Building Loyalty and Customer Retention for Under a Dollar
The buzzword for this week is “branding.” Last week
it was “Brand Loyalty.” Oh yeah, and the buzz-acronym
for this week is “CRM.” Customer Retention
Management. What crap.
What? Do you new guys on the marketing block think
we old guys didn’t know what we were doing ten, twenty years
ago. Do you think we didn’t know how to keep a
customer? So you came up with a new name for it, am I supposed to
be impressed? Hell, there’s even a “Branding”
magazine now, and a preachy new “CRM Magazine.”
Ooooh. Look what’s neeeew. Excuuussseee meeeeee.
You want to see a good example of CRM, take a look
at L.L. Bean. They’ve been around forever - and they keep
their customers… for life. They’ve been marketing
extremely well without all the new buzzwords, thank you. And I assure
you they’ve been around a lot longer than any new fangled
“Customer Retention Management” scheme.
Shamefully, most big companies today actually do
need to study “CRM” - cause they don’t know shit
about keeping customers happy. Just take a look at Sprint, or
AT&T, or any of the big phone companies. You get their worst
prices if you’re a loyal, long-term customer. Exactly what were
those connivers thinking to concoct that plan? Then, call them
with a quick question… and get… 20 minutes of voice
mail. Finally, they blow you off to their website so you can
spend four hours looking for something it would have taken them 30
seconds to answer on the phone. I wonder if there’s a secret
publication called Anti-CRM Magazine that only the phone companies -
and credit card companies - receive? And banks. And…
Yeah, so the phone companies have got to read up on
it. They lose so many people on the back-end that they have to
continually market on the front-end to stay ahead. I guess they
haven’t figured out that it costs about one fifth as much to keep
a current customer as it costs to acquire a new one. Heck, they
could blow their marketing costs out of the water if they could get
their fingers out of their noses long enough to write a few thank you
letters. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
If you ask me, and some firms do, the way to keep
customers is with good old-fashioned honesty, and some good
old-fashioned service. (I know, it’s quite a stretch for some of
the phone companies!) You answer the phone when it rings - with a
real, live person. You don’t tell customers the crap about
“…to give you better service the phone call is being
recorded.” Yeah, right. And here’s three more
quick lessons: You build a brand by providing good value: first quality
products and services. You build customer retention by asking
customers if there’s anything else you can do for them - then
doing it. And you create loyalty when you thank them sincerely
when they buy something from you.
When you do all this on a regular basis, do you know
what you get? Presto! Customer Retention. You develop a
customer who keeps buying your goods and services. Poof! Brand
Loyalty. And a customer who tells his friends about you:
Bingo! Company Loyalty.
And now, I’m going to tell you how to get all
these things for under $1. First, you send me a dollar
and… just kidding. You do it in a letter.
A letter is the most effective single sheet of paper
in direct marketing. It has been since I started my direct
marketing career way back in, well, never you mind; and it will be long
after I finish this column, which right about now will have to wait
until after Sponge Bob SquarePants. Yes, and a letter will still
be the most effective tool in direct marketing way after Jay Leno is
off the air, and when The Simpsons shows its final episode. Well,
maybe not The Simpsons.
What makes a letter such a powerful tool? And how do
you create one that has this kind of effect? It’s easy -
I’ll show you.
In direct marketing a letter isn’t really a
letter. A letter is something you write to Aunt Bertha at
Thanksgiving so you get a nice gift at Christmas. In direct
marketing a letter is really a one page highly stylized ad designed to
look like a letter. Any arguments?
When you write a letter the very first thing you
write is… the objective. What do you want to accomplish
from this letter. If the letter goes perfectly according to plan,
what will the immediate result be? That’s the objective.
Draft your whole letter around that.
Take this quick test: take a look at most of your
correspondence. What’s the objective? Most people are
probably saying it’s to generate a sale; unless you’re a
lawyer - in which case it’s to sue some poor bastard - in which
case God says, “so ye shall reap what ye shall sow.”
And I say it takes one to know one. Well, I guess that pissed off
all the lawyers who are now either not reading the rest of this column
or who are busy figuring out if I am liable for the above heretofore,
or… are already preparing to send me a notice of suit.
Good riddance to you. Do you know what you have when you have 8
lawyers buried in the sand up to their necks? Not enough
sand. (Hey, just kidding, can’t you guys take a
joke?) Some of my best friends are, umm, ok, never mind.
So you create letters to sell. Sell sell sell.
Sell products, services, appointments, sales calls. Right?
OK, now those of you who shook their heads yes, reach out and smack
yourself on the butt. Unless you are a direct marketer and your
customers read your letters and directly send you money with an order,
your real objective isn’t to sell your product. People
don’t read your letter and send you money. The real
objective is to generate a phone call. Your letter simply makes
the phone ring. When the phone rings, the letter worked -
perfectly. It fulfilled the objective. Then it’s your
job to sell something. BTW, how’d you do on that test?
That’s OK, I don’t test well either. But wait,
there’s more…
Now let’s talk about writing a letter to a
very different objective. How about creating a letter to keep a
customer? A letter to build loyalty, trust, and friendship.
Yes - all rolled up into a single sheet of paper. It’s pretty
easy to do, here’s how: just write a thank you letter.
“Thanks for your past business - I appreciate it.”
There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Instead of trying to
sell something, take a minute out - spend the 41¢ on building a
customer relationship. Use a letter so powerful it’ll sit
on a client’s desk for a month: send a simple thank you.
It’ll be the best 41¢ you’ll ever spend - and I
guarantee it.
Let me ask you: When’s the last time you
received a thank you letter? That long ago, huh? No,
I’m not talking about the pre-printed junk card your accountant
bought from a catalog and sends you each year at Christmas. (OK, there
go all the accountants calling their lawyers asking about a class
action suit.) I’m talking about a real letter - one you’ve
actually received from a real person, that said your name right there,
up at the top, and continued, “thanks, thanks so much for your
business this past year - I appreciate it.”
Call me old fashioned, but I still believe
it’s a privilege to serve your customers. I’ll bet
they could go just about anywhere to buy services and products exactly
like the ones you sell. But they don’t - they get them from
you. When’s the last time you thanked them for that
privilege? That long ago, too, huh? Do you know what other
vendors call your best customers? They call them valuable
prospects.
With a single thank you letter you can turn your
best prospects into customers; you can encourage your best customers to
do even more business with you, and feel better about doing it.
Yes, they’ll feel great about spending even more money with you -
all from a single letter that was written with the objective of making
them feel great about doing business with you. “Thanks for the
business you give to us - we appreciate it. We’re always
ready with help, to answer your questions, and to assist you in any way
we can, at any time. Thank you.”
With two, well-written “Thanks for your
business” letters, you can endear a person to remain your
customer for years. You can plug that hole in the bottom of the
customer bucket - you know, the one they keep falling out of.
And with three letters, with three thank you letters
you can make a customer fall in love with you, your company, and
they’ll never even consider going anywhere else. Your
letters need to say… oops, I’m out of room here -
give me a call and I’ll send you instructions for the third
letter. Or call for an early look at my ramblings for next month
on using letters.
Jeffrey Dobkin
Word Count: 1700
Bio -
Jeffrey Dobkin, author and speaker, is a specialist in direct response
writing. Sales letters, TV commercials and scripts; persuasive catalog
copy; and exceptionally hard working direct mail packages. He also
analyzes direct marketing packages, ads, catalogs, and campaigns. After
25 years experience in direct response, Mr. Dobkin is also a pretty
sharp marketing consultant. Call him directly at 610-642-1000 for
free samples of his work.