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This issue focuses on the importance of promoting to customers as these efforts usually result in high rates of return.

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Selling To Your Customers

A Proven Way To Increase Sales and Profits

By Bob Stimolo

Many school marketers do a thorough job of prospecting, making sure their seasonal promotions mail on a regular basis. But few do a thorough job of mailing special promotions to customers. Customer promotions are important because those promotions usually result in high rates of return.

Why It Should Work

Customer mailings are profitable because of a number of factors. First and foremost, the target is active buyers, the best possible list one could select. Second, because the mailing goes to active buyers, the promotion format does not have to be terribly elaborate for it to receive attention because customers will recognize a familiar company name. Third, active buyers will respond to a good offer at rates significantly higher than prospects.

The Offer Is Always Critical To Success

The most successful customer promotions provide a motivation to act immediately. The approach proven most effective is a special offer with a specific expiration date. When doing customer promotions, one can gear the offer to customers only, thereby lending credence to its “special” aspects.

Most school marketers that engage in regular customer promotions report success through price discounts. An assortment of discounted items are presented with large discounts on some items and small discounts on others. Some items are at full or close to full price to allow a decent overall margin in the product mix.

A popular format for customer promotions of this type is a multi-page letter, sometimes supplemented with a flyer. One-color, 8 1/2” x 11” pieces in a #10 envelope make these promotions relatively inexpensive to produce and mail, increasing their profitability.

E-marketing

E-marketing to customers has a high success rate. Some marketers broadcast specials and sales at regular intervals to customers via email. Customers’ email addresses are collected on order forms or through inbound 800 numbers. Customers are more willing to provide their email address if asked to do so for the purpose of confirming orders or shipments or so they can be contacted should there be a problem with their order. Other marketers use services offered by compilers that append e-mal addresses to their customer files and send the emails out for them.

Some companies generate e-newsletters as a way of mainataining and building their email files. Some offer sales and discounts in conjunction with their e-newsletters while others do it as a separate event.

Almost als companies that employ e-marketing report that emailing sales promotions to customers works well for them. However, it’s important to include a clearly marked opt out provision so that a recipient or subscriber can discontinue receiving e-marketing correspondence with the simple click of a mouse.

Many school marketers conduct their email campaigns seasonally, such as a follow up to a catallg mailing. Others do so more frequently, especially those that offer sales along with their newsletters.

The cost of email promotions is considerably lower than direct mail, as long as you have your own email addresses. If you have to use a service and rent addresses the costs rise appreciably. Prospecting with email addresses has a much lower success rate just as you would expect to find with direct mail.

Selecting Product

There are two types of product offerings which have proven most successful for customer promotions. One is high volume, popular product (particularly if it is consumable material). The other is new product, either absolutely new, or new versions and add-ons to popular existing product.

Many marketers would prefer to attempt to sell slow moving items or even non-moving items, but these tend to result in a poor customer promotion or one which yields little or no profit. If it is not possible to sell certain products through normal marketing channels, odds are they will not move well among customers. The possible exception is an extreme price cut as in a clearance sale.

Creating The Customer Promotion Theme

It’s a nice touch to create a theme for a customer sale because it gives the recipient a context in which to view the sale and lends the whole promotion credibility. A “back to school” sale, a “warehouse clearance” sale, a “Christmas” sale, a “holiday” sale, or an annual “customers are terrific” sale are a few suggestions. The possibilities are almost endless.

Sales with product themes can also be successful such as a “teacher’s aids” sale, a “duplicating master” sale, or an “office supply” sale. And, of course, concepts can be combined to create a “teacher’s aids warehouse clearance” sale or “duplicating masters holiday” sale.

Opening Salvos

Customer promotions should get right to the point. Rather than open with pretty covers or high impact graphics as a prospect promotion might, I prefer going right to the selling in a sale promotion, or right to the critical benefits in a new product promotion.

Timing

Customer mailings can follow regular mailings made to both prospects and customers. They are additional opportunities and can be dropped in the mail anywhere from 2 weeks to up to 2 months after a major mailing. Customer mailings are additional promotion opportunities since customer lists should be included in with the regular mailing.

If you don’t produce customer mailings now, give them a try. You’ll find them low in cost yet high in return. If you are currently mailing customer promotions, try one more. If that’s successful, try another and so forth until the productivity drops to an unacceptable level. You should find them a lucrative source of revenue.

Between Issues is delivered between issues of SMRI’s monthly publication titled School Marketing Newsletter (SMN). SMN is an informative resource that is exclusively devoted to all aspects of marketing to educators. Each month all 12 pages are filled with specific and proven ways to increase sales and deliver improved profits. Inside information from nationally recognized authorities, insights from school personnel, market trends, technology updates, and step-by-step “how-to” articles for improving your sales are just some of the valuable information you’ll find in every issue. For more information or to request a free sample of SMN, click on this link http://www.smriinc.com/newsletterpage.html.