Add To Your Bottom Line With Relationship Marketing

 

What is the lifetime value of your best customer? Do you know your customers well enough to duplicate their demographic and more importantly, to keep them as a customer for life? Through Relationship Marketing you will build more meaningful and profitable relationships with the individuals who matter most and keep them coming back (and bringing their friends) for more.

No, this does not require you to become the best friend of your customers but it will require you to get to know them a bit. Relationship marketing uses many traditional marketing tactics, but treats marketing as a personal process evolving over time versus individual, unrelated marketing attempts. Molding the marketing message and tactics to the life cycle of your customer attains high client satisfaction and can be immensely profitable.

An example of relationship marketing being used throughout the life cycle of a customer would be sending a Thank You or Welcome to new customers after making a purchase. If 30-90 days pass and that customer has not made a second purchase, you follow up with a promotional postcard perhaps one offering a discount. When the customer makes their next purchase, follow up with another thank you and provide a second purchase discount. Each outreach is tailored to your customer based on the specific product or service they purchased from you.

It is also important to reach out to customers in ways that simply show gratitude and are not self-promoting. This can be done by making personal contacts with your customers through Birthday cards and Anniversary cards. Holidays are also a great time to connect with your customers in a non-marketing manner. A Happy Holidays card thanking them for this year’s business is a cost-effective way to foster warm feelings and remind your customers they are important to the success of your business. This personal marketing approach fosters loyalty and allows you to establish a stronger connection with your target customer.

Relationship Marketing allows you to eliminate wasted advertising dollars and spend less money overall by being much more effective with the money you do spend. Relationship marketing will create high returns on your advertising campaigns and soon become the best friend of your business.

Teresa Pollard, the author, is a marketing consultant who helps business professionals increase referrals and repeat business with SendOutCards. For as little as $25, you can start increasing sales while reducing the costs of direct customer marketing.