Database Marketing to Increase Your Sales

If you're selling a product or service and not keeping the contact information of your customers, you're probably losing about 30% in extra sales and profits per year -- Mininum! Without that information, you cannot go back to them the number of times it takes to create an extra sale ... whther that be once, twice or the seven-eight-nine times consultants often talk about.

You absolutely need to be keeping a database of customer information and start marketing based on the insights it provides. Internet marketers do this all the time, and are great marketers to model on this account. They collect names, email addresses and the fact that someone is opted in on one or more autoresponder lists, which along with the list itself, is another bit of vital information telling them who is interested in what ... or came from where ... or who bought what ... and what which price.

Internet marketers constantly send out targeted emails just based on their lists of inquiries, or past customer purchases, in order to drum up sales. With email this costs virtually nothing, and is the key step to the "back end" sales which can turn around a business.

And that's what you need to do... with your online and offline efforts. You need to take your databse of customers or leads, and then start sending them offers. The big benefits can come from online or offline direct marketing. If you can collect a list of targeted names and addresses, these are the folks you can send letters to ... sales notices, inventory clearances, special deals, you name it. And those letters lead to extras sales.

In fact, the first thing you can do to increase sales is go into your database, find past customers who haven't purchased anything in awhile, and send them a letter or call them with a special offer. Everyone is afraid to do this but any smart marketing consultant will tell you that activating inactive accounts is one of the first things to do to increase sales. It costs almost nothing and often brings quite a few customers back into buying mode.

So why not try it?

People are always looking for ways to increase sales, thinking there is some magic pill or secret method. More often than not it's just a result of common sense things, and the hard work of follow-up or execution. That's where the MAGIC lies -- pursuing the simple and obvious in a disciplined fashion and setting all your marketing on autopilot this way.

This is one of the ways to increase sales with little or no effort. Create a database of customer information and USE it.