Lesson 3 – Building Your Customer Database

In the last lesson we discussed the fact that there were ways that you could increase your profits without spending additional capital on advertising:

1) Convert more of your prospects to customers
2) Get your customers to buy more products or services
3) Get your customer to move up in price for their purchase to get more value

One method that we didn’t discuss was to get your customer to come more often to your website, store or location.  If you can get every customer to buy one or two times more per year than they would have done otherwise, you will have significantly increased your profits without having spent more money on advertising.

One of the best ways to do that is to have a customer database of some kind.  There are a number of ways to build one and you should use every available avenue to reach your potential customer.  Some of your clients will like to get notifications by email some will like them in their social media streams, still others would like to receive SMS contact.  Regardless of how you do it, you need a way to communicate helpful information to those who have purchased or may be interested in purchasing from your business.

The formula for maintaining a successful customer database is capture, communicate and reward.

Capture: First, you need to have a way of encouraging would-be customers to give you their contact information for the purpose of keeping in contact with them.  Everyplace your customer comes in contact with your business, they should have the chance of becoming part of your database.

Communicate: Second, you must be in contact with the people on your database on a regular basis.  You can call it a newsletter or .  You can do it by email, regular mail or by mobile device.  In order to get people to come back to your store or your website, you will need to make sure they are aware of your sales pricing and what your business is up to.

Reward: For being your customer or getting your newsletter there should be some ‘insider’ perk or reward.  Give them opportunities to get special information and pricing unavailable anyplace else but your notices. This will encourage them to stay in your database.

In our next lesson, we will discuss how you can start building up that database with new customers by doing joint ventures and strategic alliances.  However, if you don’t have a database set up to capture more customers, we can help you.  Call today so that we can show you what kind of database is right for your business.