If you’re not following up people who contact your business, you are missing out and losing money. Read on to find out how to change this.

People who haven’t heard about your business yet are ‘cold contacts’: those who have signed up for your newsletter, sent an enquiry, or purchased from you are ‘warm’. It is much easier to get warm contacts to buy again than to get cold contacts to buy, and much more cost effective too, so make sure you nurture your current contacts and customers with ongoing marketing.

A great follow up or ‘customer management’ system makes this much easier and more effective, and a large proportion of your follow up can be automated online:

This is an example of one way that a business can promote its services and use online follow up:

• Generate enquiries – through banner advertising, adowrds, Facebook advertising, competitions on websites etc
• Gather contact details from enquirers using a form generated by your choice of email service provider – make sure you pick one with a good autoresponder
• Give contacts the option to select focussed areas of interest
• Create some ‘welcome’ emails to send to new contacts showcasing how your business can help them
• Follow up with a time limited offer tied in to their field of interest
• Send regular newsletters: email makes this easy and low cost
• Continue to include regular time limited promotions and ‘calls to action’
• Add information on purchases into contact management system so relevant offers and news can continue to keep people ‘warm’ to your business.

What follow up systems do you need to develop for YOUR business? Read more about how to use autoresponders here.