I am generally surprised that most of the stores I frequent actually don’t know my name. I’m talking about the specialty businesses like the running store or the bird feed store. My family frequents these types of stores all the time yet they do no real tracking of the money we spend. Therefore, when it comes time to spend another dollar or another hour on marketing they don’t go back to their own customer list but they buy and an ad to attract the next new customer. This is eight times as expensive as sending me a marketing piece to get me to come back into the store to spend a little more.This is a real miss allocation of resources. It begins with their not having a decent customer database into which they can record all of my preferences and buying habits. This way they could know when it was time to pitch me on a new pair of shoes or another bag of bird food. They would also know if I suddenly stopped coming to the store and they could reach out and ask why.

Business owners should know who their best customers and clients are in order that they can discriminate in their favor. They should treat these highly valued customers better. Contact them more frequently and make them different offers. Someone who has spent money with you once will do so again and again until you disappoint them but you cannot assume that they will even remember who you are just because they’ve been in your store a bunch of times before.