The most effective way of getting those who have bought from you once, to buy from you again

Once you have started selling a product the simplest and most cost effective way of staying in touch with that customer and encouraging that person to buy again, is to mail them again - either via email or through the post.

Email is clearly attractive here as it is lower cost than the post and allows you to link from your email to your ever updated website.  However, if you don’t get the message right it is easy for the effectiveness of these emails to fall away very quickly.  Since you must have a system through which people can unsubscribe from your email list directly, you can find that you will lose many people from the list very rapidly.

To overcome the overkill that results from endlessly saying “Special Offer!”, “New catalogue!!”, “It’s that time of year again!!!”, and other such phrases, always followed for some reason by at least one exclamation mark, you should start to build up a conversation.

These people to whom you are writing are those who have marked themselves out from the crowd by at least enquiring of your product, and at best buying something from you.  They need to be treated with respect and courtesy.

Talk with them about their interests, their requirements and their needs.   Never address them as a crowd or herd (as with “Some of you will know that”) but instead treat the person to whom you are writing as if he/she is the only person you are writing to.

Advertising as conversation is an idea that has been around for a couple of years now, and those firms that use the approach are generally doing incredibly well out of their advertising. 

Those that don’t use it tend to say, “I don’t have the time for this: I need a sale now.”  But by ceaselessly shouting about their products and trying to get a sale at this moment, they achieve the opposite of what they want.

Technical details, costs and other matters…

Hamilton House can hold your lists in confidence and security on its servers and undertake email and postal campaigns for you as required.

For email lists of up to 5000 the importing of the list is generally free, there is a charge of £70 for sending out the first email and £30 for each transmission thereafter, plus a £10 a month fee for holding the list.   These costs include running an automatic unsubscribe service on the list.  Other charges may apply but we’ll be pleased to give you a written quote for your specific case.

For postal lists, there is a database set-up charge of £100, which includes importing your existing lists.  We can then add further names and addresses plus 3 items of simple data  for 18p per address.  There’s more information on the website

Free consultancy

If you’d like to talk to us about your product or service and the lists you hold we’ll come up with ways of using such a list to maximise its effectiveness – and we’ll give you a full quote in writing.  We’ll also take a look at your list, to check for any possible problems, and review the promotions you have, or are thinking of, putting out.

Telephone: 01536 399 000 or email Sales@hamilton-house.com