Search Results for ‘postcards’
Last week Heidi Caswell of Connect Simply, and yours truly Heidi Richards Mooney did a teleseminar on follow up strategies in business.
Remember when you were young and started making friends or dating, you knew instinctively that if someone didn’t “make a move” you’d probably loose the opportunity to get to know that person better. And yet, when it comes to business we may understand the importance of “making a move” (follow up) but many times we simply don’t do it. In this session we talked about that and more.
Here are jsut a few of the ideas Heidi and I shared:
Follow up strategies, what works and what doesn’t
Why “high touch” marketing is so important especially today
When you should follow up with someone
One great strategy that always works ~ that strategy is greeting cards and postcards (I’ll write more later about how I am using it to promote all 3 of my businesses)
Stories of business owners who used that one strategy to really grow their business
And other great tips.
In fact, we are sharing this audio with the readers of Redhead Marketing Blog. Go here and grab your copy: www.redheadmarketingblog.com/audio/FollowUpDivas.mp3.
You can contact Heidi Caswell at www.ConnectSimply.com. Feel free to drop me a line at heidi (at) redheadmarketing.com if you’d like us to give you a personal tour of our Greeting Cards System.
November 12th, 2008
personalized postcards and greeting cards have been our number one stay in touch method. We have found them to be a great “buzz generator.” The system we use is called SendOutCards and since I have been using it, have had thank you notes for our thank you notes, phone calls thanking me for thinking of them in such a personalized way and everyone so far has said they are “keepers.”
Continue Reading November 7th, 2008
What if there was a system that could help you develop a continuous stream of solid referrals and all you had to do is set it up one time, add contacts as you receive them and few clicks of the mouse start your referral building process?
Continue Reading October 30th, 2008
Staying in touch with your clients and customers should be an integral part of your marketing plan. In fact, it should be one most important activities that you do. In fact, there are several ways you can touch your customers from phone calls, to emails to snail mail campaigns.
Here are the ways we stay in touch with our retail floral customers:
1. We use postcards for those we have not heard from in 6 months or more.
2. We call those we have not heard from in a year.
3. We send bi weekly emails with specials.
4. We have a quarterly newsletter - Ramblin’ Rose which we send with specials, tips, flowers trivia and more.
5. And we send flowers to those customers who are the most frequent purchasers.
6. We also have a “weekly drawing” of our customer database and send them flowers to say HI.
7. Once a year we send a holiday CD filled with our specials (late November).
8. And I randomly go through our list and send thank you notes for our customers’ business once a month.
Here’s what we do to stay in touch with the members of the Women’s eCommerce Association:
1. We host monthly events which are both educational, informational events that our members attend. At the same time, have the opportunity to stick around after the sessions and chat among themselves and very often with the guests we invite to share their success stories.
2. We publish and distribute a bi-weekly ezine called eMonday News.
3. We also publish a digital magazine ~ WE Magazine for Women - for the Total Woman - filled with excellent articles about wealth, travel, business, women, balance and relationships… and much more.
4. We have a network on LinkedIn that we just started where our members can post questions, answer questions, share expertise, and get to know one another.
5. We also host bi-annual summits on a variety of topics which is a great way to reach out to our members – the most recent was “How to Grow a Million Dollar Business” Summit.
How do you stay in touch? Feel free to leave your comments and share your story.
October 14th, 2008
On one of the forums I belong to the question was asked ~ how often do you market your company, especially before the holidays?
Here is my response:
We never stop marketing! Here’s what we do for our retail flower shop and website. In early November we begin our holiday push by sending postcards, greeting cards and email reminders to our customer base. Even though a great deal of our business revolved around the holidays, we never assume people will remember us in November (Thanksgiving) or December so we know it is just as important to keep our name in front of our audience during this time as it is the rest of the year.
In addition to the physical stay-in-touch reminder method, we send out a weekly eblast for our floral customers reminding them to order early – showcase our current specials and offer a small discount if they order by a certain date. You would be amazed how many people call and thank us for the reminder…
We also partner with our local chamber of commerce and send out an eblast and a broadcast fax around the 7th - for the corporate clients who want to ship out of state - we do gourmet gift baskets so this helps us to really pull in some new clients.
I attend any and every networking event available and give out a holiday CD with our product line for the holidays - which also includes a history of Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hannukah, a coloring book for each of the holidays, the top ten flowers for the holidays, and several other goodies. People love these and once they were produced (about 3 years ago) we only have to update the product line on the CD. It is something people tend to keep.
In addition, we offer free downloadable information products similar to the information on the holiday CD, as well as a letter from Santa for Christmas and free coloring books for the kids. This type of content really drives traffic to the site during the busiest online shopping month of the year.
Although we don’t do as much social networking as I’d like (there are just not enough hours in the day when you are in retail), we do try to visit them at least twice or three times before December 10 to just stay in touch.
And the week after Christmas I do a short plan for the coming year - review last years goals and plan and adjust for any necessary changes or new trends on the horizon.
BTW, Our website, Eden Florist & Gift Baskets is getting ready to relaunch. Laura Wheeler of Fireflight Web Studio is creating a whole new look with greater functionality. Go there today to see it and come back in about a week. The new site should be live.
October 13th, 2008
Sometimes we do such a good job marketing our companies to new people we forget that we already have a built-in audience of former clients who for one reason or another don’t need our services right now. Don’t let that stop you from reconnecting with them and asking them for business ~ either directly or indirectly.
Here are 5 Tips to Get Business from Former Clients
1. One of the best ways you can get former clients to refer you is to offer your services to them for free. You could take 3 or 4 of your top former colleagues (the ones you feel have the best potential to refer you to your target audience). This is how many coaches build a client base and I personally have found it to be one of the most successful ways for me.
2. Ask them to write a letter of recommendation. You did a good job for them, now let them tell others.
3. Educate them. Tell them who your ideal client is so they will be on the lookout for you.
4. Stay in touch with them. Drop them notes, postcards, call to say HI – the most important thing is to stay on “top of mind” with them so if and when the opportunity to refer you presents itself, you will be the only person they think of.
5. Start gathering testimonials of everyone whom you have worked with. These will come in handy for getting new clients and referrals. People feel more comfortable refering people when they perceive they are already successful. You may not yet have the ideal number of clients, however you are already successful. SHOW IT!
August 13th, 2008
Scratch-off Marketing
In this day and age of Lotto, Instant Win, and other forms of GIG - “Gambling Instant Gratification” scratch-offs are an excellent way to promote a product and/or service and get customers in the door.
I have used these for a few years now - We send a postcard to our past customers (those who have not purchased in a year or more) using a scratch off incentive. The post card has a Milk Carton graphic with a caption “Missing” - there is a scratch off with a prize which the customer can either redeem in my shop or over the phone. The “prizes” range from $5.00 off your next purchase to a dozen roses.
Sending these postcards serves two purposes. It cleans up my database - returning those that are undeliverable - and it reminds people to again use my business. We have had incredible success with this program (having done it for about 15 years now). The postcard design changes from time to time, but the message is generally the same.
In addition, this year those postcards that were returned to us undeliverable came in handy for Saint Patrick’s Day. We cut out the scratch off from the postcard and stapled it to a coupon that said “try your luck” When customers came into the store, we gave them the coupon and invited them to scratch it off and redeem instantly. It created quite a buzz and flower sales were up 30% over last year for Saint Patty’s day.
Check out Terra Williams site for some ideas and to order scratch-offs for your next campaign at Easy Scratch-offs.
August 5th, 2008
Did you know that you could mail full-color postcards to 1,000 clients for under $500 inlcuding postage?
The US Post Office has tools to help you design and deliver impressive direct mail pieces at a fraction of what it might typically cost elsewhere. The service is called NetPost and can be found at www.usps.com/directmail/gethelpcreating.htm and can be done right from your home or office computer. You can use this service to send postcards, letters, brochures and flyers.
July 19th, 2008
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September 29th, 2007