First of all, let me apologize right away for not posting the last couple weeks.  I’ve been very busy preparing our marketing plan for the upcoming busy season, and just kept forgetting to blog. but I’m making it up to you this week we’re tackling the project of setting up a customer relationship program for your tat business.

CRM or customer relationship management is a very popular buzz word that has been being thrown around a lot in the business and marketing circles.  Unfortunately, most people don’t address small scale customer relationship management, and how valuable it can be to a local business. CRM is basically just keeping in touch with your customers in order to build a strong relationship with them so that they hire you to do their parties and recommend you to their friends and families.  Now that you know what it is, lets get started…

First things first, you will need to build a customer database, now this isn’t hard so no worries.  The first step in this process is to get a spreadsheet program.  If you have Microsoft’s Excel, this will work very well, however you can also use Open Office which is a free download that has similar features to the Microsoft Office Suite.

So go ahead and download that or open up Excel.  Now go to this link, and download the template I created for a very simple customer database.  Now when a window pops up that looks like this:

click the save file toggle then click OK, a second window should pop up and you should be sure to save to Desktop.

Now open up your Spreadsheet program, click open and select the file titled CRM, this will open the template.  Which should look a lot like the image above.  Now just save the file in your business folder so you can use it later with ease.

Now that you have a simple database, begin collecting the information for the database from you customers.  Maybe you have a list of names and emails, or a list of old phone numbers etc. Compile all of this information into this database for easy reference.  Don’t forget, when a new customer comes in, have them write down all their information.  This simple database will become invaluable in your CRM program.

The next step in the process is to begin managing you customer relationships…use the database and shoot an email or a simple letter out to the customers who haven’t got a Tat in a while, encourage them to come back with a small discount or special offer of some kind, like a free glitter tat kit. If they come back, great, if not find out why and try to fix it if you can.

Another way to use this is to send your customers holiday promotions.  If you have time, shoot an email out to your entire database, use customer names, and encourage them to come in for a valentines tat for their loved one or to celebrate that they don’t have one.  Include one or two high quality pictures of Valentines day themed Tats, use your imagination.  This will be sure to bring in customers that forgot all about you and are in need of a unique gift idea. Doing something like this for every holiday, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mothers Day, Father Day, Fourth of July, will increase the amount of times your customers come in, and its completely free.

But, this isn’t just for holiday advertising, keep in touch with your customers, after they get a tat, shoot them an email and see if they have any questions, if they had a party ask them if they had a good time and remind them that they should refer you to their friends and family, if you haven’t heard from them in a while, send them an email to find out why.  This gives customers a reason to come back and keeps your business in the forefront of their mind.

And, that’s it, use your imagination, and you’ll be sure to retain more customers and increase your sales and your businesses reputation.  If anyone has any questions please feel free to email at marissa@tatstore.com.