The Organ Grinder’s Monkey

Ah, the forgotten customer. You know, the folks on your list you haven’t connected with in so long it makes you cringe when you think about emailing them now - that is, if you’ve ever spoke to them at all, after they bought your product or service.

You were an idiot. Maybe you didn’t have a good system in place to stay in touch when they bought your product. Maybe you don’t even have one now. Maybe you just got caught up in the day to day rush of doing business and making sales and forgot. So all these perfectly nice customers wound up getting shoved off into a dark corner somewhere, where you would occasionally stumble over them and remind yourself that you really do need to do something about that, before hurrying back off to whatever it was you were doing.

Now you’re embarrassed. You’re ashamed. You don’t know how to even begin reconnecting after all this time. And yet, these people are your customers. They deserve your attention. And you really should, you know, do something about that.

Sean D’Souza recently sent out a brilliant how-to piece about reconnecting with people on your list who you may have lost touch with - or never even touched base with in the first place - without going crazy. He even includes a helpful contact letter template you can use, if you can’t think of what to say on you’re own. (And no, you can’t use, “It’s not you, it’s me.” That is sooooo 1990s.)

I worked with a bed company that had 3500 customers that they hadn’t contacted in over 10 years (talk about a loooooooooooong time). All we did was put the customer database together. We sent out letters to each and every customer with a discount voucher.

And guess what?

In the next month, customers who hadn’t been to the store for nearly a decade, walked in and bought products from sheets to beds. Needless to say, the bed company was hitting themselves on the wall, for not doing this mail out earlier.

Tags: Customers //