Seasoned direct response professionals understand that while your first customer order is important, the next, and often elusive, second order, is almost as critical. Once someone purchases from you initially, they are a buyer, but when they buy from you twice, they become a customer.
But, in this day and age of shrinking marketing budgets, what's a proven approach to capture that second order as well as cross-sell and up-sell your current clients?
Look no further than the lowly statement insert and fulfillment follow-up package for results that almost always get heads shaking in wonderment.
Strategic Thinking Makes a Powerful Statement
For example, recently a large insurance company was looking to inform its existing customer base that it was much more that a life insurance company; that it was indeed a full-service financial planning firm with several options available to meet its customers changing and growing needs.
After reviewing their current statement process, we made the recommendation to replace the buckslip they were doing with a more comprehensive statement insert that included a reply card and included the seven main investment areas that the company offered. For added emphasis, we also included individual statement messaging (too often overlooked).
The results: The leads they were generating were seven per month under the previous program. The new program raised that number to 72 per month! The added cost? One single penny per statement. Now that's a powerful ROMI.
Show Them You Want a Relationship
A B2B cataloger was having difficulty getting repeat orders from its customer base and asked for my help. I had several meetings with the client and they shared that the products they offered in a specific book were the most consumable, yet out of all their catalogs this particular title had the fewest amount of repeat orders. They were both puzzled and frustrated.
After the second meeting I had our office manager go through the catalog and order some items that were needed. We were a first-time buyer. The inbound sales representative was superb, attempting to up-sell us, explaining their specials and collecting information in a very professional manner.
By 10 a.m. the next day, the package had arrived. Impressive, as we had ordered very late the previous day. All items we had ordered arrived and the package included a statement of what was ordered and the cost summary. I reviewed the entire package, took some photos of it and called the client to set up a follow-up meeting.
