Fresh Marketing Strategies to Revitalize Your Retail Business

Can’t Miss Marketing Ideas You Can Use Now!

Ritchie Sayner

Tired of hammering your customers with the same old markdown message?

Are too many good customers “opting out” of your email blasts? If so I have a couple of fresh marketing strategies with proven success.

Customer Appreciation Letter

The first one is a customer appreciation letter that is sure to garner over a 50% return if past history is any indication. For this to be effective you must have a customer’s name email or mailing address (preferably both) and the ability to know how much they have spent with you in the past twelve months. Run the list in descending order starting with the customers who have spent the most with you down to those who may have only made one or two purchases in the past year. There will most likely be a handful of names at the very top and you probably can name most of them. These are your very best customers—the customers who love your store unconditionally shop frequently and spend a ton.

• Platinum Customers: Depending on the size of your operation this might be five to ten names perhaps more maybe less. Let’s call these the “platinum” customers just so we can keep the designations simple. The second step is to establish an arbitrary qualifier for platinum status. In this case let’s specify customers who spent over my keyword0000 with you as “platinum.”
• Gold Customers: The next level will be identified as your “gold” customers. These folks are also very good customers and might drop between $5000-10000 with you.
• Silver Shoppers: A “silver” shopper spends $2000-5000 and will make up a much larger group than platinum or gold.
• Bronze Patrons: Your “bronze” patrons comprise the last group. These are folks who spent less than $2000 and will represent the largest number of shoppers.

The sales volume qualifiers are arbitrary. Yours might be more or less depending on how your customer list comes out.

Customer Appreciation Letter

Now that you have your shopper list in hand write a letter which will be mailed or emailed over the owner’s signature. This letter is going to express your gratitude for supporting the store shopping local achieving “gold” status etc. Along with the letter will be a gift card or store credit in the following denominations:

• Platinum = my keyword00
• Gold = $75
• Silver = $50
• Bronze = $20

You must put a tight “use by” window on the letter to encourage quick response preferably no more than 30-45 days. Obviously you will “make an exception” for anyone who wants to use their gift past the expiration date because they are special customers right? And please no other rules e.g. can only be used on full price merchandise can’t be used on this or that. Remember this is supposed to be a customer appreciation letter.

Keep track of how much is spent on each card. My experience doing this for many years is that the response is quick the return rate is surprisingly good the amount spent is way over the value of the card and the good will generated is incredible.

Part Two: Follow-Up Letter

This is a follow-up letter for customers on your list that have not shopped with you for over a year. Your goal is to find out why they are shopping with you now. This letter will begin:

Dear ____

We miss you! Did we drop the ball? Or wording to that effect. Articulate the changes you have made the new lines you are carrying any new locations that have been added the updated website address etc. Provide the store number and invite them to call you personally if there is a problem. You need to know this you want to know this right? Include $20 with the letter again with a tight “use by” date to encourage urgency. The obvious goal is to see how many former customers you can get back. You might also be able to correct a problem you previously knew nothing about. At the very least this exercise will help you clean up your mailing list.

Allow me to share a personal story with you.

A few months back my wife decided she would close her account at a well-known specialty store. Far be it for me to name names so let’s just say it was a high-profile Northwestern retailer with 353 locations that began in the shoe business and has a reputation for outstanding customer service.

Her reasons primarily dealt with lack of selection and what she felt was inadequate sales help not meeting the standards she was accustomed to from previous experiences with said retailer. Within two weeks of closing the account she received what I would call a form letter signed by the president inviting a phone call if further discussion was warranted.

That opening to my wife is like honey to a bee. The number was dialed and answered not surprisingly by a secretary who promised a return call. A call actually came the next day from the President of stores who spent over twenty minutes asking probing and truly interested in what went wrong and what could be done to fix the problem. He wasn’t defensive or accusatory; he really wanted to know what they could do better. He understood her concerns even agreeing with many of them.

The morale of the story is clear.

If the president of a prominent national chain can take the time to engage with a disgruntled customer why shouldn’t an independent retail owner be able to do the same thing? In this case size really doesn’t matter. If you have one store or twenty the point is to engage and communicate with your customers especially when there are “issues.”

I would suggest doing this personally and not delegate what might be perceived as an unpleasant task to a customer service person. After all customer service along with customer experience is truly what distinguishes the independent brick and mortar retailer from all others.

Ritchie Sayner

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