely unsubscribe, and they will un-follow you in social media spheres like Twitter and Facebook.

To maintain a healthy marketing mix, you should share advice and tips that are relevant to your customers.  This can include information about emerging technology, special events and looming deadlines for new rules & regulations.

For instance, as a direct mail professional, I keep my customers educated about all of the US Postal Holidays and I provide them with tips on how to save money with postage.  For nonprofit clients, I help them get approved to mail at the nonprofit rate, and I educate them about restrictions for mailing at the nonprofit rate.   Questions from my customers were the inspiration for all of these blog posts.  By helping my customers with their questions, I’m strengthening their relationship with me.

What information do you know that could be beneficial to your customers?  In many cases things that may seem common knowledge to you as an expert, can really lead to “ah ha” moments for your customers when you share them.  This means that as an expert in your industry, it’s probably much easier for you to share valuable information with your existing customers than you may realize.

Start a conversation with your customers and find out what they don’t know.  You can do this by picking up the phone, sending an e-mail or by using a free survey tool like SurveyMonkey to poll your customers and take the first step of collecting this valuable data.

Besides making a sale, what other steps should I get my customers to take? Of course making a sale is the ultimate goal of any customer interaction, but there are other steps customers can take to move forward into your sales funnel.  For instance, you can encourage customers to sign up for your e-newsletter, follow you on Twitter, or become a fan on Facebook.  Getting customers to take any of these steps will naturally make them closer to you, and it will provide you with an additional channel to use to market to them.

Right now, if you only have a physical mailing address for your customers, direct mail is that logical place to begin to collect other information and connect with customers online and via social media.  Modern printing technology has made it even easier to interact with your customers online with vehicles like QR Codes and PURLs.

Why is this so important? Not too long ago, I had coffee with a good friend who is a commercial realtor.  She explained that she’d recently bumped into an old client at the grocery store.  The realtor went on to tell me that her previous client had expanded her business into 3 new locations, and that she would have liked to have worked with my commercial realtor friend, but since they’d fallen out of touch, she’d ended up working with a different commercial realtor.  My commercial realtor friend was devastated as she calculated the 10’s of thousands of dollars that she’d missed out on because she’d failed to market to her existing clients.  Could this same thing to happen to you?

Stop taking your existing customers for granted.  Develop and execute a plan today that will deliver valuable content to your existing customers on a consistent basis.  Investing in this type of marketing strategy with your existing customers will maintain top-of-mind awareness and assure that they think of you when they are ready to make a purchase or refer a trusted friend or family member.

What’s been your experience marketing to your existing customers?  Thank you for sharing this in the comments section below.

About the Author: In 2009, Blase Ciabaton used his 6 years of expertise as a direct mail professional to launch the blog www.TheDirectMailMan.com.  The blog caters to small businesses and tackles issues related to customer prospecting, improving response rate & identifying targeted mailing lists.  If you found this post valuable you may want to sign up for his weekly e-newsletter or following his blog’s rss feed.

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