You may have asked the rhetorical question of “What is the value of a new sale?” You know the gross margin on each unit and can do the simple math but of greater significance is “what is the lifetime value of a new account? How much gross margin does that customer provide per year and over how many years will I benefit from this relationship? Are there additional products or services I can sell them? Will they refer me to other potential customers?”

This leads to the next question. What is the acquisition cost of each new customer? One study placed the average, fully loaded cost of a sales call at $300. How many calls does it take to close the first sale? What is my total sales and marketing budget divided by the number of new customers acquired each year? It is most likely quite expensive but what are your options?

Personalized, targeted marketing can be a powerful, yet cost effective tool to obtain new customers. You simply employ information you know about a prospective customer into your message. This is much more effective than simply broadcasting your message to generic audiences. There are many levels or personalization.

The most common is just using their name and address as in a letter.

The ultimate is customizing each communication based on data you collected or purchased on that prospect. This would make it the most meaningful to that customer and therefore get the highest response rate. Prime now has the technology to have every color piece pull in database information about that prospect and print it specifically for that individual.