Hey there! I hope you’re having a good week. As you know any holiday season (Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s and Father’s Day) can often make or break a small business and if your business still requires a lot of foot traffic, you may want to think about what you have in place to “pick-up” some extra sales.

We’ve all heard the old saying, that 20% of your customers produce 80% of your sales and that it’s cheaper to keep a current customer than it is to try to get a new one. But we sometimes forget that this often neglected “repeat business” is key to a healthy and profitable one (myself included).

The stats on the topics of “repeat business” and “customer retention” are compelling to say the least. You can read more about them via Help Scout’s and Five Star’s blog posts, but I’d like to point out just two of them:

#1 Did you know that on average, loyal customers are worth up to as much as 10 times what they spent on their first purchase?

#2 Did you know that you only have about a 5 – 20% chance of making a sale from a new customer, but a 60 – 70% chance of making a second sale from an existing one?

Now I’ve got a third question for you. What strategy or promotion do you have in place to land that second sale?

Think about it. Do you have something already in your restaurant or shop that you could use to boost sales without annoying your customer or having to all but set your hair on fire to get it started?

Have you ever considered your Wi-Fi? Probably not right? I mean everybody’s got Wi-Fi on their phone and most cities have got a pretty decent Wi-Fi connection so why bother? Well – I’ve found a pretty smart app called Zen Reach.

Now before I get into the details here, I would like to remind you that I am not an affiliate or partner of any kind. I am not being paid to write this on their behalf or anyone else.

I do this because I’m a technologist and it’s part of my job to stay up-to-date on all the latest “whiz bangs” so I can stay not only on top of my game, but help you stay on top of yours. A website is just one of many tools that we can use to grow our businesses, but it means nothing if you’re not using it and your customers don’t even know it exists.

Apps like Zen Reach help you drive more traffic and sales to your site and that means more business for you. So let’s get back to this week’s post. Zen Reach gives business owners a new reason to consider offering Wi-Fi in their place of business.

They’ve created software that allows you to customize their Wi-Fi experience to feature and showcase your promotions and events. So how do they do this?

When your customer logs into your Wi-Fi, Zen Reach adds them to a guest database that is created for you. They no longer see a generic login page or ads from someone else, they see customized, branded promotions from you.

Zen Reach uses your customer’s Wi-Fi connection, to collect marketing data from them while their using it.

You can use this during a “one-day sale” or when “happy hour” is about to begin or end in real-time, while they’re still in your shop or bar or restaurant. You can also funnel posts from your social media feeds or review site accounts.

This means you don’t have to worry about constantly changing out those “menu stands” or “table tents” cluttering their table or worrying about customers littering the sidewalk with those “coupons” or “survey cards” you stuffed in their shopping bags.

If anything the data you collect from Zen Reach, along with their marketing and analytics features, will give you a better indication of what to actually print on those “print and promo” pieces in the future and what you can just promote to them through their phones.

Yeah – their phones. Here’s where the repeat business part comes in. You see Zen Reach takes this “data” and hooks it up to services like Open Table to send out emails or text messages to your most loyal customers to get them BACK into your restaurant, bar or shop.

I personally think what’s really smart about this is that you don’t have to hit your customers up for that “second sale” all the time. You and your staff can focus more on giving them the best customer service and experience that they’ve come for.

Now I’ve never used this product before, but I can see it’s potential because let’s face it – people are constantly looking at their phones. How many times have you had an employee who just can’t seem to “turn a table over” because the guest won’t get off their phone?

And what about those free “gift cards” in your shop? What are the chances of your customers keeping up with them and remembering to use them? They may lose your gift card, but the chances of them losing that phone these days are slim to none.

Now Zen Reach isn’t free (it hovers around $199/month) and they have some competition with Yelp WiFi (formerly Turnstyle) but regardless of whether you choose them or not – branding your Wi-Fi and investing a little bit of time and money to boost your repeat business is worth well the investment.

And one more thing. . .If you’re using Wi-Fi in your business – don’t just sign-up for it because it’s free. Make sure you have a reason for it being there.

You may have wanted to provide Wi-Fi as a “value-added service” to your customers in your store, but free Wi-Fi can also mean you’re at the mercy of the obnoxious ad services that pay for it. They’re using it as a cheap way to pump inappropriate or just plain dumb ads to your customers – at your expense.

I know that’s not very nice but there’s no nice way to say it. This is why you can’t always go for what’s cheap or free. You have to invest in your business and your customer’s experience at every level.

So if you don’t have a plan in place this holiday season to boost those second sales – you may want to give an app like Zen Reach a try. Well that’s it for me this week – now I’d like to hear from you.

Question: What do you do to attract repeat business in your shop or restaurant? Share your comments below.

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Note: This post was last updated on January 14, 2020