Collecting customer information is one of the best forms of marketing you have. It gives you the ability to get in touch with people who have already been to your brick-and-mortar store, who have experienced your services or products, who have, essentially, already begun building a relationship with you. And best of all? It’s free. You may pay out a little bit if you send postcards or a paper newsletter or flyer, but the cost is minimal compared to paying for a radio or newspaper ad. And if you start moving your customer interactions online, you can use this customer information to stay in contact with your customers and prospect list via email without any postage or printing cost. (More on e-mail marketing ideas.)

So what stops local business owners from regularly collecting customer information?

• They don’t think about it.
• They don’t want to be pushy.
• They don’t know how.

Start Thinking About It
If I offered you a way to get targeted marketing messages to your best customers for free, wouldn’t you be interested? That’s what collecting customer information is all about it. “Not thinking about it” is just a poor excuse, so here’s your free reminder to start thinking about and take advantage of a great marketing strategy. You don’t have to be pushy to ask if people want to be on your Preferred Customer List. You just ask, politely, and give them a quick and easy way to sign up. If you get a “No” in response, you don’t have to push it.

How to Collect the Information

• Step 1: Make it quick and easy.

Have a simple form handy, make lots and lots of copies, and leave it out in your retail space. Don’t make the form long; in fact, the shorter the better. Ask for the customer’s name, email address, and (perhaps) phone number or mailing address. The name and email address are the essentials, and you can just stick with those and get great results.

• Step 2: Make it beneficial for the customer.

Give your list a name – the Preferred Customer List or something along those lines – and give customers a clear, concise reason why they should join it. “For exclusive offers.” “For special discounts.” “For members-only events.”

• Step 3: Train your employees.

Create a short script and train every single employee to go through that script. It can be very short, and very simple: “Sir or Ma’am, would you like to sign up for our Preferred Customer List? We just need your email address, and you’ll get access to exclusive offers just for our Preferred Customers.” Teach your employees to have the form and a pen ready, and hold it out to the customer while they are asking the question. This small physical gesture makes it almost instinctive for the customer to reach forward. And no, employees shouldn’t be pushy either. If a customer declines, all that is needed is a polite response: “Well, maybe next time! Thanks for shopping with us!”

• Step 4: Be an Example.

Let your employees see you going through that script whenever you ring out a customer, answer a question, or call a customer about a special order. The script can easily be followed over the phone; you or your employee will just need to take the information verbally and write it down.

• Step 5: Be True to Your Word

If you’ve offered exclusive deals or special events, follow through. A weekly email is best, but at the least follow up with a monthly email offering a special deal, coupon, or event. Make sure the folks on your mailing list understand that it’s exclusive; that’s the value for them.

• Step 6: Get Feedback

Over time, your list will grow and you’ll have customers you get to know well. Use your list to get feedback on everything from your products to your store appearance to the kind of deals or events they would really like to see. Your customer list can quickly become a very valuable, informal method of market research; and the market is your ideal customer, so you know the information is good. (Here is a cool idea on WHAT to send to your e-mail list once you create it.)

The holidays are the perfect time to start collecting customer information, so get to it. Create that form and start asking. You’ll have a great way to follow up with all those new customers you get shopping for holiday specials.

Image by bulliver.

In lieu of reminiscing on the best and worst bathroom experiences, bathroom marketing experiences, that is, of my past year (as I have in the past), I thought I would contemplate some recommendations for small enterprises and local businesses who truly want to cover all their bases, so to speak, when it comes to customer experiences.

When it comes to bathrooms… it stands repeating: we don’t give them enough attention. You would think after a few years of this Bathroom Blogfest-ing business, we’d have raised some awareness, but nonetheless, there’s still a LOT of improvement to be done in this area. My only fear is that, in this new age of Twitter, that folks will start tweeting from the potty that they need more TP. But I digress….

One this is certain: customers now have a very loud voice, and they can use it to talk about anything they want.

Here’s my “what-if” of the day:

BAD IDEA: Instead of having a gross bathroom and running the risk of an unfortunate social network outcry…

GOOD IDEA: Create a bathroom experience that is outstanding. Then hang signs in the bathroom that say “If our bathroom is in need of service, please text a request to xxx.xxx.xxxx or speak to any one of our staff. If our bathroom is sparkling, please feel free to compliment us by tweeting @acmebiztweets.” Then, take the opportunity to do something nice for those who connect. This technique may sound outlandish, but it would seem the sort of tactic that could lead to a lasting relationship with the super-connectors among your customer base.

What do you think of all this potty talk?

I’m participating in the Bathroom Blogfest 2010, and here are links to a few of my fellow bloggers this week. Check them out!

David Reich wrote on My 2 Cents Bathroom Blogfest: Some Pay for Captive Audience.

Renee LeCroy from Your Fifth Wall asked Are You Overdue for a Bathroom Redo?

Steve Tokar in Please Be Seated discussed Bathroom Blogfest 2010: back to the 60s.

Valerie Fritz in the AwarepointBlog highlighted Customer Experience in Hospitals: Why Bathrooms Matter!

Paul Anater in Kitchen and Residential Design Blog wrote Still stuck in the 60s? That may not be a bad thing…

Jeanne Byington in The Importance of Earnest Service offered bathroom perspective and advice in Service of Nostalgia.

Joseph Michelli wrote about Quality Toilet Paper on Dr. Joseph Michelli’s Blog.

Christine Whittemore contributed New Jersey’s Best Bathrooms: Bathroom Blogfest 2010 on the Smoke Rise & Kinnelon Blog, reminded us in Flooring The Consumer that Water Matters. Bathroom Blogfest 2010 and put forth a content plan for the week on Simple Marketing Blog in Bathroom Blogfest 2010 Begins.

Andy and I are privileged in our work to conduct a lot of one-time consultations with small businesses who need a push in the right direction and an action list to help them take their small business marketing to the next level and create a more remarkable and consistent customer experience.

We also have the privilege to work very closely, literally in the trenches, to develop, implement and then teach a small number of business owners how to execute marketing strategies and tactics as well as customer experiences that will grow their businesses for the long term. In these relationships, we seek to be game changers – revolutionaries – who encourage “drastic and far-reaching changes in ways of thinking and behaving” when it comes to small business marketing and small business customer experiences. (If you’ve been hanging around here a while, you’ll recognize that quote as the dictionary definition of “revolution” and the reason behind the name of this blog.)

Looking for a customer experience revolution for your small business? Here are TEN posts from the deep archives of this blog that I thought were worth a second (or third) look when it comes to helping you create a profitable customer experience. These posts are FULL of great ideas and tips for small business customer service and experience improvements. Your customer experience, after all, is the most critical element to the short and long-term success of your business. It is the linchpin to your success. Click on the tip to read a full blog post on the topic (and don’t forget to leave behind your comments and ideas on each topic!).

1. Make sure your front-line sales team knows how to do their job – and the importance of it.

2. Make keeping customers (customer retention) and getting new customer referrals from your happy customers a primary focus.

3. Don’t assume anything about your customers. They probably do NOT know what to do with your stuff.

4. It really does pay to understand your customer. Customer feedback is critical (a bonus post for this tip!).

5. Use great photography in your small business marketing.

6. Use lighting as a cheap and easy way to improve your customer experience and to market your business 24 hours a day.

7. Pay attention to the auditory aspect of your customer experience. It matters.

8. Make shopping with you more convenient for the time-crunched shopper – which is all of us.

9. Don’t forget that marketing doesn’t stop when the customer walks in the door – it’s really just beginning.

10.   Last but not least, here are a few more great ideas for improving your customer experience. A revolutionary customer experience is possible for your small business!

Want more? If you’ve been trying to figure out how to achieve that in your business or are looking for a small business revolution, community or non-profit organization, please get in touch with us – we’d love to hear from you.

Photo Credit: advencap

For all businesses and organizations, regardless of size, the experience that the customer has with your business from start to finish – from the moment they meet you via marketing or word of mouth until the moment they cease to be your customer – must be flawlessly consistent.

When small businesses pull off this hat trick of “consistency” especially well, they reap generous rewards on the bottom line. Consistency in a desired customer experience that makes your customers feel like insiders is a sure meal ticket to success – the magic formula that all businesses are looking for – and few achieve. A desired customer experience is one that is remarkably different (for a true understanding of “remarkable” – read some Seth Godin books), convenient, and most of all creates a simple, easy-to-understand and experience…well, experience.

What does consistency look like in small business?

Merriam-Webster.com defines “consistency” as “a condition of adhering together” and as an “agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole.” But this is the part I really like… Merriam-Webster says “specifically: ability to be asserted together without contradiction.”

That’s really the bottom line. Examine your business today and look for anything that might contradict the specific and remarkable customer experience that you want for your customers to get from your small business. Marketing is only one piece of that puzzle, but it is critical that everything from your social media messages (including the tone and frequency of your posts) to your visual advertising to your visual merchandising and in-store way-finding to your employees’ dress, attitudes, personalities, expertise and ability to serve the customer… to the shopping bags, the after-the-sale service and follow-up to the on-going e-mail marketing, customer loyalty and retention efforts to yes, most of all, the experience that you put forward through your 24/7 presence on-line through your web site and blog – it all must be CONSISTENT. It must go together without contradiction.

Customer experience

Are your employees confusing your customers? Does your marketing message contradict your in-store experience? Is your in-store experience confusing – do all of your sensory experiences not play together to make a “harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole” in your small business?

Then, when you’ve created a system of customer experience that is consistent – you must replicate that system of customer experience every single day. It is this repetition that will grow your business.

Set your sacred cows aside today and look at your business in an effort to banish inconsistencies and create systems and experiences that grow a consistent customer for your business. A great customer experience is not an optional exercise.

What are you doing today to improve your consistent customer experience?

Next week on ResultsRevTV Live, Luke Abney, owner of the Rogue & Good Company and 4450 will be our guest.  The Rogue, which has been in business for 42 years, has been owned by Luke and his wife Alison for the past five years.  After the purchase of the Rogue, these parents of two opened Forty Four Fifty, a women’s retail store, in September of 2008.

In addition to the stores, the couple owns the property they are on, including the property that houses a restaurant adjacent to the businesses. With a motto of, “Yes is the answer, what is the question?” Abney realizes what makes his stores special is the experience customers have while shopping there. “We believe that our associates make the difference in why we have repeat business,” Abney says. And with close to 200 years of combined retail experience among his associates, Luke Abney knows his two stores strive to provide the best in quality and customer service.

Abney also says not only should the customer experience be special, but so should the merchandise.  He hopes the selection of merchandise, the shopping experience, and the efforts of the associates will help his customers achieve their desired clothing needs and wants.  “[Offering] that experience is definitely an advantage in our marketplace,” Abney says.

Tune in to this episode of ResultsRevTV Live to hear more from this experienced businessman as we ask him about the ins and outs of retail merchandising and his marketing approach.

As editor of this little resource and promotional tool I like to call the Results Revolution, I have made it my prerogative that we should have at least a tiny bit of fun… As such, I’ll be occasionally – every other week or so… sharing a few snapshots and brief comments about my experiences shopping, dining or visiting locally owned and operated locations wherever we are in America.

Disclaimer: My photos are typically made with a VERY beat-up camera on my Blackberry, but hopefully you’ll get the idea. If you want REALLY fantastic photos for your commercial business, of course, you should call Tom Beck at Beck Photographic, my friend who is not always with me to save me from my camera phone shooting moments. (Disclosure: Tom has been a show sponsor but he didn’t pay me to say THAT.) Here goes…

Lots of custom options for baby doll beddinng at Javis Davis in Fairhope, Alabama.

Javis Davis in Fairhope, Alabama

While walking around downtown Fairhope, Alabama with our three kids, a small window on a side street caught the eye of my girls. They persisted, and we walked into the store – home of custom infant, child and doll bedding creator, Javis Davis. Owner Mary Lou Cothran is a jewel of a person and spent time with the girls, demo’d her web site for me, and talked to our art-loving son about the weekend Arts & Crafts Festival in Fairhope. Her store, her products and most of all, her web site, are an extraordinary experience sure to entrance the little girl in all of us. It’s a fun product, a fun experience created by a fun, charming person. The technology on her web site for this locally owned and operated small business is definitely worth a look. I hope that wasn’t the last time Mary Lou and I meet.

View of the front of the fabulous Windmill Market in downtown Fairhope, Alabama, a sustainable, local-friendly market.

Windmill Market in Fairhope, Alabama

The kids and I discovered the Windmill Market on our first Spring Break jaunt around downtown, and we took Andy back on Sunday after church for Moe’s BBQ at the Market. The Windmill Market is a completely sustainable property, with rainwater collection, composting machines, and gardens all around the building. Of course, wind powered energy from their on-site windmill also provides an easy landmark for anyone looking around downtown for the market. The market features locally grown produce, cheese, meat and prepared foods (including fantastic cookies and cakes) in the back and locally produced art, crafts and other product-based businesses in rented stalls throughout the front of the market. On weekends live music accompanies the very delicious and substantial servings from Moe’s BBQ – all can be enjoyed on picnic tables adjacent to the market. For me, the deep thought given to the “experience” of this business leaves a lasting memory. Table decorations are herbs grown in tin buckets. Borders to the dining area are straw bales  with vegetables GROWING in them. It is a truly organic, sustainable experience – fun and learning for the entire family!

Catching Fireflies in Rochester, Michigan

Catching Fireflies was looking especially "springy" on this March day.

Always a favorite of mine, I was thrilled to run right past Catching Fireflies downtown Rochester, Michigan location while out jogging and taking in above-average temperature day in Michigan. Catching Fireflies brightens this downtown in the snowy winter, but on this spring day, the flowers and bicycle out front said “Welcome Spring!” I also massively enjoyed catching up and comparing notes with Catching Fireflies owner, the very innovative and smart April McCrumb. Catching Fireflies does a lot of things right including e-commerce, e-mail marketing, blogging and a Facebook Page. I can’t help but pick up gifts for others and happies for myself here and there from this amazing business. But for today, I was thrilled to see the building up close and personal again and have it brighten my spring day. Does your building’s exterior do that for your community?

Spring Floral Design Class sign outside the Silk Worm in downtown Rochester, Michigan.

The Silk Worm

The other happy spot on my downtown Rochester, Michigan run was this great sandwich board outside of The Silk Worm. I love that this business has embraced the business trifecta by offering a value-added class as one arm of their marketing and outreach program. Can’t afford an arrangement? Okay, then afford to learn how to make your own! More businesses should be fearless and implement this tactic. The success would blow you away. It was also great to see Stanley and Christine Surratt owners of the Silk Worm later at our Rochester tweet-up.

The amberjack lunch special at Broad Street Baking Company welcomed us home in a memorable and delicious way!

Broad Street Baking Company, Jackson, Miss.

Last, but certainly not least, after Spring Break and a trip to Michigan left us road-weary, we were thrilled to walk into our hometown favorite (whose parent company sponsors the Results Revolution), Broad Street Baking Company. Chef Payton’s lunch special on this fine spring day was a grilled amberjack with a fresh corn salsa with the most delicious string beans and roasted potatoes I’ve ever put into my mouth. A truly stellar performance from the kitchen, this special treat made me take a deep breath out and thank God that great locally owned businesses are all over our great country – especially in my own backyard. What’s even better is that this great restaurant has an iPhone app that reports daily specials and a fantastic presence on Facebook and Twitter, and probably the strongest e-mail marketing effort in the Jackson metro market.

Disclosure: None of these businesses are sponsors of the Results Revolution OR our sister companies UNLESS otherwise noted in the text above. But since they’re cool places that would be considered for such a position. Regardless, they are definitely doing it right!!

A few weeks ago, I wrote the following for my weekly E-mail letter (Want to get this letter? The content is current, relevant and behind the scenes business owner information. Sign up here):

Sometimes a project comes along that just warms the soul. Right now, Andy and I are working with the new owner of a historic soda fountain as he seeks to share the nostalgia and heritage of this landmark with a new generation – using New Media and Social Media tools. Recently, when meeting with the new owner, I found myself saying something that I say a lot: “Customers are more loyal when they feel like an insider, and prospects are more likely to convert when they have ‘insider’ information.”

Similarly, several times a week, without fail, folks ask us about our lives… Usually the question goes something like this: “It seems like you are on the road ALL THE TIME… HOW do you do it?” Or, “How do you have time to do all of this?”

Really, the bottom line is that folks want insider information – they want a peak behind the scenes. And your customers want the same from you. As strange as it may seem, in this age of reality shows and YouTube (check out our channel), people really do care what happens behind the scenes at your business. I don’t think I’m that interesting, but who am I to tell you how to feel or what to be interested in? Or maybe, if you’re like me, it’s so refreshing to know that other people think or feel like I do. I believe “Insider Information” is a “needle-mover” when it comes to customer loyalty, word of mouth marketing and long-term success.

What are YOU doing to make your customers and prospects feel like “Insiders?” (Yep, go ahead, hit the “reply” button and tell us. Seriously.)

Maybe “Insider Information” from us will help you become more motivated and/or equipped to use the tools of Social Media or New Media effectively for your business. So, from this point forward, our e-mail newsletter will be flavored with the spice of our life: tales of life on the road, digital nomad-ism, social media, new media, late-night brainstorming sessions, work/life balancing acts and our disdain for early starts. Welcome to the INSIDE, loyal readers.

In follow-up to this e-mail, I got a note from friend Mandy Becker, owner of Swagger Gifts in Cary, NC. I asked her permission to share her comments with you because I thought her feedback was so apt – it reinforces the message. Here’s what Mandy had to say:

I loved this!  I totally think the insider info think is critical!  The last three times I went to market, I wrote a blog about what it was like, what I was buying, etc. My customers loved it! They felt like they were part of the action! I have heard so many times, “Oh, I wish I owned a gift shop – what’s it really like? Do you love it?  What’s a typical day.” It is amazing how much people care about one another’s lives; I think we live vicariously through others in some way. Anyway – thank you!

P.S. I think I might even do a weekly blog post called “Insider Information.” Thanks for the idea – I hope it is okay if I use it?

Where are the points in your customer experience that make a new customer feel awkward, out of the loop? Do some customers walk into your restaurant and know exactly what to do, what to expect, how to respond? Learn from your regulars – and find ways to make new customers feel equally comfortable. Sales and tips will increase accordingly.