Would You Spend 10 Cents to Almost Guarantee Repeat Customers?

Published on August 2nd, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

About the Author

Mitch (@mitchellharper) is the co-founder and CEO of BigCommerce. Way back in 2007 he built what eventually became BigCommerce as you know it. Today he runs the company alongside Eddie and along with our 100+ team members, is passionate about helping businesses succeed with e-commerce. Mitch spends time between our Sydney and Austin offices and is giving the keynote at TechConnect 2012 in Sydney on April 19th.

The tea in the photo above was purchased at a regular market so there’s nothing special about the tea itself. What is special, however, is the little card that was included with the purchase that directs you back to the tea makers website, www.realchai.com.au:

Here’s the message that was included with the tea if you can’t read it:

Dear Chai Lover

Thank you for purchasing some Real Chai from us today.

I look forward to you being part of our Real Chai community for many years to come.

I appreciate that you can’t get to the markets all the time so we have made it very easy to re-order your Real Chai once it has run out.

All you need to do is follow these simple steps…

Go onto www.realchai.com.au

Visit the shop page

Select your re-fill bag

Enter in your details

Watch it get delivered to your door step in days

Continue enjoying your Real Chai experience

If you have any feedback as always I would love to hear it.

Happy Sipping!

Anthea Cahill (aka the chai girl)

Simple, effective, cheap to produce, and a brilliant marketing strategy – getting people who purchased from you at a market to your website using a piece of paper that probably cost 10 cents to print.

Try getting repeat customers for 10 cents using any marketing method period. Besides some creative email marketing, you’ll find it tough.

Why not take this idea and implement it for your business? Write your own message (or just copy Anetha’s – I won’t tell), print up a few hundred and slip one in with every order. I bet you’ll be amazed with the results

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Comments

John Grover (August 2nd, 2010, 2:08 am)

Mitch,

Thank you for sharing this great marketing idea. I for one really appreciate that you always give back, and play it forward! I am going to utilize this with our other marketing strategies.

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Blake Schreck (August 2nd, 2010, 9:41 am)

We hand write a little thank you note on every packing slip. Our customers love it and it takes so little time.

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Arturas (August 3rd, 2010, 5:08 am)

Thanks for sharing a great example of customer care and retention. Very often it is the little things that count, this a great example of connecting offline with online.

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Neil (August 3rd, 2010, 8:03 am)

We have been using something similar for a while now. We offer a 10% discount off a customers second order and this appears on card we put in parcel. This brings in more traffic to our website from our eBay sales.

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Patti (August 3rd, 2010, 7:10 pm)

Mitch
This is a great article. I have already implemented this in my business. Thank you!

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