[colin thomas]

i keep all my customers details, address, phone, etc, but only in invoice form. does anyone know of someone or a company who would convert these details into a mail-merge programme and even perhaps send out reminders/newsletters on a regular basis for costs + an amount per envelope sent? i'm not that computer savvy but it would seem a good thing for a home worker to get involved with.

colin

[AquaMagic]

PM Me your email address i met a woman at a chamber meeting this morning that may be able to do this for you ill send her details.

Dene

[ianharper]

cbt

first hi,

if you was to sell your business today it would be your database that would be the value in the price that you ask for it.

in other words its your biggest assett. would you test someone that you dont know with that?

it would so easy for them to sell or use them for themselfs. it happens. a friend carpet cleaner local to me had aguy working for him for year and was paying him very well, this did not stop him from taking some of his customer base and setting up on his own.

i can reconmend the program act

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sage-ACT-6-0/dp/B00006JN1G/sr=8-1/qid=1170787480/ref=pd_ka_1/026-4446999-7410854?ie=UTF8&s=software

its so easy to use

you should be having as much contact with customers as possable, every month that they dont hear from you, you loss 10% off the relationship with then so within a year they will not remember you. thats how important it is.

good luck

respect

ian harper

[colin thomas]

dene, sent you an e-mail, can't find the pm option!

colin

[the red carpet]

Theres a software programme on e-bay at the minute for £25

[calmore]

Bear in mind you need MS Excell for this to run.

Does anyone know if it's any good?

[colin thomas]

ian, thanks for the link, if you send out flyers as you do to keep customers in touch, how many do you send a month? if you have a data-base of say, 2000 customers, you don't send that amount of flyers a month do you? do you send to customers as it comes to 6 months from  their last clean?

colin

[ianharper]

cbt

I hope you dont mind but its a bit of a story and an on going process with regards my marketing. i test and track a lot.

for example before xmas i was putting out 5k a week into a free newspaper. it was a waste of time as i was not evan making the £70 drop fee. add that to the £30 printing cost and that my avarge ticket is £98 and i only look to get back what i spend out. as my marketing is back end heavy. just show you how the little thing  really mater in sales

so what went wrong the size of the leaflet it was a5 it should have been a3 pnk leaflet. the reason was that my a5 got put inside other companies a3. so how should i prevent this? when booking i should have left it to right to the last posable moment and then asked what other leaflets where going out in the areas that i selected and types of company.

one of the cleaver things about the pink leaflet is its size. i know this but was lazy, and it cost me.

so, in answer to your question the 5k into the newspaper and 1k by myself a week.

leaflets are frount end marketing looking at it as putting names and addresses onto your database and only expecting a 1 to 1 return on your marketing pound (more is great) the reason for this is that the cost to get a new customer is much higher that selling to one on your database. because they know you.

in the USA they talk about "touches"  per year. some companies have 60 to 70 per year. you can get up to 200. lots of these are email based. i would say that for us as carpet cleaners 24 to 30 a year

if you had a customer base of 2000 you would not need any frountend marketing. its all about numbers at the end of the day so lets just say that you do two jobs a day at £100 each job five days a week thats 50k a year. and just 500 customers a year.

with other marketing tools like a referal program and five arounds this should keep you datbase toped up as customers move away.

i would say it would take you about three to four years to build up a responsive database off 2k. if you have a datbase that you have not worked then you would need to make some kind of offer that would rebuild the relationship between you and them.

I know someone local to me that was is in business was in business for over 15 year and he went on fast track and had a big databse that he did not keep in touch with, now he doing really well with the systems.

you are on the right track with your thinking about the amount of frountend marketing to backend. as one grows the other srinks. at what rate depends on how good you are at putting new customers into "your" system.

I would reconmend the fast track option system. offering prospects three differant prices works well and the advantage you will get people on maintance plans. where they pay you monthly

Good luck

Respect

Ian Harper

[colin thomas]

thanks for that ian, a very un-selfish reply and very helpful,

colin   

[Len Gribble]

If you hold a database of customers do you need to register with a government body?

Know I had to when I employed staff.

Len