We all associate reminders with outstanding bills: bills we have to pay or bills our customers have to pay, not happy reminders to send or receive.
But how would you regard reminders that bring in extra turnover for your business? Would you call those happy reminders? I would (and do).
The online shop of InterFlora is a great example of how to create Happy Reminders: everyone who orders a delivery of flowers (or bouquet, or plant) online is asked: would you like us to remind you next year by email of this
occasion?
Anyone who has had the wrath of his partner for forgetting an anniversary will be very happy to be reminded this simple way: won’t that bring you extra Brownie Points?
InterFlora also asks if they should remind you in the same simple way of any other anniversaries you might forget: wedding days, birthdays etc and not just of your partner but also for other family or friends anniversaries. All happy reminders where you score Brownie Points; all extra simple turnover for InterFlora.
I’m sure every business can think of a service or (add-on) product they can promote by simply reminding their customers of the existence of it. All you need is a simple database with customer details, mail-merging it to a ‘standard’ letter in order to ‘automate’ these reminders and start sending them out on a regular base.
At Wood You Like we remind every new customer 1 month after purchasing a wooden floor about maintenance: we stock the (add-on) maintenance products but also offer maintenance service for a fixed price.
And every 6 months we repeat this reminder. (It’s recommend that every 5 - 6 months wooden floors receive an additional maintenance layer).
All it costs us is one simple click to create the automated letters once a month, two sheets of paper, one envelope and 1 stamp per reminder. The ROI is amazing.
Happy Reminders: simple, low-cost and effective.
Funnily enough I came up with that exact idea for a local florist in Ashford about 4 years ago with the added function that they could put their family members birthdays onto the website and it would send you a reminder so you wouldn't forget. Glad to see at least someone is doing it.
With regards to reminders to our current customers, I sometime find we forget about our aftersales possibilities because we are so focused on getting new sales. The age old advice I give my clients is "it costs 5 times more to make x from a new client than it does to make x from a current customer".
Maybe i should take notice of my own advice sometimes:-)
Posted by: Mike Perk | October 12, 2006 at 05:03 PM
Reminders are a great and simple way of generating new business. I've noticed that people really are touched by the fact that you have taken the care to remember (whether automated or manual) their birthday or anniversary.
We at World Wide Creative have the technology to do this, but instead we don't take the time to implement it.
Talk about being a skinny chef! You have just inspired me to open up this conversation again.
Posted by: Freddy Rodrigues | October 13, 2006 at 08:42 AM