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How many times should you "touch" your customers?

Guest post by: Peter Geisheker

Article Overview: Here is how a successful retail clothing store "touched" their clients to dominate their market...

How many times should you "touch" your customers?

As I have mentioned many times, the key to success in marketing is to choose a niche market and then dominate it by using repetitive marketing. What I mean by repetitive marketing is marketing to both your customers and the prospects in your niche market over and over...forever. This keeps your company fresh in the minds of your customers and prospects.

Here is the marketing campaign a very successful retail clothing store uses over a 1-year time period to absolutely dominate their market:

18 mailings (direct mail - sales letters/promos)
4 personal calls from their sales associate
4 Telephone Voice Broadcasts
52 weekly emails

That is a total of 78 contacts (also known as "touches") per year to each prospect and customer. And, each prospect and customer is being contacted using 3 different marketing channels - direct mail, the telephone, and email. Very, very smart!

If you want to dominate your marketplace, the way to do it is with repetitive marketing. If you are only contacting your customers and prospects a few times per year, you are going to get killed by your competitors. Make it a rule that you should contact every customer and prospect in your database a minimum of once per month and contact them using different channels such as direct mail, phone calls, email, faxes, thank you notes, etc. If you do this, you will quickly dominate your marketplace and have very loyal customers.

Related Articles
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  Marketing and the Complex Sale
  Are you out of "touch"?

Article Tags: direct mail, email faxes, loyal customers, mail phone, mail sales, marketing campaign, marketing channels, marketplace, niche market, prospects, retail clothing store, sales letters, time period



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Re: Is Bulk Mailing useful for promotion - Thanks for the tips will try profollow and mailchimp. I have tried with cc, aweber, icontact and interspire. Every software has its own pros and cons. Yes, opt-ins are good to get in touch with customers who are interested to hear from you. But what about the other potential customers who are not opted but they also might be interested in my product and services. Don't the real potential target customer are sitting outside and search for our products? How do we proactively in touch with them? Thanks, Robert
Re: How to network for inventors - Hi Kevin, You need to find ways to keep in touch and stay top of mind. What I've done, for example, is created a list of the most important 30 people that I want to stay in touch with. Some of top authors, some are customers, some are partners, some are prospects, etc. I make a point to find a way to stay in touch with them every month by helping them out. I'll look for articles that might support their business, try to make introductions that will be useful and invite them to events that they will find valuable. You can't do this for everyone you meet because you also have your business to run and it can be time consuming but try to separate your list out so you find ways to stay in touch with the most important people who can have a significant impact on your company.
Re: Marketing to Wealthy Consumers - Hi Russell - lots of great ideas so far! I haven't seen talk about referrals yet though. It's the most powerful way to reach more wealthy consumers if you already have an established base. I'm assuming that your customers may be repeat clients but there is a long time period between purchases (they don't come every month for a new item). Have you tried any referral programs for existing customers or thought of a way to stay in touch with your customers on a regular basis so at least they keep your company top of mind?
What are reasons to stay in touch with your customers? - What are some creative reasons to stay in touch with your customers?
Re: What are reasons to stay in touch with your customers? - Hi Everyone, Thank you all for your answers, but I think my question was misinterpreted (I probably should have phrased it better). While staying in touch with customers is vital to any business' success, what I really wanted to know was... what are some of the reasons/excuses to contact your customer to say "thank you" or to just stay in touch. For instance, if your customer has been shopping with your business for 1 year or has spent "x" amount of dollars with your business or it's his/her birthday... what are some other reasons? Thanks


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