In my post about Up-Selling to clients, I talked about how you can easily sell additional services and products to the clients. In this post I am going to talk about the biggest asset that you have in your possession - Your Client List.

Ask anyone in sales and they will tell you that it is lot easier to sell new things to old customers than to find totally new customers. Why? Because old customers have already experienced your services and can trust you more with their money more than someone they haven’t tried even once.

We maintain a Customer List for the Internet Marketing Solutions company that I run and everytime we release a new product / service or run a special offer, the very first thing we do is to send information about it to our customer list. Amazingly, the response rate from our inhouse list goes as high as 90% — something unheard of with any other medium.

So how do we pull these types of number and how can you replicate it? Read on.

From our own experience of maintaining customer lists and using it to grow our business, you should observe the following rules of thumb –

1. Ask for Permission. It is always a good idea to ask your customer if they would actually like to receive regular information about new services you are offering and special deals that you will offer only to your old customers.

Sure, 4-5% will refuse to join but 95-96% people will join your list. And it’s not big deal to worry or try to persuade those 4-5% people to join cos they would never read your messages anyway. It is better to have a high quality list of just 100 people rather than a junk list of 1000 people.

And asking for permission will not only make you look professional but also plug the legal issues of the CAN-SPAM act. =)

2. Personalize. It is always an excellent idea to personalize your mailing list. After all, Dear John sounds much better than Dear Valued Customer. One extremely easy way to do it is to use Aweber. We use it at our company and fully recommend it.

3. Be in Regular Touch. Sending a message to your customer list should not be an annual ritual but rather a monthly or fortnightly activity. Don’t overdo it by sending a message daily but rather once or twice a month.

People have horrible memories so be in touch with them regularly or they will forget you.

4. Track Your Customers. Okay this is the part which takes the most effort but it is really profitable and sets you apart from your competitors by showing that you care.

Keep track of what industry your customer is in, what new products and services they are launching, what his or her personal interests are, what are special days in their lives etc. Getting the idea?

And after you have this information — USE IT.

Send them articles / links that you find might be of interest to them and link them to what people are writing about their company or their products / services. Send them wishes on their birthday, anniversary and other special days.

Oh and one thing to remember — don’t send them links to their bad reviews / complaints about them but rather just great reviews / good things about them. If you can’t find great things about them, just don’t send them anything. You don’t want to be the messenger of the bad news.

Also, if they have launched something like iPhone which every man and his dog are reviewing, then send them links to the Top Dogs only. Yeah I know it sounds obvious but you don’t know what some people do.

5. Offer Incentives. Make them feel good for having joined your list and offer them exclusive deals and benefits. Give them a reason to order your product / service again. Offer them discounts or bonus services for free.

Final Thoughts – From my own experience with freelancers, most completely forget about their customer after they complete their order. They don’t know that they are leaving a whole lot of money on the table by not following up. Start and maintain your customer list — it’s a very profitable preposition.

If you have more ideas or questions about the topic, feel free to post them below.

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