We’re continuing our series on Social Media for Small Business. Recently, we talked about how to increase the value of your business by increasing the perceived value you deliver to your customers.

Today we want to extend that subject by talking about relevancy. Are the messages you send to your customers relevant?

___

 

 Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss how small businesses can trump large companies on The Bigg Success Show! Click the player to listen [5:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

___

I recently got an e-mail from Best Buy. Now we love Best Buy. But this message hit me the wrong way. The subject line read, “Find great gifts for Mom.” There’s just one problem with that: my mom passed away a few years ago.

___

___

My mom’s gone as well. Of course, Mother’s Day is coming up so the message is timely. Unfortunately, though, it’s not relevant.

___

___

It goes beyond that. While I’m through the grieving process, Mother’s Day is always one of those times when I think of mom the most, of course.

___

___

We want to help our customers with their pain, not create pain for them!

___

The opportunity for small business

We really don’t expect a business like Best Buy to know our moms are gone.
This spells BIGG opportunity for small business.

You can be relevant!
You can send messages that resonate with your customers!
You can trump large companies with personalized service!

___

One of my former businesses was a heating and cooling business. When our technicians were in a customer’s home working on the furnace or air conditioner, they would record the age of the customer’s equipment.

___

___

So now you had some valuable information, but it isn’t valuable if you don’t do anything with it. So what did you do, George?

___

___

We accumulated this information in a database which we used to generate a mailing list. We sent a letter to that list twice a year – in the spring and in the fall, the two BIGG seasons for this particular business.

___

___

So if I had just replaced my equipment with you, I wouldn’t get a letter asking me to buy. The only people who received the letter were people who had an identifiable need.

___

___

Right. The message was relevant. And obviously it resonated because every letter we mailed generated $346 in sales!

___

___

Yet it only cost you about $1 to mail every letter?

___

___

Yeah. We wrote the copy. It was written like a letter from a friend because we wanted it to be personal. We emphasized that there was no obligation for us to come out and check out their system to see if replacement was their best option. We told them that we would let them know if it wasn’t. And we did! Because we wanted the replacement when it was right for them.

___

___

So the only cost was some time and postage. And with e-mail, you don’t even have to pay for postage! And it’s so easy to build segmented lists.

___

___

Absolutely. But here’s the story behind the story. We didn’t expect the letter to do all the work. If you want to get this kind of return, you shouldn’t either.

___

___

Explain that in more detail, George.

___

___

We designed a system so our customer service representatives knew which customers had received the letter. When the customer called in for service or we called to schedule their regular maintenance, we confirmed if the customer received the letter. This often prompted the response, “Oh yes, I did. I wanted to talk about that.”

___

___

In other words, the customer was almost pre-sold.

___

You can do something similar in your business. Design a system to gather relevant information about your customers. Then send them messages that resonate and you’ll be a BIGG success!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00583-050710.mp3