You may have heard about some of the biggest brands and influencers in the world creating ‘income at will’, meaning they can generate cash quickly, whenever they want. Imagine for a second just how different your business would be if you could create ‘income at will’…
If you knew you could just create money out of nowhere, everything would change. You’d be less stressed, more optimistic and generally happier if you knew that a ‘bad month’ would never happen again because you could create customers and sales out of nothing.
Most Kitchen and Bathroom retailers never really experience that feeling.
‘Marketers’ of Kitchens and Bathrooms do, however.
They have systems and processes for creating profits quickly, and they can turn them on and off. We often find people who think of themselves as ‘marketers’ of their business are a little more relaxed!
When it comes down to it, there are only three ways to grow a business…
Method #1
You can get lots of new customers.
Method #2
You can increase the number of times your customers make a transaction.
Method #3
Or you can increase the size of each transaction.
There is also a fourth, which would be to acquire other businesses but we won’t go into that here.
Now, most people look at those three methods and quickly choose the first one. And why not? It seems logical that getting new customers will grow your business.
Well, yes, but there’s a hidden element here that’s not often divulged. It’s called ‘Cost of Acquisition’.
You see, new customers don’t just come for free. They usually require you to spend money to get leads. Not all of those leads will turn into customers, and those that do sometimes come in on an offer where you’re not necessarily taking a full price.
Problem: Paying to get custom and then not receiving full-whack on the transaction because you’ve used an offer.
So, let’s look at a less problematic and cheaper way of growing your business and generating revenue. Let’s look at Method #2 for now: Increase the number of times your customers make a transaction.
Mike Thomas, co-founder of Flo Marketing has had 10 one-to-one conversations this week with Kitchen retailers up and down the country (you can schedule one of your own if you want to grow your business – see details on our website). They all had one big question that they couldn’t wait for an answer to (‘how do I get more customers?’, obviously).
Mike said, “every single time I stopped them in their tracks. They were looking in the wrong direction for sales.”
“Practically everyone who I spoke to had a big fat pile of past customers that they had good relationships with and who trusted them enough to let them into their house and start making some major changes, let alone pay them a substantial amount of money to do it, and they were looking straight past this gold mine at other extravagant, complex and time-consuming ways to make money.
“There were varying reasons for not sending these people a sales communication, from ‘I never really thought about it’, to ‘Oh, I was going to do that but…’ and ‘I really don’t want to bug them’.
“All poor reasons if you want to grow your Kitchen and Bathroom business.”
So how would you go about leveraging this potential goldmine of past customers?
We want to share a simple email that has been responsible for £100,000s worth of sales in the last few years. It’s called the ‘Customer Reactivation Email’.
Before we go on, we want to make it clear that there’s no such thing as ‘too simple’. Many people haven’t sent this email out to their list because they want to jazz it up, change it to be ‘more professional’ or only send it to 10 or so people. I can guarantee that if you either don’t send it, or make adjustments to the email or strategy, you won’t make it any better, only worse. It’s a tried, tested and proven email that gets consistent results and reactivates customers.
So, here’s how it goes…
This email is called the ‘Customer Reactivation Email’, and it’s for people you have an existing relationship with i.e. not cold prospects or leads, only people who know you. This works so well because of the existing relationship between you and your past customers.
Start with creating a list of all those people that you’ve done business with in the past. Research how many times they’ve bought from you and how much they’ve spent. Then, send them a personal email, from you (the managing director or CEO of the company), saying this…
Subject: For {firstname}
Dear {firstname},
It’s {YOUR NAME} here from {YOUR COMPANY}.
We haven’t heard from you in a while, so just dropping you a line to say hello.
Can I help with any advice or support regarding your Kitchen or Bathrooms?
I’d love to be of help if I can.
Talk soon,
{YOUR NAME}
Now, there’s a few important details that you should remember when sending this email…
Firstly, it needs to come across as a personal email. It shouldn’t look like a broadcast, so even if you are sending it through a CRM system, there should be no design, no generic references and a plain email signature, similar to the one you use on your email. It should also come from your personal email address. Not an ‘info@’ or ‘sales@’.
You make the money in the follow-up!
You’ll get some replies by sending this email, but it’s important to make the most of the opportunity by implementing a solid follow up strategy.
To people that did respond, follow up appropriately on the phone and deliver as much value as you can, looking for sales opportunities. These are warm leads, and sometimes hot. You’ll be able to gauge the strength of a lead from what they say in their reply.
Send another simple email a week later to people who didn’t respond, saying this…
Subject: FWD: For {firstname}
Hi {firstname},
I hope you’re well. Last week I sent you an email. Did you receive it? I’ve copied it below just in case you missed it.
Talk soon,
{YOUR NAME}
{INSERT ORIGINAL EMAIL AGAIN}
If you need a hand with any of the content in this article, you should consider spending an hour of your time chatting with us.
Now go get implementing…
Talk soon,
The Team at Flo