Reaching a customer between purchases without becoming a nuisance

4 days ago
3 min read

Introduction

The period between one purchase and the next is usually silence. The work finished, the invoice was paid, and nothing happens until the customer either returns or does not. In a business with a twelve-month cycle that is eleven months of being gradually forgotten while competitors advertise.

The instinct against contact is understandable. Nobody wants to be the business that sends unwanted messages, and most of the marketing people receive is unwanted. But the alternative being practised is not restraint, it is absence, and absence is why satisfied customers use somebody else.

There is a version of this that customers do not mind, and it is characterised by being infrequent, relevant and not always asking for something.

1. Reaching a customer between purchases works when it is infrequent

The frequency principle.

Two or three contacts a year is enough to remain present and is far below anybody's irritation threshold. The gap between silence and nuisance is very wide. Most businesses sit at one extreme. Three well-timed messages beat twelve routine ones.

2. Not every contact should ask for something

The proportion.

If every message is a sale, each one gets less attention than the last. Useful, seasonal or simply acknowledging contact earns the occasional request. The ratio matters more than the content. Two useful messages to one that asks is a workable rule.

3. Time it against the interval

The relevance factor.

Contact that arrives near the point the need recurs feels helpful; the same message at a random moment feels like marketing. Your repurchase interval tells you when. This single adjustment changes how it is received. The same words land differently two months apart.

4. Seasonal relevance does most of the work

The easiest form.

Before winter, before the tax deadline, at the start of the growing season. The timing supplies the reason. It also makes writing the message straightforward. Pick the two or three moments that matter in your trade.

5. A reminder about their own thing is welcome

The strongest format.

Anything specific to what they bought — a service due, a check worth doing, a warranty ending — is genuinely useful rather than promotional. It requires records that connect to the customer. That is the only real cost. A date field against each job is enough.

6. Use the channel they used

The practical courtesy.

Somebody who has only ever telephoned may not read email, and a message on the wrong channel is not received at all. Note their preference when you first deal with them. It is one field.

7. Personal beats broadcast at small scale

The advantage of being small.

Fifty customers can receive a message that mentions the actual job you did. Nothing automated competes with that. Large businesses cannot do it and small ones mostly do not try.

8. Keep it short

The format.

Three or four lines gets read; a newsletter frequently does not. Brevity also makes the habit sustainable for whoever is writing them. Long formats stop after two issues.

9. Make it easy to stop

The trust point.

A clear way out, honoured immediately, is what makes the contact feel reasonable. Very few people take it. Its presence is what matters.

Be careful about automating this to the point where it stops sounding like you. A sequence that arrives on schedule with no connection to what the person actually bought reads as bulk mail, and the advantage of a small business here is precisely that it need not.

Conclusion

Contact customers two or three times a year rather than never.

Make sure not every message asks for something, time contact against your repurchase interval, use seasonal moments where the timing supplies the reason, prefer reminders specific to what that customer bought, use the channel they chose originally, write personally rather than broadcasting, keep each message to a few lines, and make opting out easy and immediate.