Keeping In Touch Keeps Business Up By Robert Johnston At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

People learn and remember things by repetition. This is why it’s so important to keep in touch and repeatedly follow up with customers, and potential customers that you haven’t met yet. The best and most cost-efficient way to do this is with postcard printing. If you already use postcard marketing as one of your marketing tactics, you probably already have a postcard printer you can use.

You should ask your postcard printer if they can do full color postcard printing. Full color postcards are more effective than black and white postcards because they don’t blend in with the rest of the mail.

Here are a few reasons why you should increase your postcard printing budget to use postcard marketing to follow up with customers:

A study by the Association of Sales Executives found that 81 percent of sales happen on or after the fifth contact. If you only follow up a couple times or worse yet, not at all, you’re missing out on a lot of sales. You can be persistent without being annoying – this is why postcards are such a good follow-up technique: it’s cost-effective for you, people will at least scan your postcard to see who it’s from and then they can throw it away if they want to. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because every time a person skims your card and sees your name, your name gets etched into their brain a little deeper. The next time they see that you’re having a sale or see your next postcard a few months later, they’ll be more apt to read it because they recognize your name.

Don’t be afraid to fill up people’s mailboxes. Maybe you think that people receive enough junk mail that they won’t bother looking at your mail piece. Well, consider this: another study found that 90 percent of business owners said they don’t follow up with their clients. That’s a lot of people that aren’t getting postcards in the mail. And, if you use full color postcard printing, your chances of getting a look are even greater because your postcard will stick out from the rest of the bland, white mail.

Cater to your specific type of prospect to increase sales. You should be following up with three different types of customers, and you need a different marketing message for each one. You should follow up with suspects (people you’ve targeted but haven’t yet contacted), potential customers (people who’ve responded to past marketing material but haven’t bought anything – yet) and customers (people who’ve done business with you). Your message to each should be different, for instance: suspects should be enticed to check out your product by calling or visiting your store; potential customers should be persuaded to make their first purchase; and customers should be encouraged to do more business with you or to make referrals.

Catering to each prospect makes them feel that you really do care about getting their business – an overall message won’t work because it will be garbled and at least one type of prospect will skim your postcard and say “this message isn’t even for me” and will disregard further mailings from you. So don’t be afraid to follow up frequently, say every quarter and when you have special sales. This will only build your company’s memorability.

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