Thank Your Customers! http://thankacustomer.com Referral Marketing at its best Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:34:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 en How to Maintain Year-Round Relationships With Greeting Card Marketing http://thankacustomer.com/how-to-maintain-year-round-relationships-with-greeting-card-marketing/ http://thankacustomer.com/how-to-maintain-year-round-relationships-with-greeting-card-marketing/#comments Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:53:06 +0000 http://thankacustomer.com/how-to-maintain-year-round-relationships-with-greeting-card-marketing/ If you think that that the "Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am" approach works in today's long-term business environments, you'd better guess again. In some environments, a quick 'thank you' is as almost as offensive as not thanking a customer at all! To fully show appreciation for consumer patronage (and pick up additional business along the way), you've got to reinforce at least 7 touch points a year.

Timing Marketing Materials With Strategy

Greeting cards are an inexpensive yet effective tool to remind your customers that you're still around, that you care, and that you have some wonderful products or services to share. One key to making greeting card marketing work as intended is sending cards at appropriate times.

The 7 Touch Points

Seasonal greeting card marketing attempts to communicate with customers 12 times a year. Strategy greeting card marketing attempts to communicate with customers about 7 times a year. Although we don't recommend that you use both approaches, you can certainly combine them as long as a customer receives only one card a month. Receiving more than one card a month may be overwhelming and worse, it could lose its intended effect.

1st card Sent immediately
2nd card Sent 1 month later
3rd card Sent 2-3 months later
4th card Sent 4-5 months later
5th card Sent 6-7 months later
6th card Sent 8-9 months later
7th card Sent 10-12 months later

The 1st card thanks the customer for a purchase and gently introduces a line of back-end products or asks for referrals The main purpose of this card is gratitude, so advertising should be minimal and placed along a single line or two of text in small type, normally in the format of asking for their referrals, and simply including your contact information.

The remaining cards should follow the same format as the 1st, however to make an impression, their main messages should be appropriate for the months or occasions in which they're sent. Promotions in these cards may introduce new products and services, time-limited offers, benefits, bonuses, testimonials, and more.

Give us a test run and send a free card now!

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