It’s a fact that your customers are your best leads. This means that
most likely people to purchase your products and/or services are ones who have paid for them before. It’s also a fact that it costs far less money to keep a customer than it does to go out and get a new one. These are two reasons that using direct mail postcards to keep in touch with your customer database is a must. There are a few rules to follow when marketing to contacts in your company database.Rule #1: Collect all of their information.
It sounds like a no-brainer but you would be surprised. The more information that you have on your customers more likely it is that you will be able to get in touch with them to let them know about specials or to remind them it’s time for their next service. Also, don’t neglect to ask for your customers' email addresses, everybody has one and most will give it up pretty easily.
Rule #2: Don’t treat your customers like prospects.
Make sure when you collect information in your database you differentiate between people who have placed an order in past and people who have not. Customers want to feel like you are paying attention to them and when they have placed a few orders with you and are still getting your "10% for First Time Buyers" postcards they tend to feel unappreciated. Bottom line, if they don’t qualify for an offer you are sending out, don’t send it to them.
Rule #3: Don’t let your designs get stagnant.
When you are mailing to databases of people that you have never spoken to before it is OK to send them same postcard multiple times. It helps to increase recognition and will eventually increase your response rate. Dealing with customers and prospects that you have already spoken to (meaning they already know most or all of details of your business) you need to mix things up a bit. Your mailings should be attention getting and informative. If you have started offering a new service recently, a postcard designed to let your database know about it would be a smart move. The main point is to keep your company in front of their mind and to keep them reading your postcards.
If promo that you send to your database gets too repetitive your customers will lose interest and at that point you are just wasting your money on postage because your postcards won’t get attention that you want.
One of your main goals should be to educate your customers about how your product or service works and this will in turn help them to get more use out of your entire line of products and services. Many times it is as simple as sending out mailings that make your customers aware of all that you can do for them.
Take, for example, a California based software company called Forté Systems. Not only do they use direct mail postcards to acquire new business, they know how to use them to effectively market to their current customer database as well. To fully understand how you will need a little background information.
