Retail Tips: Increase Your Business With Existing Customers!

By Jay Townley, The Gluskin Townley Group, LLC

Unfortunately, too many specialty retailers overlook the vital importance to their businesses of increasing transactions with their existing customers.

In today’s retail economy, your customer database is one of your key assets, and using it to drive direct response marketing is essential to surviving and thriving!

If your business doesn’t maintain an electronic customer database through your point-of-sale (POS) system or some other type of customer relationship management software, take immediate steps to set one up. There are two tasks here:

(1) If you don’t have an electronic customer database, initiate one ASAP! This should be easy with a POS system, but can also be easily initiated using Access, the database application that comes with Windows Office.

(2) If you already have an electronic customer database, make sure it is as accurate and up-to-date as possible for your direct-response marketing program. This drives your POS entry process and staff education to assure that all customer contact information is entered uniformly and consistently.

Establish a direct response-marketing calendar listing your store’s specific events, flyers, specials and newsletters and when you will use your customer database to reach out and invite them to do more business with you.

It can be as simple as planning to send 100 postcards or emails per week to targeted or selected customers inviting them to visit your store for an event or sale that your database tells you is of interest to them!