Get Your Customers to Fall in Love with You

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it seems appropriate to talk about love. And before the pragmatists and anti-romantics among you click away for fear of encountering a sappy ode or sonnet, let me clarify that I’m talking about love of buyers for retailers and how you can encourage those “warm fuzzies” from your own customers.

But before I jump to that topic, let me first relate a short recent experience that illustrates this point. I recently placed a take-out order at a local chain restaurant. After taking my order, the manager said it would be about 10 minutes and proceeded to offer me a free drink. Now maybe this is commonplace at some local eateries, but this was a reasonably-sized franchise, and something I had yet to experience, or have seen since at other establishments. Turns out after I asked about this practice, the manager said they do this to keep customers happy while waiting. It’s important to note they didn’t miss out on a sale of a drink because I was done placing my order. My reaction though was one of surprise and a feeling of good will (important disclaimer here is I am a bit of a soda hound). So for the reasonably small cost of a cup and syrup and soda water, this merchant has earned some measure of loyalty from me.

So the obvious way you can apply this tactic is by slipping a “freebie” into your customer’s orders. Maybe you only do it the first time someone orders with you. Maybe you do it for the especially frequent shoppers. The exact process you will follow is up to you based on your knowledge of your typical customer profile (one-time shoppers vs. repeat buyers, etc . . .). You can view this freebie as analogous to a sample you may get in a real store—a chance to try a product with no obligation.

Obviously this notion of a sample only works for certain types of stores (drop me a line when you find the jewelry store with samples). For those stores, there are other things you can do to spread the love:

• Process and ship orders with lightening speed; imagine your customer’s surprise when they get a timely shipment notification. This is an area where smaller merchants have a distinct advantage over larger merchants.
• Hand-sign your packing slips with a thank you note. This tip comes from merchant/developer Rob Snell and he claims buyers have been delighted. A simple “thanks for your business” or “Happy to be your supplier for widgets” can go a long way.
• If a customer adds comments to an order, send an email to them if you have any questions or simply confirming any special request. Buyers will appreciate the feedback.
• Insert your idea here.

So submit your best customer love idea in the comment area below so all Yahoo! merchants can spread the love.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

[Edit--02/09/07] Check the comments section for some more details around how to determine 1st time or repeat customer status.–PB

Blog to the Future

The Yahoo! Store blog will soon celebrate its first anniversary (birthday?). As such, it’s a good time to look back at topics we have covered, and more importantly discuss what you may want to see in the future. First, a quick retrospect (can we even do that only after a year?).

Some topics we have covered

• Best Practices for
  • Building Trust with Buyers
  • Building Community
  • Shipping
• Guest bloggers
  • Rob Snell: Yahoo! Store Caption Linking Secrets and Southern-Fried Search Marketing
  • Scott Sanfilippo: Keeping the Holiday Momentum
• Links to free reports and resources for merchants
  • Everyone loves free
  • Increasing conversion in the buying process
  • Free marketing strategies report
• News about Features
  • Yahoo! Site Explorer Authentication
  • Open for Business Control Panel Launches
  • Design Wizard and Add Product Wizard Launches

We also included articles on the holidays, answered merchant questions, dove into some RTML, and talked about getting started for new merchants.

Some topics for the future

• Interviews with SEO and SEM experts
• Interviews with top Yahoo! Store owners
• Links to more conferences, webinars, and other events of interest to Yahoo! merchants

And now for your feedback

The sole purpose of this blog is to build a strong community of Yahoo! merchants by providing information and sharing best practices to get open, get selling, increase traffic and revenue, and make your online venture a success. We not only want your active participation and feedback, we need it.

Tell us what you want from the blog. What topics do you want to see more of? What are we not doing on the blog that would help grow your business? Join the conversation by posting a comment. Send us an email if there is a question you want to see covered on the blog.

And most of all thanks for reading,

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business