Well done! You have made contact and they want to know more about you and your business. So what next?

Now you need to invite your contact or customer to engage in a two-way dialogue in a way that will benefit both parties. The aim is for you to teach the customer or contact about your business, what you stand for and what you offer.  At the same time your customer or contact should be invited to tell you more about themselves.

This is where building a good client database comes in. All the information you can glean such as age, gender, family situation, geographical location, preferred product ranges, hobbies and interests etc may be useful to you in the future so take note now.  One of the beauties of Mailshot is the ability to build a database and use the information to segment your customers into groups. This lets you make special offers or provide more relevant information to particular people. You might make an offer to customers living in a single geographical region or let previous purchasers of a specific product know when you have more in stock. Mailshot will also let you analyse data from past campaigns and promotions to identify what individual customers are most likely to respond to. The more personalised your contact becomes  – the more likely your customers are to want to hear from you.

A word of warning however – your contacts and customers must be treated as  intelligent individuals. They will know if you are simply harvesting information – or if you are genuinely trying to get to know them better.  Try and approach it as if you are making a new friend – genuinely seek out the common ground and be prepared to learn from them. Ask how they find your products and service – and be prepared to follow up and make changes to the way you do things if needed.

A good permission marketer will take every opportunity to get to know their customer, earn their trust and inspire their loyalty.  We think of it as the modern version of enticing a customer into your corner store and then taking the time to get to know him or her. You want to earn their trust so they not only return to your store time and again but learn to trust your recommendations and suggestions – and in turn to recommend you to their friends and contacts.

This entry is filed under Permission Marketing.