How to Reactivate Past Clients – Part 1

Reactivate stale or past Clients can bring you new customers…. Most businesses ignore them, successful businesses learn new ways to get them to recognize you as a market leader.

Remember that it’s 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one

When trying to re-establish relationships with past customers, some customers will be comfortable and feel as if they just conducted business with you yesterday while others will wonder why you went to the trouble of contacting them.

Who is a reactivation candidate?

To reactivate customers, you need to be attentive to the process. First, to determine which previous customers to reactivate, define what reactivation specifically means for your organization. Most companies define reactivation candidates based on their lack of response to previous marketing efforts. The typical sequential marketing efforts that an organization may follow begin with acquisition, then proceed to resell / upsell / cross-sell / downsell, retention / competitive defense / selective attrition and then reactivation.

How do you differentiate between customers who require selling and retention efforts from those who require reactivation efforts? First, and most obviously, if you know that you’ve lost your customer’s business, then you’ve probably exhausted your sales and retention efforts and can assign the customer to your reactivation group.

If you don’t know whether you have lost your customer’s business, make inquiries. If you find that it’s too expensive to keep in touch with customers, then analyze their buying history (e.g., length of time since last purchase, number of prior purchases, length of time between purchases and average order size) or apply industry averages to determine who might be a reactivation candidate.

Whom do you select for reactivation?

Before designating customers as reactivation candidates, determine whether you have their correct contact information. Exclude past customers who have outdated information that cannot be updated through third-party sources.

Also, review any customer service or third-party data you have on reactivation candidates and categorize the reasons for lost business as “controllable” (e.g., shipped wrong product two weeks after promised delivery date) or “uncontrollable” (e.g., moved from retail area). If you’re to blame for the failed relationship, determine whether there is value in re-establishing it.

Once you select your reactivation candidates, segment this group and test offers before spending money to reach them all at once. If possible, use lifetime value to determine which segments may yield a higher return.

When do you conduct reactivation marketing?

Reactivation is not a one-time event for when times are tough. Reactivation should be an ongoing activity prioritized among other marketing efforts.

Once you have customers who meet your reactivation requirements, execute a reactivation campaign. (See “Reactivation Letters” in the Sales Letter Library). With response history, you can develop a reactivation response model to determine the optimal timing and frequency of your reactivation efforts. For example, a model developed for a health products cataloger might show that the company maximizes its marketing dollars when it tries to reactivate past customers with a buy-one-get-one-free offer after these customers fail to respond to three months of discount offers following their initial purchase.

When you accumulate significant response history from your reactivation marketing efforts, build a model based on RFM analysis (recency, frequency, monetary) or data attributes that predict purchase propensity. A life insurance company might build a model based on age, number of children, marital status, income and interest rates to determine the likelihood of a previous term insurance customer buying a variable life policy.

What do you say to customers you want to reactivate?

People change over time and so does your business, so when you’re thinking about marketing to past customers, consider that your customers’ needs and preferences, as well as your business focus, may have changed.

Profile customer’s to create more personalized communications for each segment. Use past data such as RFM information and, if possible, append reliable third-party information that will enhance your customer understanding. For example, you might use third-party information to determine each customer’s age, family situation and income. Then you could send targeted communications to various segments depending on these data attributes as well as results from an RFM analysis.

In conjunction with customer profiling, make an in-depth determination as to why the relationship ended in the first place. Was it something you did? If so, you might have a manager or high-level executive make a personal call to “high-value” customers.

When communicating with reactivation candidates, use the information you have about them in your marketing communications to show your desire to have them back as a customer. Also, if your communication is asking the reactivation candidate to call a person at your company, create a group of call specialists trained to handle reactivation customers.

Investing in acquisition vs. reactivation.

Acquisition and reactivation are both investments designed to yield profitable customer relationships. When deciding how much of your marketing budget should be allocated to each effort, calculate the ROI on reactivating old customers versus acquiring new customers.

Whether reactivation involves less of an investment than acquisition depends on the extent of your data analysis, data enhancement and list rental costs. It’s generally true that with customer data available for analysis as well as past customers’ familiarity with a company’s name and product or service quality, reactivation efforts yield higher response rates and higher profitability than acquisition efforts do.

Make the first move.

Most organizations focus on acquisition, sales to current customers and retention. They see little opportunity in marketing to people who failed to respond to their offers. These organizations, however, are typically not customer-focused.

Instead of trying to understand why a prior customer is no longer responding, they assume that the customer is the problem in the relationship. The dynamics are similar to that of a person who refuses to talk to another person unless the other person reaches out first. Start looking at your past customers and commit to reaching out and re-establishing a relationship that is valuable to both sides.

In my next blog I will show you the 8 Steps to Designing a Reactivation Campaign, stay tuned.

If you need help reactivating stale clients, try our FREE test drive to gain access to our resources and tools, or you can also contact me directly.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

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Tax Benefits for Your Business

Mind Your Own Business!

The concept of minding your own business means that while you are grinding away at your day job you need to be investing in your future and minding your own business. Pretty soon you’ll be able to walk away from that day job and mind your own business full time.

The best way to do this is through the acquisition of real estate.

Let’s take a quick look at where you are losing all your money-taxes. Taxes have been around since 1913 in the U.S. and 1917 in Canada (even earlier in England). While the original intention was to only tax the wealthiest of the population, obviously that’s trickled down to the masses, including those in poverty.

Now, keep in mind the more money you make the more taxes you pay. The wealthy know a way of getting around this-form a corporation. Corporations offer tax benefits and protect you from lawsuits. To learn more about this talk with one of our business coaches or your attorney.

We’ve all heard the golden rule of: Pay Yourself First.

But, many of us don’t do it. Until you learn and put this rule into effect, you won’t have any chance of getting out of the rat race. What this rule does is force you to come up with more income to pay your expenses.

There are some key areas of finance you should learn about, taking classes is one of the best ways to do this. Here are the basics you should learn:

Accounting

It pays to know how to read financial statements. When acquiring businesses or assets you need to quickly see the financial standing of the company you are acquiring.

Many grown adults do not know how to balance a balance sheet. In the long term, this knowledge will pay off for you and your business.

Investment Strategy

This skill will sharpen with experience. Talk to investors and observe how they play the game.

Market Behavior

Know the laws of Supply and Demand. No business owner can do without understanding these basic principles of the market. Bill Gates saw what people needed. Open your eyes to opportunities. Look at what sells and who buys.

Law

Do everything you can to grow your business within legal boundaries. Know your corporate, state, and accounting laws.

Once you know these areas of finances you can make them work for you. The rich practically invent money. You have to know where to find a great deal. Let’s continue with real estate. Look for houses in trouble or find the court in your area that handles foreclosed, police impound or other real estate situations. You can either renovate and sell or rent for residual income.

So, essentially there are two main types of investors:

1. Those who buy pre-packaged investments
2. Those who create their own investments

You know which are the most successful. In order to be one of those people you need to know what to look for and how to respond.

You must:

1. Find a good deal other people have missed.
2. Raise the capital needed for the transaction.
3. Put together a svelte team to execute the plan.

There is risk involved in every acquisition. The goal is not to avoid the risk, but to respond to the risk with confidence and a steady hand.

If you need help identifying potential money-makers, where to get the capital you need and how to put together a smart team, try our FREE test drive to gain access to our resources and tools.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

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Getting Out of the Rat Race and Onto Your Journey of Creating Wealth

Get Out of the Rat Race

We’ve all worked jobs we hated. We were underpaid, underappreciated and bored out of our minds. We either quit these jobs or were fired for poor performance because we just gave up. Instead of taking that approach you need to consider every job an opportunity to learn something new that you can apply down the line to find success.

When you give people the tools they need to come up with unordinary solutions, you are enhancing their lives for the long run. You need to take this approach. What if one of your terrible jobs had been one with no pay at all and you needed to come up with some ingenious ways of making money? I bet you could have found a diamond in that rough. This idea can also be used in your own company.

Now, I don’t recommend going into the next meeting declaring that no one will receive pay anymore, but you can tell them that their potential raises, bonuses and other perks are now dependent on their creativity in ways to enhance business.

Let’s talk about a great concept called financial literacy. This certainly isn’t something they taught you in school, but is still essential to know. So, what is financial literacy?

The old school way teaches people to be good employees and not employers. This mindset will never make you wealthy. You need to focus on becoming a good employer. You also need to learn how to not only attain wealth, but sustain wealth for generations. This is what financial literacy is all about.

So, how do you get out of the rat race and start working toward a wealthier future? You need to understand the difference between an asset and a liability. Take a look at your own life and you’ll probably find the following:

Assets

• Real Estate
• Stocks
• Bonds

• Intellectual Property

Liabilities

• Mortgage
• Consumer Loans
• Credit Cards

You’ve probably been fooled into thinking things like your house, car and entertainment system are assets. They aren’t! Assets should be continuing to MAKE you money. When you continue to struggle, you are not building wealth. If you’re primary income is from wages and each time you make more money, you pay taxes-you’re not really creating wealth either, are you?

So, if buying a house isn’t an asset (and, it’s not because you spend about 30 years of your life paying it off), then what is. Here are some of the best assets to attain and when you can start to actually see wealth being created because of it:

Average time of holding on to an asset before selling it for a higher value:

1 year

• Stocks (Startups and small companies are good investments)
• Bonds
• Mutual funds

7 years

• Real estate
• Notes (IOUs)
• Royalties on intellectual property
• Valuables that produce income or appreciate

So, here are the steps to getting out of the rat race and onto your journey of creating wealth:

1. Understand the difference between an asset and a liability.
2. Concentrate your efforts on buying income-earning assets.
3. Focus on keeping liabilities and expenses at a minimum.
4. Mind your own business.

If you need help getting out of the poor mindset and into the wealthy one, try our FREE test drive and let’s look at working together.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

We went through the first three and next time we’ll talk about how to mind your own business to keep your eye on the prize.

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

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Steps to Create a Word of Mouth Campaign

Prepare for Lift Off!

Last time I gave you a laundry list of tips and tricks you can use to make your word of mouth program work for you. Hopefully you’ve taken a look and decided which ones are the best fit for your company, products, services and target customers, so you can put them to work in your word of mouth campaign.

We are going to wrap up this series on word of mouth where we give you the specific steps to create a word of mouth campaign.

Now, let’s take a look at those steps:

1. Seed the market. Find some way to get the product into the hands of key influencers.
2. Provide a channel for the influencers to talk and get all fired up about your product.
3. Offers lots of testimonials and other resources.
4. Form an ongoing group that meets once a year in a resort and once a month by teleconference.
5. Create fun events to bring users together and invite non-users. Saturn, Harley-Davidson, and Lexus have all been successful with this approach.
6. Develop cassettes, videotapes, and clips on your Web site featuring enthusiastic customers talking with other enthusiastic customers.
7. Create custom CDs for each potential customer.
8. Hold seminars and workshops.
9. Create a club with membership benefits.
10. Pass out flyers.
11. Tell friends.
12. Offer special incentives and discounts for friends who tell their friends.
13. Put the Internet to work.
14. Do at least one outrageous thing to generate word of mouth.
15. Empower employees to go the extra mile.
16. Encourage networking and brainstorm ideas.
17. Run special sales.
18. Encourage referrals with the use of a strong referral program.
19. Use a script to tell people exactly what to say in their word of mouth communication.

These are all amazing ways you can get the word out about your products and services and start a word of mouth campaign that takes on a life of its own. Before you can release your word of mouth campaign out into the world, you need to go through the checklist to make sure you’ve covered all the essentials.

Here’s your word of mouth campaign checklist:

1. Are all of your communications sending the same simple message? If it can’t survive word of mouth, it’s not a compelling story.
2. Is your product positioned as part of a category? Ex.”A dandruff shampoo that doesn’t dry your hair.”
3. Are your examples outrageous enough to be shared?
4. Do you enhance your materials with success stories from real people?
5. Are you using experts effectively and in an objective manner?
6. Have you created mechanisms so people can follow up on the word of mouth they hear, as well as simple ways of inquiring or ordering?
7. Have you made the decision process easy for customers?
8. Have you created events and mechanisms so that once a year your prospects hear about your product, and it is easier to try or buy?

These are all essential elements to take keep in mind when taking a second or even third check over your word of mouth campaigns. I hope you’ve found this series on word of mouth to be a great resource and are getting ready to put it into action for your own products and services.

Remember, if you need help with anything in this series, try our FREE test drive to gain access to the best resources, tools and business coaches you can find.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

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Learn The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing

Put it to Work!

In the last post we talked about how to conduct word of mouth research and then put that research to work. Today we’re going to give you some great tried and true ways to use word of mouth when building and executing your campaign.

We’ve done it in a list form, so you can go through and highlight the ones you want to put into action. These are offered by George Silverman which you can find in his amazing book The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing.

Here they are:

• Give them something worth talking about
• Cater to your initial customers shamelessly
• Give them incentives to engage in word of mouth
• Ask them to tell their friends
• The customer is always right
• Always tell the truth
• Surprise the customers by giving them a little more than they expected
• Give them a reason to buy, make them come back and refuse service from anyone else other than you
• Make eye contact, and smile, even through the telephone
• Find ways to make doing business with you a little better: a warmer greeting, a cleaner floor, nicer lighting, a better shopping bag, extra matches, faster service, free delivery, lower prices, more selection.
• Never be annoyed when a customer asks you to change a large bill even if he doesn’t buy anything.
• The customer is your reason for being. Never take her for granted. If you do, she will never come back, and will go straight to your competition.
• Always dust off items, but never let the customer see you doing it.
• Never embarrass a customer, especially by making him feel ignorant.
• Never answer a question coming from a desire to show how smart you are. Answer with a desire to help the customer make the best decision.
• Never shout across the store, “How much are these condoms?” or anything about the personal items a customer is buying.
• When you don’t know, say so. Do whatever you can to find out the answer.
• Every customer is special. Try to remember their names.
• Don’t allow known shoplifters into the store.
• Don’t ever let two sales staff talk when a customer is waiting. The worst thing you can do is count your cash while a customer is waiting.
• If you can suggest something better, they will be grateful. Always respect their choice.
• Never pressure anyone into buying anything.
• Never knowingly give bad advice. Just help people come to the right decision.
• Personally visit the store of the competition or assign people to visit and report back to you.
• Hire a shopping service to prepare periodic reports on how your people are treating your customers.
• If you hear of a store where the management is insulting the customers, buy it, then put up the sign “Under New Management” outside. Then sell it later based on the increased sales.
• One expert (in the drugstore’s case, a nurse or physician) who is convinced you are better brings hundreds of customers and their friends through word of mouth.
• Always look for ways to make a stranger a customer.
• People will walk several blocks to save a dollar, or see a smile, or be treated right.
• Always run a sale promotion or an offbeat event. Make them come back to see what you are cooking up next.
• Use the best sign-maker you can find and pay him more than anybody else.
• If someone is mad at you, they will tell everyone who will listen for as long as they are angry, maybe even longer. So correct any dissatisfaction, and ask customers to send their friends.
• Treat your employees and salespeople who sell to you the same way you treat your customers.
• Have a zero error system. There may be terrible consequences for example, if a mistake is made filling a prescription. Have people check each other’s work for safety.
• Occasionally make intentional mistakes to see if people are checking.
• Always measure your performance.
• Always ask a customer to “come back soon”
• If customers say they are moving away, offer to send them their favorite items by mail.
• Tell jokes.

I know this is a lot of information to digest, so I we’re going to wrap up this lesson and leave you with the homework of going through and taking a look at the tips and tricks you like best. Also, look for tips that fit your company, products, services and target customers for the most effectiveness.

If you need help with this process, try our FREE test drive and get all the help you need from myself, Nancy Baki, a Business Growth Strategist.

Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour

To Your Success,

Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions

www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com

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