Your list of customers who have previously bought from you is your most important asset. These are the customers who will provide you with return business, which is more profitable than the first sale. But, are you getting the most from your customer list? There are some secrets you should know, so you can squeeze the most benefits out of your mailing list.

Most business' customer lists consist of this information: Name, Address, City, State, Zip. That's it. Unfortunately, this mailing list is almost worthless. You need to have more information in your files than just that. One mail order operator has a customer database with 32 information fields! You should be able to set these up in your computer's database, or, if you don't use a computer(you REALLY should), all this information should fit on a large size index card in a card file. Here are some more useful fields to include in your customer database:

LastName; FirstName; Title; Position; CompanyName; Address1; Address2; City; State; Zip; PerPhone; BusPhone; FaxPhone; InqDate; ReferSource; FollowUp1; FollowUp2; SubDate; SubAmount; RenewDate;Purch1; Purch1Date; Purch1Amount; Purch2; Purch2Date; Purch2Amount; Purch3; Purch3Date; Purch3Amount; TotAmount; Comments; Cust#

The first 10 fields (reading across) should be self-explanatory. Almost any address possible can be put into my database without having to leave out information or abbreviate. The next three are for phone numbers. You MUST have your customer's phone numbers, when possible, to be able to follow up quickly and efficiently. Making one phone call can be the difference between a big sale and NO sale.

The InqDate field is where you record the date the customer first inquired about your products and services, and the date you sent the information, since it's always the same day (there's no excuse not to follow up your inquiries on the same day you receive them). This information, coupled with the ReferSource field, tells you when your ads are hitting, and how quickly people are responding to them. If you see that inquiries are coming in slowly, or long after the ad is out, you know that you need more action incentives in my next ad. The ReferSource field is where you enter the "key" from my ad. You should use a letter code after my street address to indicate which publication and issue the inquiry comes from. You should also code your mailings, for the same reason.

You enter a date into the two FollowUp fields to indicate when you want to send follow up literature to customers who don't order on the first try. You should put a date two weeks from the InqDate in FollowUp1, and one two weeks later than that in FollowUp2. Then, every day, you should run a search on these two fields to pull up any records that have today's date as a follow up date. You canteen print labels and put them on the envelopes and literature you have ready for follow ups. You should use the next three fields (SubDate, SubAmount, RenewDate) forth newsletter you publish (if you decide to publish one). These would have the date you receive their subscription, the amount they paid (You should sometimes run special prices), and the date you want to send subscription renewal information (usually 10 1/2 months from the SubDate). You can then print labels in the same manner as you do for the FollowUp fields. Next come the Purchase fields. You should have three sets of purchase fields, one for each purchase the customer makes. In the Purch1field, enter a code for the product they have purchased. The other two fields get the date and amount of the purchase. The second and third sets of fields get the same information for the customer