Drum Up Repeat Business from Your Customers - Give Your Customers Convenience

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Here's a personal favorite of mine: include a free sample with every order. Lots of businesses will use this approach to attract customers, but they also work to encourage additional orders from a regular customer. The trick is to include something that works well with what you're already shipping, but is different enough to pique your customer's interest.

So if your customer ordered several skeins of colorful sock yarn, you might include part of another skein of sock yarn by a different manufacturer in a slightly different blend, so they can try it out and see if they like working with it. If they've ordered a glue gun and some standard glue sticks, include a few colored or glittery glue sticks in the same size. Their next order just might include both the original product and a full-sized version of the item you sent them to sample.

One very good thing you can do to encourage your customers to re-order is let them set up accounts with you that involve logging in with a password. Let them fill out an easy form when they set up the account, that includes their billing, shipping, and credit card information (and make sure the database that will hold this information is rock-solid secure!). Tie the login with password into your shopping cart, so that when your old customers log in, you already have all of their shipping and purchasing information filled out on their order form. That way, they don't have to keep filling in that information every time they want to order something from you. It speeds up repeat visits and purchases.

If you sell goods that are consumed over a regular period of time, you might want to give your customers the option of re-ordering automatically. This works well for products such as coffee, health and beauty items, medications, and so forth. A customer using such a program gives you their regular order, and how often he or she wants to receive it – say once a month. Each month, then, you'd charge their credit card for their order, and then ship it out. Your customer no longer faces the hassle of shopping for the product every time it runs out, and you benefit from the repeat business. It's a win-win situation.

Finally, one great trick to encourage repeat business is starting up a rewards program. You've probably seen them at restaurants, where a certain number of punches on a card gets you a discount on your next meal. One of my favorite sushi restaurants tracks their reward card holders electronically. They have your name, so they don't need you to bring in your card; they can keep track of how much you purchased in one of their databases.

You can let your imagination go wild with the kind of rewards program you offer your customers. Just make sure you customize it to your business. It doesn't even need to require repeat purchases to work well; a card that lets customers take five percent off every purchase from your business, every time, will encourage them to think of you first when they need something that you sell.

I've given you a few ideas you can use to encourage repeat business from your customers. I'm sure that you can come up with many more. Good luck!

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