Let me guess, you’re reading this because you’re wondering if there is anything better than just sending out countless newsletters or those drip email campaigns that really never converts.
Or perhaps the notion of marketing to your existing customer is intriguing to you but you’re wondering how to do it without pissing them off or being annoying to them.
So here, I want to share how we help our clients generate additional revenue from their current and past customers/leads and the top 3 mistakes that 80% of businesses make when marketing to them.
Mistake #1: Not Marketing to Current and Past Customers/Leads At All
According to Fischer of Downtown media, your current database is now the “new oil” which countless businesses never focus on.
Business owners spend millions of dollars acquiring, storing and collecting as many leads as they can, they forget what’s right in front of them…
And that is the idea of utilizing current/past customers lists to grow their business.
You see, this is pretty common sense for business owners to neglect the opportunities that are right in front of them. They are too focused on their business to see it clearly.
Has it ever crossed your mind as a business owner that you can actually market and sell to your current and past customers who have already purchased from you, love your product, and know what your brand is about?
The thing is, upon conducting a study and performing a test run on database reactivator campaigns for our clients, We noticed that out of 1000 customers, 60% of them responded, which means that there’s still an open window of engagement in another attempt to convert.
That’s not even the surprising part there.
Out of 60 percent of respondents,
- 20% addressed their concerns why they didn’t continue
- 10% said they’re not qualified to convert before for some reason but are willing to check now.
- 20% are people who are definitely interested in knowing more.
While 10% converted into a profit.
Now, 10% may not sound like huge but imagine if you’re getting a thousand new contacts every day. Besides, remember this doesn’t cost you an additional dim to acquire, you’re essentially just maximizing your current marketing budget!
Here, let me do some math for you…
Let’s say your current marketing budget allows you to generate 50 leads daily and converts only 5% of those leads
This means that on an average year only counting working days (20) you would generate: 50*20*12 = 12,000 leads.
And with a 5% conversion rate to a customer, you would have 600 new customers.
Let’s assume each of your customers has an average lifetime value of around $3,000. This will net you $1.8 million dollars in growing revenue.
But what if we now started to market to these 600 customers on a quarterly or bi-annual basis using our past/current customer reactivation campaign and generate additional sales from 8% of these customers.
0.08 * 600 = 48 (additional sale)
And let’s say these additional sales were $1,500 each.
48* 1,500 = $72,000 in additional revenue.
Now, this may not sound like a lot but keep in mind that an additional $72,000 has virtually no cost to acquire.
But let’s not stop there…
Remember, out of the 12,000 lead you generated you’ve only converted 5%, that means that there are still 95% of the lead that has not yet converted.
So let’s run a past lead reactivator campaign every 4 to 6 months, because remember just cause they don’t buy right now doesn’t mean they won’t buy 4, 6, or 12 months down the road.
so 11,400*0.05 (5% additional conversion) = 570 additional customers.
570* $3,000 (LTV) = additional 1,710,000 in growth revenue.
Now we rinse and repeat the process to create what we like to call the revenue multiplier growth effect.
I’m sure that doesn’t sound like a waste of time and effort to reach out to past customers.
Mistake #2: Only Using Email Drips
Nothing beats the classic as most people would often say.
Or is it?
Mailing customers has been around for a century and it is the most common and effective method that most businesses use to market to their existing customers.
According to the Direct Marketing Association, the average ROI is 40:1 and according to Superoffice Research, 290 billion emails are sent daily and email marketing is the most trusted form of communication with 77% of consumers choosing email over other online channels.
The only downside to email marketing is that everyone has been doing the same thing. Imagine having your Physical mailbox full of these market emails.
Ain’t nobody got time to read all those emails.
In fact, the average open rate of an email is less than 20% and that’s if your email doesn’t go straight to the junk or spam boxes.
That is probably the reason why 80 percent of businesses turned down the idea of marketing to their past customers because they might’ve tried it before but got little to no results.
The truth is…
80 percent of businesses never look outside the box and try to communicate/market to their current and past customers through other channels such as text messaging, voicemails, etc…
Other forms of marketing channels can be more tricky to construct but are a lot more efficient than attempting to construct a perfect marketing email alone.
Mistake #3: Lack of Personalized Touch
Ok, perhaps you’re better than most businesses, above and beyond the 80%. You’re already marketing to your current, past customers and leads and you’re leveraging multiple communication channels… emailing them, calling them, and maybe even texting them.
But the results still suck, and no one is responding to your messages.
That is because you’re probably sending the same type of marketing messages that everybody sent.
“Promotion, promotion, promotion”, “50% off today”, etc…
Sure there are going to get you some repeat business but a very small fraction. People are used to seeing this, and you should be a little bit more creative when marketing to your past and current customers because they already have a relationship with your brand, they have already bought once from you.
Marketing to past customers is a subtle art of building relationships through personalized messages and converting them to buy more from you.
Don’t send the same promotion email or text message that you sent to all your databases, instead send something like this.
“Hi [Customer Name], this is [XYZ] from [Your Company]. We are having a special customer appreciation day and giving away a $50 gift card would you like one?”
Do you see the difference?
You could have easily blasted out 10,000 emails or text messages saying 50% off today and hope that enough people will see it and take an auction or you can send out a more personalized message to make them feel more exclusive and special.
The only difference is the message.
Lack of a personalized approach takes away the feel of your customers that they are valued and remembered. Yet, this key mistake is still undervalued since it takes a lot of effort to segment each customer’s preferences.
What Next
Oftentimes, business owners overlook the low-hanging fruits in their business that can grow their business by 20, 30, and even 100% without having to spend any additional advertising dollars because they’re too focused on working on their business and cannot jump up.
I can firsthand tell you that running past customer marketing campaigns we use here at Simply Grow Online has generated tens of thousands of additional revenue for our clients.
If you want to know whether you’re leaving money on the table and whether we can help you generate more sales from assets that you already have but are under leverage, you can book a free discovery call with us to find out here.