9 Tips to Create a Perfect Customer

You made a sale - Congratulations. Before you send the customer their purchase, make sure you have the tools to effectively contact the customer again. Get your customer's information!

 

Customers buy from people they like, know and trust. The customer already likes your product (and hopefully you).

 

Step back and get to know your customer, so they will trust you and come back for more.

 

Did you know that your BEST customer is an EXISTING customer.

 

Here are 9 simple ways you can create a perfect customer, build a relationship and keep them coming back for more.

 

1) Get their information: Ask for their email address

2) Get their information: Ask for their mailing address (you'll find out why ... see point 6)

3) Get their information: ask for their birthday (see point 7)

4) Note their purchase (listen): write a note for yourself (Ms. Smith, purple necklace for her sister)

5) Follow-up and make it personal. It takes 30 seconds, and will make your customer feel good (and potentially come back for more). Hi Ms. Smith. Thanks for visiting my etsy shop, I hope your sister loves the purple necklace as much as you do. Sincerely Sarah

6) send a handwritten thank-you... our mailboxes are full of bills - treat your customer to a hand-written card. A short simple note is perfect.

7) You know your customer's birthday ... and send them something special on their birthday. This could be months from when you initially met them, but this little interaction will keep you fresh in their minds.

8) Be an expert. You have their information, send them something interesting. Trending colours, new jewellery techniques. Maybe even a how-to or DIY.

9) Special Occasions. Remember your customers year-round. Mother's Day is coming up ... what a perfect chance to wish your customers a Happy Mother's Day, or send a sample or gift.

 

Written by Jacqueline Hunter (Show Director, Craftadian)

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Discovering Etsy Treasury Lists.

About a week ago or so I discovered Etsy Treasury Lists. A selfless concept allowing you to create lists of things you like from various artists and make them public for everyone to view. Of course there are a few common sense guidelines such as do not use your own items and do not use same item twice. I am not sure what was the exact trigger to get me to create my first one but it may have been seeing a lovely owl bag created by a friend of mine. So my first Treasury List is called Owl Friendly . I loved looking around for items. It is a similar feeling to creating wish lists. My approach was pretty simple for this one just use the "owl" keyword to search. Actually before anything I already remembered I had three favorite shops which had owl oriented items that I liked so I added them first.

About the same time I have received an invitation to use a new bookmarking tool called Pinterest . If you like creating Treasury Lists on Etsy then I recommend the mix of the two for various reasons, which I will explain further. Some reasons to use Pinterest:

• “Pin it” allows you to bookmark pictures and create visual boards of things you see online and you like.


• I wanted to have a big selection of items and then choose the 16 to put on the Treasury List.


• I didn’t like to have many windows open to see which ones to add.


• I couldn’t figure out if I could save a draft of the list on Etsy or if it gets published right away.

These are the steps I follow to create my lists:

• When you set up Pinterest it will ask you to allow a “Pin It” button to be added in your browser.


• I create my lists on Pinterest first and add as many items as I like.


• Every time I see a picture of an item I like then I “Pin It” and add it to the board I have created with my specific Treasury List in mind.


• This approach allowed me to work on my boards when inspiration came for me to look for various items or when I had time.


• When I have at least 16 items then I go ahead and create the corresponding list on Etsy.


• I have a window/tab open for the Etsy Treasury List and one open for the board on Pinterest.


• In order to retrieve the link from the board: I hover over the item I want to add, on the Edit button I right click, choose to open it in a different window/tab. Once open I copy the link, close the window, and past it in the “Listing URL” in the Etsy list.

I found this a lot of fun and one possible bonus is that you are creating another venue for the respective items to be displayed. True there are not your items but oh well no harm in supporting other artists too. Unless you chose to make your Pinterest boards private (I have not checked how you do that) the boards can be visible to other people. Example of the board is here: Around the World in 16 Earrings .

I love making Treasury Lists which are meaningful to me. Since I am Romanian, Canadian living in Manchester, UK you will probably see often various artists from these places or from countries where my friends are from.

Now one warning about Treasury Lists. If you do as I did and just started don’t come back to it every other minute to see how many views and how many people liked it. I must admit I ended up like the character at end of the “Social Network”. I will not ruin it by giving more details but you get the picture ☺