How to use a customer magazine to improve retention
By Paul Green
Imagine you could secure 10 or 20 minutes in front of your ideal customer, telling them all the problems your product or service fixes.
This is what a customer magazine does. It’s something your customer chooses to read that is ultimately a big sell for your business.
It’s not an out and out overt sell; customer magazines are much more subtle than that. Instead it consists of a series of messages to help your customer decide they must buy from – or stay with – your business.
Customer magazines are perfect for any business or organisation where people make a decision on a regular basis whether or not to stay, such as membership organisations, charities, and breakdown clubs.
Your customers think they make a decision to stay or switch based on price. Ultimately they will. But if you can continually educate them of the other benefits of staying, they will break down the price argument in their head.
Let’s say you run a vehicle breakdown company and members have to actively renew every year. You are not the cheapest in the industry, but you have the biggest fleet, meaning you get to stranded motorists faster.
This is a perfect message to send in a customer magazine. You can run features on some of your drivers; how such a big fleet is managed; a survey on average response times; case studies of happy customers, etc etc.
Overall the message you are sending is that yes, you are slightly more expensive than your rival. But when your customer needs you, you’ll be there faster. That’s got to be worth an extra £20, surely?
It’s hard to authentically send a message like this in a letter or leaflet. But a fascinating and relevant customer magazine that your customer will read during their “downtime” is the perfect way to get this message across.
