This morning I’m continuing my push to get entrepreneurs to place a higher emphasis on customer retention. Celebrating a ‘new customer’ when you close the first sale is premature because you don’t yet have the beginning of a buying habit (i.e.: lifetime customer), not until your customer purchases for the second time. The second order is the true start of a buying habit.

Magazine publishers have known for decades that their renewal rate goes up dramatically after the first renewal. Sixty-five out of a hundred new subscribers will re-subscribe. After that, 85 percent of subscribers will renew. Those numbers are similar for most businesses. Magazine publishers also know that, with some focused effort (i.e.: regular and frequent communication), they can increase first time renewals to around 80 percent and other renewals to over 90 percent.

So can you! And nothing works as effectively at generating more repeat business as a monthly customer newsletter. Plus, with my No Hassle Newsletters, I make sending your customers a monthly newsletter quick, easy, painless, and profitable. So, start communicating with your customers and while you’re at it, make a special effort to get the second sale. It will not only be easier than the first, it will also be more profitable. And so on and so on ….

If producing a full blown newsletter is just to daunting, even with my Done-for-You No Hassle Newsletters, then you need to check out my hot new customer relationship, business building tool, Newsletter Postcards.

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 leave a response, or trackback from your own site.