The Lucrative Lost Customer

If you've been in business for any length of time, you have them: lost customers.

For whatever reason, these folks are no longer coming into your store, your office, or visiting your website. And it's not because you've stopped marketing to them. For whatever reason, they've stopped responding to your marketing efforts.

Now, depending on your type of business, the length of time will vary by how you label them "lost." It could be 6 months, a year, or even longer.

And occasionally a customer you haven't seen or heard from in years will return to your business. Statistically, that's bound to happen eventually.

But after a certain amount of time has passed without hearing from them, you're going to want to change your marketing approach. After all, if what you've been doing hasn't worked with them, why continue with the same strategy?

Instead, you'll create a special sequenced marketing campaign just for them. In fact you'll have this marketing campaign already in place, and once so much time has passed since their last purchase, your special campaign springs into action.

So the first thing you'll want to include in your "lost prospecting" campaign is to send them a special letter, acknowledging that you haven't heard from them in a while and that you miss them. Give them a compelling special offer with a firm deadline. Perhaps two weeks.

Then, just before the offer expires, send them another mailing, if they haven't responded to the first. Remind them that you mailed them two weeks ago, give them the offer again, and another two weeks to respond.

Some of you may have guessed, but yes. We're going to send out a third mailing to those who haven't responded. A day or two before the second offer expires, send them a third, and tell them because their business is so important to you, you are giving them two more weeks. Tell them you can't understand why they haven't responded yet.

If you have their email address, send them an email as well.

Then, if they still haven't responded, you want to follow-up with a phone call five days before the final offer expires. It could be a live person calling or an automated prerecorded voice broadcast. Also at this point you want to reemphasize that you are puzzled by them not responding. Ask them if there's anything wrong, or if you can do anything to help. You want to appear as though you are bending over backwards to make it as easy as possible for them, but you don't want to come across as sounding desperate.

And if you think you are pestering them, you should remember that these are lost customers. You only stand to gain from your efforts. They've already abandoned your business, for whatever reason. And of course, your offer should be truly remarkable. People have a nose for junk.

I learned how to do a sequenced campaign well from Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer. In fact, Bill shared these actual results from a campaign he conducted for his own two retail stores:








As you can see, Bill picked up business he wouldn't have otherwise gotten using this strategy. And granted, you would want to test your own campaign sequences until you come across your optimum strategy.

But I've seen first hand that sequenced campaigns do work, and not just for bringing back lost customers.

Have any test results or successes you'd like to share? Feel free to post your own comments.