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Great Strategies To Keep Customers Coming Back (1) |
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1. Build an unbeatable bundle of products and services. Take a
cue from Amazon.com: If you want to keep your customers, make sure they
can get what they want without leaving your premises. Amazon may have
started selling books, but today, surfers stay in its online store for
greeting cards, music, videos, tools, toys, software, and with the zShops
initiative, to shop as many small, independently-owned stores as the company
can cram into cyberspace.
2. Give your customers an incentive to come back. Be it a gift,
a discount, special financing, or a chance to win what's behind Curtain
#1, customers come back for incentives. McDonald's cashed in on the Beanie
Babie craze by offering a series of specially designed Teenie Beanies
with its Happy Meals for kids. The promotion generated so much business
in 1998 that the burger giant ran it again this year.
3. Tap into the power of communities of interest. Try thinking
about your customers as a community and your company as the common connection
they all share. To get a feel for how strong that bond can be, just drop
in on the 60th annual Harley-Davidson rally in Sturgis, South Dakota in
August 2000 and suggest that some other company builds a better bike.
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4. Stand behind your work and reap the rewards of trust. If your
customers don't trust you, they won't come back. Period. But, if they
do, you can survive the roughest seas. There is only one maker of refillable
lighters left in the U.S., the Zippo Manufacturing Company. What makes
Zippo so special? The simple, unequivocal lifetime warranty: "It works
or we fix it free."
5. Support good works and your customers will support you. Doing
well by doing good is a powerful loyalty builder. Just ask children's
clothing maker Hanna. Its "Hannadowns" program encourages customers to
return their purchases when their kids have stopped wearing them. The
customers get a 20% discount on their next order, Hanna keeps the customer
buying, and the needy get 10,000 articles of returned clothing per month.
Everybody wins.
6. Show your appreciation to every customer. Thoughtfulness counts.
Industrial cleaning products maker New Pig Corporation provides its telephone
reps with fast access to an assortment of greeting cards. Mention that
your favorite football team won on Sunday and a day or two later, the
postman delivers a congratulations card from the company.
For Strategy
7-12, click here
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Written by Donna Greiner & Theodore B. Kinni
1,001 Ways To Keep Customers Coming Back is available in bookstores. Copies
signed by the authors are available direct from The Business Reader at
a 25% discount from the cover price. Please e-mail your request to bizbooks@gte.net
or phone The Business Reader at 757-258-4746.
Endorsed by Jimsun, from www.addto.com:
your e-commerce community!
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