How Well Does Your Company Communicate With Your Customers?
Your company is great at marketing right? You collect thousands of names of interested prospects at shows and events each year. Your canvass team brings in a lot of appointments. You get leads that call in from print advertising, direct mail, the Internet, and you might even get a referral from a satisfied customer once in a while. Sound familiar?
Most successful home improvement contractors are very good at building a database of prospects that have an interest in their products and services. However, our research has shown that most contractors are under utilizing this very precious asset. What do we mean by under utilize? They set appointments and sell products to those people that are looking to buy their product “right now,” but they do a poor job of nurturing those prospects who are looking to purchase at some point in the future. They also do an extremely poor job of communicating with prior customers to solicit future business and ask for referrals. How does your company compare? Ask these questions about your company:
- If 75% of the appointments my company runs sit for demos — what am I doing about the other 25%?
- If 35% of my demos close, what am I doing about the other 65% that I don’t close?
- What is my company doing to regularly communicate with all those prospects who sign up at shows and events, but don’t immediately set an appointment?
- What is my company doing to communicate with prior customers to tell them about new products, promotions I am running, special events or just to solicit referrals?
- How different would my overall marketing costs look like if 20% of revenues came from repeat and referral business and 20% came from my existing database?
Consider these statistics:
- 70-90% of marketing generated leads are not acted on because sales finds them unqualified. (META Group)
- 9 out of 10 sales reps reportedly give up on their individual leads after just two calls. (MarketingSherpa).
If the subjects of Asset Recovery — getting more business from your company database, and Referral Solicitation — getting your past customers to recommend you to friends are on your mind, you need to talk with Three Deep Marketing. (If these topics aren’t on your mind — they should be!)
Our company specializes in developing automated email and direct mail campaigns that systematically communicate targeted messages at predetermined intervals to your prospects at specific stages of the engagement cycle. These systems keep your company in the prospects top of mind, and nurture them so that when they are ready to buy — you’ll be the company they call first. (Instead of hearing “We went with another company” when you finally get around to calling them.)
We can develop mixed email / direct mail campaigns for different types of customers:
Prospect Nurturing campaigns for sales inquiries that aren’t ready to set an appointment yet. These messages inform the prospect of the key benefits of owning your product and the company credentials that separate you from your competition. You can also include special offers to stimulate prospects to initiate an appointment.
Follow Up campaigns for prospects who’ve received a product quote but haven’t purchased yet. These messages might have special offers to stimulate them to act. These messages will impress prospects with your before sale communication, further separating your company from your competitors.
Construction Process campaigns for new customers to welcome them to your company, and informing them of key milestones in your job production cycle.
Customer Service campaigns for completed customers to solicit and collect customer service survey information, and send periodic messages informing them of new products, special offers or company events.
Referral Solicitation campaigns keep your company name, and special referral incentive program information in your customers top of mind awareness to keep your referral stream coming in. It’s a fact that in order to be a referable company, you have to have a systematic process to ask for and collect referrals. We build those systems!
Email communication is often the most targeted way to communicate with today’s consumer. Our programs can integrate with your company’s current contact management system, and prospects can be loaded into campaigns quickly and easily. Your messages go out systematically, and suddenly your company is the leader in your market in terms of communicating with your prospects. This is a sustainable competitive advantage that will keep your competitors struggling to keep up!
