newsletter

pcAmerica Newsletter #300
Customer Tracking & Loyalty (Increase Sales by 25%)
Please Contribute to My Charity!
Contacting pcAmerica

pcAmerica Newsletter #300

Only Law & Order with 422 episodes and ER with 322 episodes have been around longer than the pcAmerica Newsletter.

Prior to publishing the newsletter via email, the pcAmerica Newsletter was actually mailed to customers. I’m not sure if anyone has a paper copy of one of our older newsletters, but earlier versions of the newsletter go back as far as 1976.

Can you believe that prior to the email version of the newsletter, we actually used the mail to send out a printed version of the newsletter?  Email has only been popular for about 7 years.

Email actually was invented or started around 1965 (according to an article in Wikipedia). In 1993, America Online and Delphi started to connect their proprietary email systems to the internet. My first experience with emails came on the Delphi system. Does anyone remember Delphi?

It was in the early 1990’s when lots of computer enthusiasts began to send each other emails. At that time, a telephone call from New York to California cost about 25 cents per minute. Communicating with friends via email became an inexpensive form of communications with people all over the world.

In the early 1990’s you were paying CompuServe, Delphi, America Online and other providers a per minute charge for using their email and internet services. Actually, at that time, they were called service providers. We called it the internet when service providers started communicating with each other.

CompuServe was started mainly as a form of accessing business information including buying and selling stocks. I actually knew the person who started one of the earliest online stock trading firms. In the mid 1970’s, he wrote some software that would allow traders to buy and sell stocks online. He insisted on advertising in my publication.  I hated to take his money. Who would ever buy and sell stocks on a computer using the telephone lines? Anyone remember Max Ule & Company?

Can you imagine, attaching a computer to a telephone line and getting a stock quote?

For those of you who receive an annoying amount of email now, imagine the year 1999. Ten years ago email was rare. Now, in 2009, everyone uses emails. When we first started sending out this newsletter via email somewhere around 2004, people had first started to communicate in mass via email.

Now, kids (those people who are under 30 years old) use email as their only method of communication. For the younger generation, email has been transformed into text messaging. If you want to communicate with your children in the future, it will only be through text messaging and emails. Most of your communications with your children and grandchildren with be through mobile phones and texting devices. Mobile voice calls are actually down because the younger generations are communicating through text messages.

Our current pcAmerica Newsletter format is about 5 or 6 years old. We use it as a method of communications with our customers. We don’t try to sell our products through the newsletter. We try to offer our customers and readers information about improving businesses and using computers within a business environment. Our final goal is that you will use or recommend pcAmerica products in your business, when you need them.

Email has gone from 0 to 60 in less than 5 years. Think back 5 or 6 years. How many of you had an email account? How many pictures have you seen of our President Elect using his Blackberry. That’s the future.

Thanks for reading our newsletter. Thanks for all of your comments and ideas.

Customer Tracking & Loyalty  (Increase Sales by 25%)

Speaking of Email Newsletters, they work for us.

As a retailer, your best customers are your current customers. It may sound funny, but it is true.

It is those customers who walk through your doors that will keep your business going.

You can advertise in the newspaper. You can do those joint advertising mailings. Neither will bring in revenues anywhere as high as those generated by contacting  your present customers.

Keeping in touch with your present customers and potential customers is the best form of advertising. Creating and sending out emails is fairly easy to do and far less expensive than newspaper advertising or joint mailings.

If you need help in starting an email campaign, use one of your employees. You are likely to find an email savvy employee working for you.

Cash Register Express (CRE) and Restaurant Pro Express (RPE) have customer tracking built into the software. Should you not be using CRE or RPE, at least collect customer information on paper.

The customer tracking feature within CRE and RPE lets you track name, address, telephone number, birthday, email address and other information. Depending on your type of business and your goals, you don’t need to obtain all of the information.

At a minimum,  you should be getting a name and email address. Having a complete address and birthday is also nice and enables you to send out (via U.S. Mail or email) a birthday greeting.

Once you have accumulated 25 or more email addresses, start sending out your weekly, biweekly, or monthly newsletter. Your newsletters don’t need to be complicated. You can take pictures of your employees, make them famous, and get your customers familiar with your staff. You may want to offer discounts on a weekly basis to get customers into your store. You may want to educate customers about your products.

Have fun with your email newsletter. Write about things that are interesting or fun for your customers. Use your employees to help.

Hundreds of pcAmerica customers have started up periodic newsletters. Communicating with your customers is the best way to increase business.

The Customer Tracking & Loyalty features found within CRE and RPE are great for increasing business.

· Record details of each customer (name, address, birthday, telephone #, etc.).

· Send promotional e-mails and mailings to advertise sales and specials.

· Loyalty programs include bonus points, frequent visitor discounts and birthday rewards

· Retain detailed purchase history of customer.

· Customer tracking includes accounts receivable with balance tracking, payment history and printed statements.

· Increase repeat business by offering rewards to your customers.

· Use loyalty cards to easily track your customers. 

Please Contribute to My Charity!

As the owner or manager of a retail store, you are constantly being asked to contribute to various charities and other types of organizations.

Giving to charities and helping out is a good thing. I am not advocating ending your charitable contributions, but here’s an idea that one of my favorite restaurants, The Dog House, shared with me.  The idea will work with any type of retail store (restaurant or non-restaurant).

When a local organization such as a school asks for a contribution, you can turn it around. The Dog House organized a Dog House week for the school. They distributed menus to the entire school. Anyone who made a purchase at The Dog House during the week referred from the school filled out a short form. At the end of the week, The Dog House contributed 10% of their total referral sales to the school.

Better yet, you can have referral customers give their email addresses on the form and be included in future mailings.

The police, firemen, local churches, cancer, heart, and other health related charities, ASPCA, schools, baseball teams, GM (just making sure your reading this) and others are all asking for money. Most of the these causes are good causes, but many retailers just can’t keep giving. Now you have a way to turn it around. Make many of these charities into customers.

Give each charity its own week. Make up some specials, especially for members of the organization. Collect those email addresses and give back enough to make it worthwhile for the organization you are working with.

Purchases may be tax deductible. You would have to ask the proposed new Secretary of the Treasury about that.