Maintaining a usable marketing database of prospects, current customers and past customers is very smart and is a huge, valuable asset for your business.
One of the smartest things you can do with this database is to segment it or “slice and dice it” so you can send specific and targeted messages to “sub lists.” Let me explain with an example.
Let’s say you have 1,000 prospects in your database which have full contact information (e.g. name, mailing address and email address). For this example, this is your “full list.” You could then create sub lists from this complete list based on the towns each person lives in and send out a sales letter or email with the headline “Special Sale for People Who Live in XYZ Town.” Follow-up marketing would stress the same targeted message.
This simple, yet effective use of a targeted message will increase response, since the person receiving says, “Hey this is for me!” The only efficient way to do this type of targeted marketing is by segmenting your database and sending specific marketing to specific people. This advanced strategy could add thousands of dollars of extra sales every year. More importantly the more targeted your marketing is the better the relationship will be with the consumer, which leads to better testimonials and more referrals.
Your list must be segmented by product categories as well as up-sale offers. If someone buys a mattress and protector but not sheets, frames, and pillows separate marketing campaigns can be developed to maximize the value of each customer. Did they buy a bedroom but no nightstands? If they move to a bigger house do you think they would appreciate an offer to buy night stands before their group is discontinued? Of course they would.
When I worked at Kronheim’s Furniture we advertised and offered many children’s correlated bedroom sets. Today this information would be in our customer database. Back then I kept all my customer’s information on 3×5 index cards. At one of our sales meetings we found out one of those bedrooms were discontinued. I ran back to the store, sorted my index cards, called all my customers and helped my customers buy thousands of dollars of furniture that they needed and wanted. Six months later one of Joe’s customers came in to buy the discontinued set. They never received a phone call from Joe. What do you think they thought of Joe in that moment? The words unprofessional and apathetic come to my mind. I could write an entire book just on this but we must move on.