Customer Relationship Marketing

Published on this site: December 23rd, 2006 - See more articles from this month

What is CRM? Customer relationship marketing is all about building relationships with your prospects and customers. It is a proven way of increasing your sales and the customer conversion rate of your prospects and leads. It is also used to increase backend sales. One of the most important keys to developing a successful business is practicing good customer relationship marketing. Without this important element in your marketing you will not be able to progress effectively with your business.

How do you put this powerful concept into practice? There are several ways you can build relationships with your prospects and customers:

1. One of the most effective is a mailer: What is a mailer? It is a sequence of messages sent, via your autoresponder, to either your customers or leads. Offline this will be done manually and is often referred to as a drip system. It will give more information on your product and service, with the express purpose of selling to your reader. Leads will click on a link for more information, which will set the sequence of messages off. This link can often be found on your website or in your newsletter.
   
   A second use for a mailer is sending a sequence of messages to your customers, to sell backend products. This will begin with a " thank you" letter and continue with information and an offer or discount for a related product. Be careful not to send too many messages in this sequence as you can lose customers when you overdo this.
   
   
2. Newsletters: are very powerful tools for building up relationships with your leads. Each subscriber to your publication is a potential customer. As they continue to read your newsletter they will build a relationship with you. Over time they will trust you and your offers and become your life-long loyal customers.
   
   
3. Providing good customer service and support: this is a critical area in your business and one that many businesses overlook. The better you look after your customers and subscribers the more they will build up trust for you and your company. When you treat them like the VIPs they are, your customers and subscribers will be much more inclined to buy from you.
   
   
4. Building relationships through website content: Your articles and website content can also help to build good relationships with your visitors. When you write good informative content you will build up your credibility in your visitors (leads) eyes. They will perceive you as the expert and this will help to build trust and sales.
   
   
5. Building relationships through your sales copy: Your sales copy is one of the main ways that you will build a rapport with your reader. It does not matter if it is a full blown sales page on your website or a small ad in a publication. The purpose is the same, to build trust and credibility between you and your reader. Making your sales copy personal with compelling benefits does this.
   
   
6. Personalizing all communications: it is very important to personalize all communications to your prospects and customers. This can easily be done on your autoresponder collecting first names when you get email addresses and then putting in a small code. Offline communications should always be personalized. Personalization is not only respectful to your recipient it also makes the reader feel special. It will increase good feeling between your customer, or prospect and your business.

These are just a few ways that you can increase sales with customer relationship marketing. Remember that business is not exclusively about dollars and cents but essentially about people. How you treat your customers and prospects will have far reaching effects on your business.

Cheryl Miller - is an entrepreneur specializing in niche markets. For more information about magnetic badges and how they can help you promote your business, please visit http://www.badgemags.com Cheryl is also the publisher of the Magnetic Marketer Newsletter http://www.badgemags.com/magnetic_marketer_subscribe.htm