If you've ever bought anything from Borland by mail order, they'll periodically send you new product announcements with special pricing. If you're on Compuserve you get a little periodical every now and then. These large companies know that it is several times less expensive to sell to an existing customer than it is to find a new one. Once you've been in existence as a small business for some time, one of your most valuable assets is your pool of satisfied customers.
Most products and services are needed repeatedly and a key factor for small business success is to keep track of your customers and to remind them that you're still around. The first step is to keep a database of your customers. If your product is inexpensive and generic, you can just keep names and addresses; if it is expensive and unique, keep track of exactly what they bought and when. Then, periodically send them a newsletter detailing new products, features, hints on how to use your products, and how to get related products etc. You may also want to offer discounts in such a newsletter — don't forget that your cost of selling for this particular initiative is likely to be much less than for the rest of your business.
Such a database can be kept on any office PC and the same machine can generate a very professional-looking newsletter. For a newsletter how-to page using some Microsoft and Adobe products, look here. The Corel and Lotus office suites have similar capabilities and are less expensive. A newsletter initiative is ideally suited to most small businesses because the cost is low, the risk small and the potential benefits high. And, if wildly successful, it has another key characteristic: it can easily be farmed out.
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