It’s been said that acquiring a new customer can cost 5x that of retaining a current one—and it makes sense once you think about it.
Your current customers already trust and are familiar with your brand/products. In contrast, a new potential customer is still unsure whether they should patronize your business or your competitors.
While it’s essential to focus your marketing efforts on landing new clients and customers, it’s equally as important to work to ensure you’re not neglecting your current ones.
Also known as
customer retention, keeping in touch with your customers post-sale will help keep your brand/company at the forefront of their minds.
Read on to learn more about the various ways you can continue the customer conversation after the sale.
Direct Mail
Before the pandemic of 2020,
direct mail was one of the hottest marketing channels out there. It’s since gone nuclear thanks in part to people staying home—businesses who sent out direct mail flyers in 2020 found a very receptive (and captive) audience.
According to the United States Postal Service
website, “30% of consumers are spending more time reading marketing mail during the pandemic.”
Direct mail is tangible, physical and plays a subtle psychological role in capturing the attention of those who receive it. Many Alexandria and Arlington businesses who engage in direct mail are taking their campaigns one step further—they’re designing their mailers in unique shapes and creative ways to set the piece apart from the rest of the mail.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to stay in touch with your customers when it comes to low-hanging marketing fruit. However, there is one massive caveat for setting up and running an effective social media campaign—
you need to add value.
Take a look at the social media sites of your competitors. Are they just shouting out into the proverbial void with mindless sales rhetoric and self-promotional language? Or are they adding something of value—a reason for their customers and clients to continue to follow them on social media?
In this day and age, people have a brief attention span regarding overt or even semi-overt marketing language. If all you’re doing is promoting your products and services, chances are you won’t gain many followers.
This is why many Alexandria and Arlington business owners opt to hire a
social media marketing company. Creating valuable content takes time and know-how, and sometimes that’s best left to the professionals.
Personalize Your Messaging
A great way to promote brand loyalty and increase trust is to personalize your outreach. For example, a “
Thank You card” is a small gesture that will let your biggest and best customers know that you value the business relationship.
Variable data printing can help cut down on costs by allowing you to segment your audience into buckets that receive a customized message. For example, let’s say you have a list of people who have only been customers for three months. You can send out a mailer or card that thanks them for their patronage and has a discounted limited time offer on the back.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is another cost-effective way of keeping in touch with your customer base. Much like social media marketing, you need to add value to every email you send out or risk people opting out or hitting the “SPAM” button on their email client.
Some Alexandria and Arlington businesses use a brilliant combination of direct mail and email marketing to keep in touch with their customers post-sale. For example, you can add a
QR Code to the back of your direct mail piece that leads the person to a landing page on your website where you can capture their email address via a form.
Mobile App
Have you ever walked into a smaller store, such as a coffee shop, and received one of those punch cards where you get your 10
th purchase free? Nobody likes having to dig into their wallet and search for a tattered card to present to the cashier.
This is why many smaller to medium-sized businesses are taking advantage of technology and creating a customized
mobile app for their customers to download and use as a loyalty program. The cost of having an app created is probably less than you think—and there are many different options out there for budgets of all sizes.
Customer Retention and Activation Help in Alexandria and Arlington
Keeping in touch with your customers post-sale is a wise investment of both time and money. If you’re unsure where to begin, reach out to the experts at AlphaGraphics of Alexandria and Arlington. We’ve helped countless local businesses with their printing and marketing needs over the years. If you’d like to speak to a marketing expert about your business, give us a call at (703) 549-2432 or
contact us on our website.