How Often Should You Contact Your Clients?

After send thing out this week’s ezine. I got an email from Sarah Jane a client of mine asking: can you contact clients TOO often?

I have a rather simplistic approach to this, one that sounds brutal - and frankly, most small business owners too shy to adopt it - but one that has help me though the years in my own business.

"Mail to them till they buy… "

But to explain: the best sales and marketing minds in the world agree that it's almost impossible to contact your clients too often. As a rule of thumb, your clients should get at least one 'touch' from you every single month of the year.

Sound impossible? Think for a minute. 48 touches a year doesn't mean you're pitching something to them every single week. A 'touch' can be any one of dozens of 'points of contact'.
Let's have a look at this in detail, and break it down into bite-sized chunks.

Ezine: you should be doing no less than one a month. That's 12 touches in a year. Your ezine is your 'Trojan Horse' - it turns you from being an 'unwelcome pest' into a 'welcome guest', because it provides a means by which you can make a 'soft sell', cloaked in useful/personal/newsy information. It's not ALL pitch.

And for those of you who moan "I don't have the time to do a newsletter every month", "My ezine without doubt makes me serious money every month." So, if you're complaining about lack of time to do a monthly ezine, what you're actually saying is that you're too busy working on the tools to actually make any money.

Birthday cards: once a year, obviously. But you can include a Gift Voucher.

Client Appreciation Evenings: not every client will come, of course, but you invite ALL of them by mail. Another touch, say four times a year.

Monthly specials: clients want to be alerted to special offers. Another 12 touches.

Special 'Event' Driven promotions: You can count more than a dozen of them without trying e.g. Mothers Day, Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving and so on… plus any number of others you can simply invent, eg National Bad Hair Day. Another dozen 'touches’ or more.

They add up, folks. I haven't done the sums, but just in the points above, there are probably 40 or 50 'touches'.

Here's the thing: If your clients feel they are getting 'too much' from you, they will tell you and unsubscribe. Those that unsubscribe will never buy anything from you anyway. Those that stay love it.

The crime is NOT sending enough information to your clients. Don't market timidly for fear of upsetting one or two of the masses. Market aggressively up to the point - but not beyond - where you pee everybody off. And only THEN back it off a little:-)

Sound like a lot of work but it's not?



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Online entrepreneur Joyce Oladipo, "Business Growth and Marketing Mentor," is creator of the winning Business Abundance E-zine to Immediately and Exponentially Growing Your Business offline and online. To Discover the 19 Secrets to Immediate and Exponential Business Growth, visit http://www.BeAWealthyEntrepreneur.com