Welcome Mat Marketing: Making Your New Customers, Clients and Patients Feel Special

Much like a welcome mat greets visitors to your home, all business owners should have in place something I call “welcome mat marketing” for new customers, clients and patients (for the sake of this article, I am going to lump them all together as “customers”).

I cannot think of a single business owner that could not (or should not) have a welcome mat campaign in place.

• Dentists should have one.
• Info-marketers should have one.
• Retail store owners should have one.
• Sales professionals should have one.

Every business owner and marketer should have at least one welcome mat marketing campaign in place to greet new people into your business.

A welcome mat marketing campaign is a focused MULTI-STEP, NEW CUSTOMER campaign (it could be a series of emails or it could be direct mail or it could be a combination of both) that is designed to accomplish two major goals (one focused on the customer and one internally focused).

The first (and most critical) goal is to make your new customers feel welcomed and appreciated and to show your business is different than all the other competitive choices simply because you care 100% about helping them be successful with your product or service.

Believe it or not, simply doing this will set you apart from a majority of your competition, since most business owners don’t even think this way.

The second goal is to reduce refunds and returns and create customers for life. While it’s impossible to make everybody happy 100% of the time, you can go a long way by creating a well-thought out welcome mat campaign.

Rather than get too complicated with a welcome mat campaign, I’m going to suggest everybody reading this article consider how they could implement something as simple as a welcome mat email campaign for all new customers.

Keep it simple and get it done if you don’t have one.

Step 1: Create a 7 day, 15 day, 30 day or some specific time-frame where new customers will hear from you over that period of time.  New CopyDoodles members currently get a 7 day welcome mat campaign from us and we’ve had 30 day ones in the past.

Step 2: Figure out an email frequency you want to use.  For shorter campaigns, I would suggest a daily email and for longer ones you might send out 1 – 3 emails per week. Depends on your specific business and what the customer expectations are for your product/service.

Step 3: Map out the campaign and figure out your goal at each contact point. Here are a few things you can include in your welcome mat campaign:

• Thank them for becoming a customer.
• Reaffirm their wise decision to become a customer.
• Spell out ways they can contact you with questions.
• Give them specific ways to start consuming your product or service (and reward such behavior).
• Offer product/service learning opportunities (e.g. demo videos, how to videos, tutorials).
  Share customer success stories (and invite them to be your next one).
• Discuss your referral program.
• Give them an unexpected free bonus or gift from you.
• Get them to self-identify as a person wanting more from you (e.g. other products, monthly newsletter, etc).

Step 4: Get your campaign in place with some type of automated email system.  The only way this works well is if your welcome mat marketing is systematized and automated.  This way it just happens after a new customer comes into your business.   Systems like Infusionsoft, Aweber and Constant Contact are a few that come to mind.

Step 5: Set it and forget it (for the time being).  I’m never a fan of simply forgetting about a campaign after it has been loaded into your email system.  All responsible business owners should revisit ALL their marketing from time to time to see if tweaks are necessary.

These are just a few things you can include in your welcome mat campaign, but the BIG TAKEAWAY is to implement one if you don’t have one in place.

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In this month’s SMART Ideas (my print newsletter), I go into more depth about this type of marketing campaign and include a swipe file of ideas and templates for subscribers to use to build their own welcome mat marketing campaign.  I also dissect one of the most impressive welcome mat campaigns I’ve ever seen (it was used on me after a recent purchase). If you’re not yet a subscriber, visit http://smartideas.mikecapuzzi.com and check it out a trial PRINT and DIGITAL issue for only $9.95! And if you decide to remain a subscriber each issue is less than $30/month and every issue has downloadable templates, copy examples and more to implement in your business.