Client Retention Tips: How to Show You Care By Staying in Touch

In order to retain clients and build a sustainable business, you must stay in touch with people in a meaningful way. This includes people you have done business with, people you have met in person at events and your email subscriber list.

Your client base has a sacred contract with you. They have connected, spent money, and spent time with you. You must care enough to keep in touch with them.

Advertising experts have proven time and time again, that ads that run continuously, at least three times, always outperform one-shot ad runs. The same is true with your client base. Find a way to reach them, share your message, and consistently stay connected.

For coaches, consultants, healers, and other helping professionals, newsletters are one of the best ways to stay in touch. It is important to shift your mindset and action from not wanting to bother your client base, which is a common mistake that new business owners make.

Just as most new business owners commonly do, I used to say, "People have just given me their name, I don't want to bother them and send them things all the time." I had to recognize that touching their lives in a meaningful way allows the cream to rise to the top. Those who are truly interested in what you have to say and the solutions you offer will make themselves known to you. The rest may unsubscribe or walk away from you, but that means they really weren't engaged or dedicated to your message anyway.

Approaching marketing this way saves you time, effort, and money. Instead of chasing people who may or may not be interested or ready for your offerings, let the people who need you most identify themselves to you. Don't worry about the others. They will let you know when they are ready or simply opt-out if they are not interested.

My newsletter continually gets better readership when I write more often and when I provide a more personal touch about my family, my dog, or my travels. When I first started doing my newsletter, I did it once a month and about 35% of the people opened it and read it. Now I do my newsletter weekly, and I have sometimes up to 85% open it up and read it. It just proves that if you're consistent and really share meaningful content, people will want more of it. They will want more of you!

Newsletters are only one way to stay in touch with your clients, prospects or business contacts, but they are a great place to start. Depending on your business and the people you serve, there are dozens of other ways to touch the lives of your clients in a meaningful way.

Once you've started regularly sending out an email newsletter, consider mailing out occasional physical newsletters, cards or small gifts to show your appreciation to your clients and contacts. It done authentically and thoughtfully, investments like this will always pay off in spades.

Although there may be specific tactics and media that will work best for your business, niche, and message, the important thing is that you are consistently reaching out to your client base and prospect list in ways that show your dedication to them. Communicating how much you care through an electronic newsletter or any other method of follow up is one of the easiest and most effective ways to grow your business and increase your visibility.