Connecting with clients, followers, visitors, guests is difficult. There are so many ways we can do it that we often fail to do anything.
We need to put in the hard work to connect and grow our audience. The only way we can grow as a business, blog, church, or organization is to develop a rapport with people.
“All things being equal people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like, and trust.” ~ The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
Newsletters
Send regular newsletters via email. Assuming you have their consent and email address to send to, a regular newsletter is a good way to stay in touch. Remember that it is a NEWS letter. It is not a SALES letter. Feel free to share your latest blog posts or links to interesting articles. If you have been featured on a site worth note, celebrate it and share.
Survey
Ask a few questions in a survey to make sure you are offering your clients what they want the most of. You can easily do this by asking a one-question survey and then look at the stats from your email service provider. You can also use free tools like Google Docs or Survey Monkey. Do yourself and your client a favor, don’t make this long. Ask 3-4 questions that require an answer. Then you can ask for demographic information if you want it. Just don’t make it required.
Social media
Ask your clients to follow you on whatever social media platforms you are on. You might also ask what ones they are on. Eric S. Gale is on Facebook. I would love for you to follow me there.
Call them
Pat Flynn, from SmartPassiveIncome.com has a huge email list and social media following. He randomly selects people on his lists and emails them to see if he can jump on a Skype. You can try the same thing or you can pick up the phone, call, and connect with a select few of your clients as well. See how they are doing and how you might be able to help them.
“We need to put in the hard work to connect and grow our audience.”
We’ve talked about newsletters above, but email is also personal. With email service providers, you can personalize the greetings and put the client’s name in various places in the email to make it appear personalized; but it’s just a snippet of code. That being said, you should still write an email (at least once in a while) that is as if you are emailing a friend. Make it personal. Ask how you can help them. After you have provided a lot of value, you can then ask your client for something.
Personal details
The more information you have about a person, the more personal you can become. Part of doing this could be based on the email opt-in form used to add the person to your list. If you have a store and you added the client through an offline interaction, make a note of that. If they opt-in on a page providing a PDF about Paleo recipes, put them on your main email list but also a sub-list for those interested in Paleo. Then you can send emails that are personal and relevant.
Network
If your audience is local, you host a meetup. Even if they aren’t local you could do a meet up at an event you are attending. I hosted meet-ups in Franklin TN a few hours before Jeff Goin’s Tribe Conference for years. It was a chance to meet with people face to face after months of “talking” online.
Meet for a drink
Depending on the size of your list, you could reach out to a handful of clients and ask them to meet for a coffee or another beverage. The easiest way to build a relationship is face to face.
Mail Cards
If you are in a business relationship with your contacts, send an anniversary card based on when you first started working with them.
If you are in a more personal relationship with them, birthday cards, anniversary cards, or other special occasions. I know a few businesses that send out Thanksgiving cards to their clients letting them know that they are thankful for their clients. This is a great idea since it won’t get lost in the onslaught of holiday cards (Christmas, New Years, etc.). Do yourself a favor, if possible, handwrite these and mail them. This isn’t the time to send a standardized, impersonal card. The interior message could be printed, but handwrite their name and your signature. Please.
