The hidden value of your lapsed customers – 5 reasons to reconnect

Difficult as it may be, customers come and customers go.

Some of them you’re glad to see the back of, but in most cases, lapsed clients affect the accounts and worse, morale. Finding new customers to replace them can be a costly business and, depending on your product or service, building a relationship with each new client takes time.

But what about your lapsed customers? You know, the ones you’d already built a relationship with, the ones that many companies forget about as lost causes.

You may think that because they left you, they’ll never want to hear from you again. In a lot of cases this simply isn’t true. Reaching out to your past clients is a great way to remind them that you’re still around and welcome their business. It's great to reconnect with customers and improve sales.

Here’s five reasons to reconnect:

1. A client that’s left you may feel embarrassed to approach you – make sure they know you’d love to work with them again
2. Old clients may not know about any new services or products you have – update them with information. Changes at their end may make you a perfect fit
3. Past clients may have found that, on reflection, your solution was the best and hearing from you was the prompt they needed to return
4. Personnel changes at your old client can actually represent a new business opportunity. Without making contact how would you know?
5. The cost of acquiring an old client is significantly less than a new one. Old clients know you and the value of your brand, which removes many of the hurdles you’ll face winning new business

How you reconnect is a matter of choice, but it’s worth segmenting your old clients in terms of likely value to your business and then putting the appropriate resources into your marketing effort. In all cases it’s worth reminding all past clients that you're still around and letting them know what’s new with you; a combination of outbound and inbound marketing activity will keep them engaged. When something changes at their end you stand a better chance of getting a call and releasing previously hidden value.