Other Methods for Capturing Customer Information
Capturing customer information at the Point of Sale is only one of the ways to acquire the information you need to leverage your fan club.
Store visitors can be invited to become "Preferred Customers" even though they may not even make a purchase during a store visit. What you want in that case is just enough information to convert them into a loyal, consistent customer later on.
Capturing customer information at your store's
website is another great way to ask people for information. This is typically done by offering a website visitor a discount coupon, gift certificate, or something else of perceived value in exchange for giving you some information about themselves.
It is always important that customers are never given the impression that you are simply "squeezing" them for personal information. Experience has shown that the customer will gladly give you the information you are requesting with the following provisions:
* The customer perceives a clear benefit to him or her by providing the information.
The request for information must be treated as a "transaction" where everyone benefits.
* The customer trusts you to protect his/her personal information.
Don't even think about selling or otherwise providing customer information to parties outside of your business operation unless the customer knows that is your policy in advance and you have explicit permission from the customer to share such information. You should protect your customer database as though it were actual money - because it is!
* You won't abuse the use of the information.
Online marketing strategies that employ email marketing makes it easy and cheap to touch customers multiple times during a season or year. Unfortunately, this fact makes it tempting to email a customer database for no other reason than to jack up sales in a slow month. If the customer gets the impression that you're just filling up his Inbox with useless spam then you will quickly start to get requests to "opt-out" of your email list.
Summary:
As Customer Data Goes Up, Your Marketing Costs Go Down
If you are still unsure about the usefulness of inviting customers to join your fan club so that you can serve them more effectively then you should consider this fact:
The more information you have about your customers the lower your marketing costs relative to sales. As more and more customer data is captured you gradually go from using a shotgun approach to market and advertise your store to using the equivalent of a high-powered sniper's rifle. One precise shot, one profitable sale - with little wasted expense. In addition, a robust customer database tends to even out sales cycles and insulate your
business from predatory, big box competition.
Finally, by utilizing online market strategies it is easy to leverage fan club information very cost-effectively - much more so, in fact, than using traditional methods of targeted marketing. By incorporating opt-in email marketing and your store's website to touch your fan base you dramatically reduce the cost per thousand impressions as compared to using the Post Office to deliver your messages. By using online strategies you will also be able to deliver a much more compelling, interactive message that is simply not possible using traditional printed marketing media.
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