Marketing 101: Micro Campaigns Strategy

For small businesses, staying in meaningful contact with your customers regularly can be a challenge. Equally challenging is finding recurring revenue streams to smooth out business downturns when they occur. Micro campaigns address both these issues.

First, a definition. A micro campaign is a multi-touch campaign and reaches out to a small segment of your customers, past customers or prospects list. The message is tightly focused and only intended for this small segment. High response rates are further ensured by use of color, personalization and a combination of online and offline communication.

Four benefits of micro campaigns

Re-establish customer contact – There are inactive customers in your database that you have not done business with in a year or more. Oh sure, they’ve gotten the email newsletter, but they know that goes to everyone. A micro campaign will speak to their unique situation. The language of the communication makes it clear this is a special offer and conversation just for them.

Scrub the database – The reality for many small businesses is that we end up with more than one database. (Hey, lets be honest: some of the big guys have a worse problem with this than than we do!) Monitor the returned email and postal mail. A return from both probably means you can delete the contact. A return from only one means it’s worth some telephone followup to clean up the data you have.

Generate revenue – Who doesn’t like a special offer with their name on it and their own unique discount code – a genuinely great offer that is only available to them and a small handful of others (for a limited time)? The goal is to convert these past customers or prospects into current and active customers.

Expand the active customer list – Think about what adding a handful of active customers each month would mean to your business. At the end of a year you could easily double your active customer base. If you are doing most everything else in your business right, this will mean more sales and more profits. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but in twelve months a series of micro marketing campaigns will have you well on the way to doubling your active customer base.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss the execution plan I use for micro campaigns.

For now, what are your thoughts on marketing to small groups of customers or prospects?

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