Reactivating Inactive Customers

Want more customers? Try reactivating customers who haven’t purchased from you in a while. These are people who have already shown an interest in your company and your products by purchasing from you in the past.  When looking to boost sales, they are a natural place to start.

There are two ways you can approach these customers.

First is to simply attempt to re-engage them with discounts, special offers, and surveys to find out whether they are still engaged with your brand at any level. If they are no longer purchasing from you, you want to find out why. You can use static re-engagement mailings, personalized re-engagement mailings, or personalized URLs for feedback and surveys.

Second is to use outside data resources to gain insight into inactive customer behavior and thereby increase your chances of re-engaging with them.

Let’s say you know that your inactive customer purchased from you 90 days ago, but before that, it was 240 days ago. You might also know the size, color, and item purchased. A list agency like Epsilon can often give you significant additional information on these customers. For example, it might tell you that this same customer purchased 35 days ago from a competitor, has purchased seven times in the past year with your competitors, spends an average of $150 with each order, and that his or her last purchase was 15 days ago.

That is tremendous insight that can help you understand how to re-engage with that customer again. In fact, Epsilon found that while response rates to rental lists averages 1.2%, response rates from house files averages 2.68%. It might take a little more work, but the return is far better.

So before looking outside for new customers, consider rekindling relationships with inactive customers. Use your existing data and additional third-party data to guide your messaging to re-engage those customers and get them purchasing from you over and over again.

 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing and Business Development

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

Good QR Code, Bad QR Code

QR Codes have been called the marketing tool that marketers love to hate. Why? Because so many seem to provide absolutely no value.

Perhaps you scan a QR Code and it doesn’t go anywhere at all. Perhaps you get an error or the page to which the code points doesn’t exist. Perhaps you see a QR Code on a product you are interested in, so you scan the code and end up at a manufacturer’s non-mobile website where you get lost in a maze of links so dense that you forget why you went there in the first place.

Does this mean that QR Codes are a waste of time? No. It means not enough thought was put into creating them.

When you are thinking about creating a QR Code, the first thing you should do is ask yourself, “What purpose do I want this code to serve? What do I want the person scanning it to get out of it?” If you don’t have a good answer, wait until you do.

A great example of QR Code use is Best Buy. When you enter a Best Buy store, all of the products have QR Codes. When scanned, the codes take you to products specs, customer reviews, and other information not available on the shelf talkers or product packaging that will help them make a purchase decision. The QR Code puts the information in the customer’s hands at the very time that they need it — as they are making the decision. That’s a QR Code used well.

Contrast that with a QR Code placed on a lawnmower that takes you to the manufacturer’s corporate site. Or a QR Code on a “house for sale” sign that takes you to the realtor’s entire inventory. Those are QR Codes used poorly. It’s not the QR Code that’s the problem. It’s the lack of thought behind it.

When creating QR Codes, think about the end use!

 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

 

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” 

Warren Buffett