Ultimately, you want to cultivate the upper crust of your client base because it’s that faithful group of customers which sustains your business. You can build your brand on this foundation, using the “relationship marketing” approach to establish long-term rapports with your most frequent customers, and to keep them coming back for more.
One of the latest trends I’ve noticed within relationship marketing is a shift towards personalized marketing, both on the web and in direct mail. With technological advances, you can tailor promotional pieces to reflect the individual needs and preferences of each recipient. As a result, the customized promotion will be more relevant to the customer and elicit a much higher response rate.
Along those lines, a creative way to reach out to your recurrent clients is with personalized birthday promotions. After all, what’s more individualized than a birthday? Celebrate your best customers with a standout direct mail piece. It allows your company to send warm regards and a “thanks, come again” sentiment, all bundled into one memorable and non-intrusive greeting. You can imprint a fun-spirited birthday message and include promotional offers that fit the customer's taste according to purchase history data. In turn, this targeted effort has the ability to strengthen consumer loyalty and promote repeat purchase.The relationship approach is ideal for the retail industry, but can be applied in other sectors as well. Next time, let’s go beyond the scope of traditional birthday cards and review examples of some brilliantly customized promotions.
