Your list of clients who have previously bought from a person is your most important asset. They are the customers who will provide you with come-back business, which is more rewarding than the first sale. However, are you getting the most from the customer list? There are some techniques you should know so that you can squeeze the best results out of your mailing list.
Most companies’ customer lists consist of this data: Name, Address, City, Point out, and Zip. That’s it. However, this mailing list is almost ineffective. You need to have more information in your records than just that. One delivery order operator has a buyer database with 32 data fields! You should be able to fix these up in your personal computer’s database, or, if you don’t work with a computer(you REALLY should), pretty much everything information should fit with a large-size index card in the card file. Here are some far more helpful fields to include in your customer database:
LastName; FirstName; Title; Position; CompanyName; Address1;
Address2; City; State; Scoot; PerPhone; BusPhone;
FaxPhone; InqDate; ReferSource; FollowUp1; FollowUp2; SubDate;
SubAmount; RenewDate; Purch1; Purch1Date; Purch1Amount; Purch2;
Purch2Date; Purch2Amount; Purch3; Purch3Date; Purch3Amount;
TotAmount; Comments; Cust#
The first twelve fields (reading across) need to be self-explanatory. Almost any address can be put into my data bank without leaving out information or maybe abbreviating. The next three are generally for phone numbers. You MUST have your own personal customer’s phone numbers, when probable, to be able to follow up quickly as well as efficiently. Making one telephone call can be the difference between a large and NO sales.
The equate field is to record the date the client first inquired about your services and products and the date you delivered the information since it’s always the same day (there’s no reason not to follow up on your questions on the same day you receive them). This information, coupled with the ReferSource field, tells you when your advertisements are hitting and how rapidly people respond to them. In case you see that inquiries are arriving slowly or long after the actual ad is out, you know that you might want more action incentives inside my next ad. The ReferSource field shows you the actual “key” from my advertisement. You should use a letter program code after my street tackle to indicate which publication and issue the inquiry originates from. You should also code your messages for the same reason.
You enter a date into the two FollowUp fields to indicate when you want to deliver follow-up literature to clients who don’t order within the first try. You should place a date two weeks from the InqDate in FollowUp1 and one two weeks later than that within FollowUp2. Then, every day, you need to run a search on these two areas to pull up any data that have today’s date, like a follow-up date. You canteen print labels and put all of them on the envelopes and materials you have ready for following highs.
You should use the following three areas (SubDate, SubAmount, RenewDate) up the newsletter you publish (if you decide to publish one). All these would include the
date you will get their subscription, the amount they paid (You should often run special prices), and the date you want to send request renewal information (usually twelve 1/2 months from the SubDate). You can then print labels very much the same as you do for the FollowUp career fields.
Next come the Order fields. You should have three pieces of purchase fields, a single for each purchase the customer helps make. In the Purch1field, enter some sort of code for the product they also have purchased. The other two career fields get the date and volume of the purchase. The second and third sets of career fields get the same information to the customer’s second and final purchases. The best customers to mail offers to are those who have purchased within the last90 few days, so you don’t have to concern yourself with many customers making over three purchases during that era (though I hope they will! ). If someone does make a final purchase, move the second along with the third sets of data because of the first and second traces, and enter the new order information in the third film set.
These fields are critical. You can instantly pull up a list of customers that have bought within the past 90 days, or60 days, 30 days, and even 15 days. When you rent out your home mailing list, this information is vital. The actual rental amount you can cost increases as the amount of time because the customer’s purchase decreases.
The following field in my database is TotAmount, which contains a method to calculate the total amount the customer has bought from me to date.
The field stores miscellaneous information about the customer that you think is important.
Use the final field, Cust#, for any specially coded customer quantity you assign each client. Use this code to identify the recipient of any commissions you might pay to customers who have brought business my method.
That’s a lot of information, and you might wonder why I would require all of that. Well, I’ve currently told you how to use the buy data fields for determining the “age” of the clients. You can also use the TotAmount area to compile a list of clients who have bought more than a degree from you. Together, these discipline searches can be used to produce a custom-made mailing list of, for example, buyers who have bought more than 50 bucks in the past 30 days. There are the most responsive people to deliver to, and I would give the highest rental rate involving my customer list.
Also you can use specific mailing list career fields to identify people who should be fallen from my list. For instance, you can search for customers with FollowUp2 dates four weeks before today’s date and TotAmounts of zero. These buyers could be erased from the record. Or, you could leave them about the file and put a word or two from the Comments field, reminding them that they happened to mail anything else directly to them in case they inquire yet again. This saves me the price tag of mailing something to a person who probably won’t respond. They might; nevertheless, chances are they won’t.
Finally, when you get a customer who has returned too many orders or defrauded you, you may put that information in the Comments field. Then, whenever they order again, when their very own file comes up, you will see their history and can use further caution with them.
As you can see, using foresight when initially preparing your customer list is a valuable standard tool that you trigger to increase your order possible, increase your income through specific list rental, and lower your mailing costs by eliminating “deadwood” from your list. This is probably the essential method to improve your chances of success.
Read also: Affiliate Marketing Online And What It Can Do For You