I was at a lunch meeting today and when asked what I do, instead of saying that I run a company that produces newsletters, I said, “I help companies increase their profits by boosting their repeat and referral business.” The natural follow-up question was, “How do you do that?”

I then explained that my company, No Hassle Newsletters, makes it possible for companies large and small to customize and mail a monthly print newsletter for less than $1 each. As a USP goes, I thought I was doing a pretty fair job!

My lunch neighbor then asked for my opinion on how much of a company’s marketing budget should be spent on something like a newsletter. It’s not often I get thrown such a perfect pitch – ready to be knocked out of the park! I smiled and said, “All of it!” I was kidding to be sure, but not by much.

In my opinion, most businesses spend far too much money chasing after new customers and too little trying to get more business from the customers who have already said, “I trust you and find value in what you sell.” Of course, most customers don’t actually say this, but they did in essence when they made their first purchase from you.

This makes my point: a satisfied customer is predisposed to purchase from you again. In fact, satisfied customers will likely purchase more of what they bought as well as something different. The second, also important, point is this: It costs less to motivate a current customer to purchase again than to motivate a new one to purchase for the first time – a lot less.

Tied it up with a bow! Now that I’ve said my piece about marketing to existing customers, I will draw the obvious conclusion and tell you (actually tell you again) that nothing, and I repeat nothing, will generate more repeat and referral business than a monthly customer newsletter.

Posted by Jim Palmer, The Newsletter Guru and is filed under business growth, marketing, newsletter marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.