Reminder statistics? Letters, postcards and calls.

[jcooper]

So I'm trying to convey to the "boss(wife)" the importance of reminders. Boss would like more profit in her "target" fund.

We currently do nothing with reminders...

By simply adding some type of reminders(call, letter, postcard, whatever) system to our current clients should be huge. Makes no sense not to do it, many have asked to be reminded... An extra 5 jobs a month could easily bring in an extra 10-15k per year. You wanna make more ya gotta do more, right?


So, does anyone have any idea how well your reminder system is doing? Any numbers?

How many are you sending a month? How many repeats book/call?

Are you calling? Postcards? Letters?

Are you using a service or doing yourself?


Those not using a service, how do you have this set up/organized? How can I make this easy to do?

 

[Chris A]

We were using Quickbooks, printing sales reports 6-12-18-24 months back, then crossing off names that had repeated by hand. Now we use ServiceMonster

 

[Wandslinger]

I would check out House Call Pro. Get a free demo. Also, I talked to Rueben at the ICE show and their new pricing structure is 30 bucks a month which includes the invoicing, email drip system and post cards at 65 each.

 

[hogjowl]

I started using ServiceMonster three or so years ago. I use their reminders. It seems to have helped quite a bit. I can't be specific. That would require me to go into SM and find the numbers. That would cause me frustration the I can't afford to endure at the moment. It's winter. I'm slow. Plus, my wife broke her foot and is acting like she lost her whole leg. So, I'm already wanting to shoot her and disappear into the wilderness alone. I'm might actually go Ladwig if I had anymore stress in my life right now, so I'm not risking a SM safari in the land of illogical pages and jumbled numbers.

 

[Chris A]

I would check out House Call Pro. Get a free demo. Also, I talked to Rueben at the ICE show and their new pricing structure is 30 bucks a month which includes the invoicing, email drip system and post cards at 65 each.

What's the email drip system?

 

[Barry-QDCC]

I use MailChimp to sent out a monthly or so email to former customers. Completely free to use. There is some limit to total you can send for free but I'm not anywhere near that - I send around 700 emails a shot. Everytime I send I get a couple jobs. Everytime I send I also get a few unsubscribing from my list.

I pay a friend $50 a week cash to spend 4 hours a week calling past customers reminding them it's time to clean again. That brings in a small, constant dribble of jobs - 2-4 per week at least.

I'm too cheap to use SM and fill my schedule. I have more time than money. So monthly I send out reminder postcards. I get my cards printed at Vista Print for around .08 -.09 per piece- depending on how many you buy at a time. Print the labels on my computer - maybe .01 per label or less. Then the postcard stamp which are right now .35 each. So around .45 per piece total. Takes me about 3-4 hours to do. My last mailing was 250 cards thereabouts. I send to 6,9,12,15,18,21,24,27,30,33,36,39,42,45 month past customers. Older customers get sent to twice a year. Seems like a lot of different months to send to, I was doing every 6 months but added in the between months a month ago to see if that would make any difference. I get customers all the time telling me they get my cards so I know it keeps my name in front of them. I doubt I get the ROI that Fill My Schedule claims that they get with their mail-outs. I guess you have to decide for yourself what to believe. The numbers they show as an example make it seem like a no-brainer. If the ROI was what they claim, if I was them I'd give everyone a highly discount mailings or 2 to prove it to be true.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Have you tried EDDM to targeted neighborhoods? Cost per piece is much cheaper and you control who and how often you send to. No labeling everyone in the route you pick within designated zip gets one.

For that same $50.00 a week you can mail to around 200 contacts.

 

[Barry-QDCC]

EDDM is one thing I have on the "gonna look at it and think about it" list

 

[Desk Jockey]

Just test it and see what you think. It "may" work better than what you are currently doing. You pick the amount you want to spend so price isn't and issue provided it returns something for the investment.

 

[GeneMiller]

I ask the customer when they would like their reminder call. I simply put it in my schedule at that time. It's free, plus I'm to lazy for anything else.

 

[jcooper]

I started using ServiceMonster three or so years ago. I use their reminders. It seems to have helped quite a bit. I can't be specific. That would require me to go into SM and find the numbers. That would cause me frustration the I can't afford to endure at the moment. It's winter. I'm slow. Plus, my wife broke her foot and is acting like she lost her whole leg. So, I'm already wanting to shoot her and disappear into the wilderness alone. I'm might actually go Ladwig if I had anymore stress in my life right now, so I'm not risking a SM safari in the land of illogical pages and jumbled numbers.

Sound horrible, really! Years ago, my wife broke her leg while 7 months preggo, with a 2 year old at home. My mom ended up having to live with us for 3 months... With her dog. It could be worse...

I pay a friend $50 a week cash to spend 4 hours a week calling past customers reminding them it's time to clean again. That brings in a small, constant dribble of jobs - 2-4 per week at least.

That's fantastic, Barry.
If you had to guess, how many previous clients is the friend calling a month to bring in 2-4 per week??? Hundreds, thousands, 50???

 

[Able 1]

Just do SM and forget about it..

 

[Barry-QDCC]

That's fantastic, Barry.
If you had to guess, how many previous clients is the friend calling a month to bring in 2-4 per week??? Hundreds, thousands, 50???

It varies but she probably averages 15-20 calls an hour some weeks, others it could be more like 30 calls an hour.

The first couple of weeks of the month she is calling strictly my past customers from my current carpet cleaning company I started in mid 2009. These are people that when I do their carpets I go back into SM and enter the call date into the call list feature. Many of those people say for instance "call me in 6 months". Then she calls back in 6 months and depending on what they say will trigger what happens next - for example - book a job or schedule a call back in a month, or call back in 6 months, or take their name off the list because they moved out of the area, so on and so forth.

We document what is said at every call. Some people we call and they say call us back in x amount of time, we call back in that time frame and they say "oh sorry call us back in another month" over and over again. I've done some jobs where we called back over 10 times over the course of 2 years before they finally booked again.

After she goes thru all the calls schedule for the current month, she starts working on former carpet cleaning customers from a carpet cleaning company I closed in 2008. That database had over 8,000 names in it, so she's got a while to work thru that list. Unfortunately I was a late adopter on collecting emails and hardly had any when I started over in 2009. It would have been a lot cheaper to send out emails to those 8,000 people!

 

[Enge]

I use MailChimp to sent out a monthly or so email to former customers. Completely free to use. There is some limit to total you can send for free but I'm not anywhere near that - I send around 700 emails a shot. Everytime I send I get a couple jobs. Everytime I send I also get a few unsubscribing from my list.

I pay a friend $50 a week cash to spend 4 hours a week calling past customers reminding them it's time to clean again. That brings in a small, constant dribble of jobs - 2-4 per week at least.

I'm too cheap to use SM and fill my schedule. I have more time than money. So monthly I send out reminder postcards. I get my cards printed at Vista Print for around .08 -.09 per piece- depending on how many you buy at a time. Print the labels on my computer - maybe .01 per label or less. Then the postcard stamp which are right now .35 each. So around .45 per piece total. Takes me about 3-4 hours to do. My last mailing was 250 cards thereabouts. I send to 6,9,12,15,18,21,24,27,30,33,36,39,42,45 month past customers. Older customers get sent to twice a year. Seems like a lot of different months to send to, I was doing every 6 months but added in the between months a month ago to see if that would make any difference. I get customers all the time telling me they get my cards so I know it keeps my name in front of them. I doubt I get the ROI that Fill My Schedule claims that they get with their mail-outs. I guess you have to decide for yourself what to believe. The numbers they show as an example make it seem like a no-brainer. If the ROI was what they claim, if I was them I'd give everyone a highly discount mailings or 2 to prove it to be true.

What vista postcard are you using? Is it a stock one?

 

[Barry-QDCC]

What vista postcard are you using? Is it a stock one?

No it's one I designed myself, it's easy to do. On the front I have a full color picture - one of my before/after comparisons. On the back is the verbage and other wording. "It's been 6 months since your last cleaning" - that kind of stuff. That's all in white background/black ink.