No New Customers? No Problem… 

When you think of the post office, you probably don’t think of a fast-acting, agile organization continually at the forefront of new ideas.  You typically hear a lot of complaints about their slow service or their antiquated technology.  While the post office may not be known for their new ideas and fresh thinking, they might just have a few wiser tricks up their sleeve that keep them going as a profitable business. 

When most business owners think about growing their business, what are they typically looking for?  You probably guessed it—new customers!  What if I told you it is six (!) times more expensive for a business to get a transaction from a new customer versus a repeat customer?  Might you look elsewhere for additional transactions to grow your business? 

I was running a few errands the other day and stopped by the post office to buy some stamps. While I was in line waiting to buy stamps I noticed a sign offering a new service.  A new service?  The post office?  That doesn’t align with our typical thinking about the post office! Sure enough the post office was now offering to send direct mail for their customers. Examples of direct mail could be sending post cards or coupons to certain businesses or households.  Why would the post office be offering this new service?  Turns out they do have some ticks up their sleeve.  The post office wisely knows there are only so many stamps and envelopes their customers can buy.  By offering a new service, their customers will come back as repeat buyers not only to buy stamps and envelopes but some percentage of their customers will also buy this new direct mail service.  The post office knows that by having and adding new services they are now going to increase the average number of transactions for all their customers.  This will not only produce more profit through additional transactions but it will allow them to spend less on marketing to get those transactions since they’ll be leveraging their current customer base instead of marketing for new customers!  Looks like there might just be a few tricks we can still learn from the post office after all. 

My question for you?  What are you doing to increase the average number of transactions for your customers? What is another service or product you can offer your customers? If you can’t seem to figure it out contact us and we will definitely help you out.

We offer a complimentary 2-hour strategy session (a $2000 value) for businesses that want to look at opportunities in their business. We can chat briefly about the details of that session to see if it would be beneficial for your business.