What's the highest return you can make on a marketing investment? Try encouraging your existing clients to purchase additional services that are complementary to what they already buy from you.

by Christopher M. Knight [February 13, 2001]

In a regular sale, you must pay for the cost to acquire the new subscriber. But when you bring in additional sales from your existing client base, the cost to acquire these sales are as little as one-fifth the price you originally paid to acquire the subscriber in the first place. So it makes a great deal of economic sense to invest a portion of your marketing budget toward increasing sales to your current customers.

Above average sales beget above average revenues
Some marketeers call this sales method upselling or cross-selling. No matter what you call it, you can measure the effectiveness of marketing goods and services to your current customers by keeping track of your average ticket price.

We've talked about average ticket price before—it's computed by taking the total sales you've booked in a given time period, divided by the total number of invoices during the same period. For example, let's say your ISP business earns sales totaling $200,000 in March. It took 9,000 invoices to earn that sum, so your average ticket price is $22.22 for March.

To show you the power of monitoring your average ticket price, let's say that you set a goal to increase your average ticket price by 10 percent in two months. If we extend our example, then we want to set our goal of attaining an average ticket price of $24.44 in May. This means that 9,000 invoices in May will produce $219,960 in revenue for your ISP business.

Don't sell your customers short
Remember, we're talking about adding annualized revenues of $239,520 in sales by setting the goal to increase our average ticket price by 10 percent and spending very little to acquire these new sales because we're marketing to our existing clientele.

[Quote by me] "You're cheating your clients of benefiting from the services you offer, that they don't know you offer, if you don't ask them to buy complementary products and services from you."

Now that we have our metrics in place we can see how effectively your sales team is able to up-sell and cross-sell services to your existing customer base and increase your average ticket price. Let's move on to how to market to your products and services to current subscribers.

Here are a few low-cost ways to market additional services to your existing client base:

• Personalized Email: You can send personalized love letters to your client base by using any type of inexpensive mail merge programs. Optimum frequency is monthly or every other month, but do not send more than one personalized letter each month or your customers will grow tired of your adoration.
• Email Newsletter: Offer your customers the opportunity to receive an email newsletter with tips and suggestions as to how they can get more out of their Internet experience—while you soft peddle blatant plugs about additional services you can offer them to make the most of their online services.
• Invoice Stuffers: This is normally one-third of a sheet of paper that you stuff in a regular invoice envelope already addressed to a customer. These little promotions of your ISPs services cost you next to nothing—and no extra postage is required. For those of you than don't send paper invoices, you can always market yours services in the email version of the invoice you send to your clients.

  [Whisper in your ear from me:] "I've been utilizing this type of mail blitz for three years now and it is still one of the most cost effective ways I know of to secure additional sales from current customers."

• POPup Ads: These are special deals or messages you can send to your subscribers during the dial-up authentication process or place on your ISPs home page while the site loads. This method of securing additional sales from your customer base is one of the least expensive ways to deliver a marketing message.
• Call Them. This is such an obvious sales tactic, that many of you would never think to call your $20 a month clients just to pitch a new product or service to them. But if you don't call your customers, they may never know how much more your ISP business could do for them. I recommend you call your residential users once or twice a year to see how they are doing and let them know about some part of your services. But you should already be calling your business clients at least once every month or two just to show them how much you care about their business.
• Give First Theory: That's right, give your clients something besides dial-up services. Give them educational nights—show them how to install safe-surfing programs on their computer or teach them how to see where their kids have been surfing. Set up an open house weekend when customers can come in and talk to technicians. Invite them over to your business, but also make sure you offer your customers the same educational tips in your ISPs newsletters, on your Web site, by email, fax, phone, and as a tag line on your paper invoices—whatever and wherever—just make sure you make it available to all of them. You will be simultaneously reducing your customer service and tech support labor expenses by helping your customers help themselves. Remember, you're also invoking the law of reciprocation here—give your customers something and then ask them to refer their friends to your ISP business just when they love you the most.
• Ask for Referrals: As much as 80 percent of the ISP owners and operators that I surveyed said they earn as much as 80 to 90 percent of their sales from referrals—but only 10 to 20 percent have formal referral systems in place to make sure that their sales team asks each and every customer to send additional subscribers their way. Ask yourself this—do you want to increase your sales? If the answer is yes, then put a structure in place to make sure each and every sales rep asks each and every customer to send new subscribers your way.

Finally, in order to raise your average ticket price and increase your ISP sales from existing clients, you have to know your ISPs sales performance history. Go figure out what your average ticket price was for each month last year—go do it right now. Set a goal to increase last year's average ticket price by 10 percent each month for this year. Keep tabs on your progress with a weekly and monthly check on the number or get the sales team involved in keeping score for you. If you do this, I guarantee your average ticket price—in other words, your sales—will increase.

Why, you ask?

Because you always get whatever you focus on the most in business and in life.

One of my timeless articles that would be a good refresher one this topic is ISP Drip Marketing. Now would be a good time to go give it a second glance.

To Your ISP Client Retaining Success!
Christopher Sparky Knight

[PS:] If you've got feedback on this article or would like to discuss ISP Marketing strategies, you can also participate in the ISP-Marketing discussion list by sending an email to join or simply send me email feedback anytime.

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Related articles:
	[Dec. 13, 2000]	How To Improve Customer Satisfaction with SLAs
	[Sept. 13, 1999]	ISP Drip Marketing