Uncover the Power of Getting to Know Your Customers

by Stacy Berver

In the dietary supplement industry; where competition is fierce and the name of the game is increasing profitability, knowing your customers is no longer simply about providing the best service. Its also about facilitating a relationship that leaves them satisfied and willing to spend more money on your products.

With the exploding world of online sales opportunities, its relatively simple to expand any type of marketing to include an online relationship. Because the first-time sale is always the hardest, any technique to improve customer relationships can pay dividends.

Consider the case of one marketer of nutrition-oriented products including dietary supplements, newsletters and books. The company has grown from a $100 million/year business to more than $300 million in annual sales, primarily because of e-mail marketing. Combining free editorial content on subjects that appeal to the target customers with special offers for products and services has proven to be a winning combination.

Numerous marketing programs have shown the same outcome: a customer who is willing to have an e-mail relationship with a company is likely worth upwards of four times more than an unwilling customer. Imagine the newfound power of the marketing investment if instead of simply spending $30 on a bottle of pills, that customer also agrees to receive targeted e-mails. Instead of a $30 customer with no clear pattern of repeat purchasing, that 4x incremental increase seen in an e-mail customer is a guarantee of $120 per customer in revenue.

As soon as a customer indicates an interest in receiving targeted e-mails, dont hesitate to begin that correspondence. The sooner the communication starts and the more regular the messages, the more that customer will expect to get the news. Customers love the perceived value of content, so use a constant voice in the e-mails and help them feel special. Special offers for e-mail customers only, limited time, buy-one-get-one, pre-saleall of these deepen the customer relationship. And for the few moments when the customer is reading the e-mail, they are a captive audience. Give them a reason to buy now, before they move onto the next thing in their busy lives.

E-mail is also an incredibly cost-effective medium, where sending hundreds of thousands of e-mails costs pennies on the dollar, thus creating an extremely cost-effective mechanism for testing new sales offers and new product ideas. Plus, the sales are immediate. Theres no waiting and no drawback to resending the offer a few times if it works well the first time.

Getting the e-mails means sourcing e-mail addresses from every marketing channel the company utilizes. Its easy to also track the value of the different channels while sending a similar or the same message to all customers. This affords the opportunity to measure the value of an e-mail address among various channels. Most savvy marketers employ more than one channel because when one channel is depressed, another could easily be growing.

Direct marketing, in particular, offers great opportunities. There are countless ways to collect an e-mail address, many with little to almost no risk. Of course, like many things in life, the more risk youre willing to take, the better qualified customer youre likely to find.

One dietary supplement marketer found e-mail addresses sourced from direct mail product orders generated twice as much ancillary revenue as did e-mail addresses sourced from other channels, such as pay-per-click advertising. Ultimately, by focusing the efforts on direct mail, the company realized $1.6 million dollars in revenue and added more than 15,000 customers to its programin just the first year. It also recouped the investment in direct marketing within three months using an auto-ship re-order model. The company also tapped into a source of new customers that does not overlap with its existing catalog marketing program.

Another company prospects both online and offline (through the mail), as the quantity of online customers at a lower customer value combined with the quality of direct mail names at a higher customer value offers an optimal marketing mix for the company. In another case, a marketer of dietary supplements overhauled its entire marketing program and launched a direct marketing promotion for its single strongest product. This gave the company the opportunity to target specific customers with both the initial direct mail and ongoing e-mail offers.

With 17 years of direct marketing experience, Stacy Berver of DM360 Inc. is well-versed at direct marketing strategy. She has launched dozens of new business ventures, working across numerous direct marketing verticals including a newsletter publisher, multiple book publishers, a commodities trading course and numerous nutritional supplement companies. Contact Berver at [email protected] or (410) 309-2155.