Stay In Touch

What are the major ways you stay in touch with your new and repeat clients? What have you found works best with great results and ease of connection? How often do you touch base after cleaning? Do you send emails, paper material, or phone calls?

I usually don't, lol, this is the way I look at it, if I'm a customer and got a service company come and service my home, I wouldn't want to be bothered by phone calls or mailers or social media posts, etc, just leave me alone, thank you for your service but we're done until next time I need you again then I will contact you, I feel most of my repeat clients appreciate that, unless if they requested to be scheduled every 6 months or so, then that would be different story. That's just my opinion though :-)

I send out the reminder cards, some at six months,all at one year. I have my regulars that will call before I sent it out. What I have learned is most don't clean their carpets once or twice a year. Keeping my name in front of them might get me the call when they are ready or a referral.

Our main source of advertising has always been the Money Mailer direct mail packets. These lead to new customers which lead to repeat and referral customers. I have tried sending post cards to my customer base, but it is expensive and the return is low because you have to reach the right customer at the right time. I keep track of where all of our jobs come from (repeat, referral, Money Mailer, Angie's List, etc). The longer we are in business I am finding that our existing customer base expects to find us in the mailer packet, and saves our "coupon - mailer" in a drawer until they are ready for us. So, we are reaching our existing customer base and bringing in new customers with the same mailer which is sent out nine times per year. At two point nine cents per piece in the mailer and an eight to one average total return - sending out individual pieces just doesn't make sense for us.

I agree with dp1. Mostly referrals for me and a few from our web page. I will personally make a note and call customer if they want a 6 month appointment or something special.

carpetdaddy wrote:Our main source of advertising has always been the Money Mailer direct mail packets. These lead to new customers which lead to repeat and referral customers. I have tried sending post cards to my customer base, but it is expensive and the return is low because you have to reach the right customer at the right time. I keep track of where all of our jobs come from (repeat, referral, Money Mailer, Angie's List, etc). The longer we are in business I am finding that our existing customer base expects to find us in the mailer packet, and saves our "coupon - mailer" in a drawer until they are ready for us. So, we are reaching our existing customer base and bringing in new customers with the same mailer which is sent out nine times per year. At two point nine cents per piece in the mailer and an eight to one average total return - sending out individual pieces just doesn't make sense for us.

Interesting carpet daddy your coupon mailer is your reminder and new client marketing piece.

Mo, it is. It is the most productive & cost effective way for me to reach all of my customers. Plus postage and media are not being wasted on customers who have moved.

I've never tried a coupon mailer. Maybe I'll give it a try sometime.

carpetdaddy wrote:Our main source of advertising has always been the Money Mailer direct mail packets. These lead to new customers which lead to repeat and referral customers. I have tried sending post cards to my customer base, but it is expensive and the return is low because you have to reach the right customer at the right time. I keep track of where all of our jobs come from (repeat, referral, Money Mailer, Angie's List, etc). The longer we are in business I am finding that our existing customer base expects to find us in the mailer packet, and saves our "coupon - mailer" in a drawer until they are ready for us. So, we are reaching our existing customer base and bringing in new customers with the same mailer which is sent out nine times per year. At two point nine cents per piece in the mailer and an eight to one average total return - sending out individual pieces just doesn't make sense for us.

How many cycles did you do before you saw a good ROI?

One of the great things about being in a small market is that you already see your customers on a weekly basis around town. They always tell me about how their dog just puked up a box of crayons or their kid trashed a room and ask me when I was available.

Easiest marketing system in the world...work in a small town. Just make sure that you do a quality job or else be ready to see "that" customer on a weekly basis as well.

milspec6 wrote:One of the great things about being in a small market is that you already see your customers on a weekly basis around town.  They always tell me about how their dog just puked up a box of crayons or their kid trashed a room and ask me when I was available.

Easiest marketing system in the world...work in a small town.  Just make sure that you do a quality job or else be ready to see "that" customer on a weekly basis as well.

You answered that like a politician. Lol. Missed the question.

Ryan S wrote:

carpetdaddy wrote:Our main source of advertising has always been the Money Mailer direct mail packets. These lead to new customers which lead to repeat and referral customers. I have tried sending post cards to my customer base, but it is expensive and the return is low because you have to reach the right customer at the right time. I keep track of where all of our jobs come from (repeat, referral, Money Mailer, Angie's List, etc). The longer we are in business I am finding that our existing customer base expects to find us in the mailer packet, and saves our "coupon - mailer" in a drawer until they are ready for us. So, we are reaching our existing customer base and bringing in new customers with the same mailer which is sent out nine times per year. At two point nine cents per piece in the mailer and an eight to one average total return - sending out individual pieces just doesn't make sense for us.

How many cycles did you do before you saw a good ROI?

Three. This has held true for me like clock work from day one (through ten years of mass mail advertising) for each new zone I have added and each new service added. The first mailing has typically been a small loss - people have never seen you and have little trust. The second mailing has typically been break even or small profit - people have seen you twice and they are gaining confidence. The third mailing is where we typically start hitting a 4-6/1 return - people know you are real, they start noticing your van, and the customers you got from the first couple of mailings are giving you referrals...

On another note dealing more with quickly generating new customers than the original question of contacting existing customers, my best ROI comes from Google Adwords. I started dabbling with Adwords last year ($5-$10/day budget with a total monthly spend of $200). The ROI was 8-10/1 right from the start. This year I upped the daily budget to $50-$100/day for a total monthly spend typically between $800 - $1,500 depending on the month. I guess the higher ROI from the start is due to the fact that potential customers have a specific need for your type of service, and are actively searching for an immediate fulfillment of that need. A couple of the cool things with Adwords is that you can turn it on and off throughout the month as you need it, you can target a very specific audience, and you are not spending a lot of money up front. Hope this helps. I would be happy to work with anyone 1 on 1 if you need help.

Great info carpet daddy. Thanks.

We send reminders out each and every month. As well we use 1/2 page postcards for special. Ex: Three rooms open area for just $ 120.00, 600 ft open area. The first 25 callers receice free Teflon protection. -- Our response rate as been in the high teens. We also send out newsletters. We work off our database only. We currently have approx. 1500 in our database. We maintain the database with clients have cleaned within 3 years. Time and experience has shown us it really does not pay to keep a large database just full of names. We do include our e mail address on most of our mailings-- we do get inquiry from our clients. I'll be honest, I am a former Joe polish addict. I was with the system and boot camps for about 6 years. It was a great experience for us-- we learned a lot. We use it everyday-- We develop our own pieces to sent out. It ain't that hard.

William Simpson wrote:We send reminders out each and every month.  As well we use 1/2 page postcards for special.  Ex: Three rooms open area for just $ 120.00, 600 ft open area.  The first 25 callers receice free Teflon protection.  -- Our response rate as been in the high teens.  We also send out newsletters.  We work off our database only.  We currently have approx. 1500 in our database.  We maintain the database with clients have cleaned within 3 years.  Time and experience has shown us it really does not pay to keep a large database just full of names.  We do include our e mail address on most of our mailings-- we do get inquiry from our clients. I'll be honest, I am a former Joe polish addict.  I was with the system and boot camps for about 6 years.  It was a great experience for us-- we learned a lot.  We use it everyday-- We develop our own pieces to sent out.  It ain't that hard.

Thant sounds great! Do you mail all 1500 customers each month? What is your total cost per piece - post card? newsletter?

We do not mail all 1500 clients at the same time, we will select 6 month since the last date of service. For those who do not respond on the 6 months, we will resend another reminder in about 6 weeks. We try and rotate each and every month. We will split the cycle after additional 3 months. On our cards we print their last clean date Ex: 10/07/2012 We create our own post cards, than we print them on our laser: Most of the time we will print on white card stock (110) with our laser printer. We will use red ink jet ink to highlight the date. Our clients have commented that they like to see the date. That is why we really like the software-- it allows us to create dates that we use in our marketing. We also have got some of our cards mass produced , on the 5,000 level. We have a card we created with a picture of our grand daughter, we use every spring. It has been a real gold mine for us. In fact our Thank You card is a picture of our grand daughter as well-- I have a client who has a printing company, we create our newsletter on a legal size paper-- both sides, He prints it, fold it, postage for and mails it on his permit, its about .54 cents each-- Its a great deal for us. We create our cards on photo shop. We can produce our post cards for about 3 1/2 cents each- than we use 1st class postage. Our normal mailing is about 100-- 300 pieces. This is our only advertising. Never ever had, yellow pages, val pak-- Have always produced our own stuff-- it ain't professional-- just us-- and our clients know that and like it. We work only off referrals, it has been that way for 25 years-- I am proud to say we are booked out on average-- 2 weeks-- it is my wife and I

If you would click on attachments you can see samples of our mail out: Thank you card .16 cents each, Oh My Gosh .11 cents each, Sun glasses .16 cents each. Forget to Call .11 cents. And newsletters are .51 cents which includes bulk mail rate

Looks great. Thanks for sharing.

Bill. Did you design all those over the years. They look great! How many do you turn out at a time. What is the ROI ? Thanks

Yes we do design these, we usually design them and than basically turn it over to the printer-- however we do have a client that is a grafric artist and she has improved on them. We design off our photo shop software, than have the printer add the final touch as far as color brightness- centering etc: We probably do 4- 6 a year.  However we go back and use the best year after year-  The Oh My Gosh has run for 4 years, our roi has always been min 19 to 1, Over the years we will avg. about 10 / 15 on the roi.  The trick is be consistent , we do mail out on regular basis  We have found for us the large card has been most effective.  We are designing a basic card that we will use, same face but the message are will be blank so we can put anything we want on it from our laser printer and get them out in 2 days .  Its a joint project, I WILL USUALLY COME UP WITH THE IDEA, BASICA LAYOUT, WORDING, Than Deb my wife, will do the final touches- she is way more patient than I am with the computer-- and software.  If the idea or the design makes sense to her-- than it will usually work well. We will send out 600 - 300 at a time, if we are happy with results we'll than get 2000- 5000 printed up. The Oh My Gosh card has had 2 printing, and the Sun Glasses card has had 2 ordering-- They have both been great cards ( plus they are my 2 grand daughter)

Those look fantastic William.