Following Up When It’s Been Too Long
It happens. You have really good intentions; then something happens to distract you and you realize it’s been months and you haven’t followed up with old clients. Nor have you stayed in contact with your list subscribers, not to mention being absent in communities you’ve built.
While for some people, it might be too late, it is worth it to try to re-engage with your former connections and customers, while also setting up better systems and processes that ensure you don’t wait too long next time.
Send a Note to Them in Snail Mail
Whether an old customer or someone on your email list, sending something to them via snail mail will make you stand out from the crowd. This works especially well with people you’ve had personal one-on-one contact with but did not follow up with. Send a handwritten note to them along with a clipping you think they’ll like, congratulations for something you know they succeeded at, or a hot tip that you think is important to them.
Congratulate Them or Send Them a Happy Birthday Message
Find an excuse to congratulate them on something – either a success they experienced or a birthday or other type of anniversary that they would celebrate. These milestones are perfect reasons to reach out to your customers and list members when you have the right information. Send us a message – we have a birthday campaign already built that we can share with you!
Host an Online or Offline Live Event
One way to bring everyone together again is to host an event of some kind. This can be live or online in the form of a webinar or workshop. It depends on your business model, but inviting your connections to a free or low-cost event like this is an excellent way to totally start up the relationship again.
Set Up Automation for Better Connections
Whether you worked with someone online or offline, once you are a connection with them, try to get them on your email list so that you can set up automatic connections and feedback situations. For example, you can invite anyone you’ve had contact with to answer your survey, give you feedback on product development, or ask them if they know someone who needs what you have and incentivize them with an affiliate or referral link to share.
Invite Them for Dinner
We know, we know – this sounds a little old fashioned, right? Well, depending on the situation, it might be the best way to apply a personal touch to reaching back out.
You can invite anyone you’ve not seen in a while or connected to in a while for a personal one-on-one dinner or lunch with you if you’re going to be in town. Even if you’ve not talked in a while, this type of invitation is always appreciated even if the timing is wrong. It gives you that way in to talk to them again either way.
Finally, you can also recommend something to them that you did not create yourself. For example, you can email your list members with a book recommendation. You can mail a book to the former client because you think they’d like it and so forth. And of course, reach out to everyone on social media and follow them so that you can share their content too. That way, it’s a two-way street.