Monday, January 24, 2011

{How to Creat Loyal Customers}

How to Create Loyal Customers: Eat.Sleep.Knit Case Study

One : Have a beautiful, well organized website where the consumer (me) can find exactly what she wants and drool over gorgeous photos.  Look at this website for reference: EatSleepKnit.com 

 Pagewood Farms Yukon in New Horizon

Two: Offer great promotions on your website, like the Yarn Marathon that Eat.Sleep.Knit has - an ongoing promotion offering bonuses just for buying yarn!

Three: Keep your prices competitive.  All the prices at Eat.Sleep.Knit were within just a couple of cents of the lowest prices I could find when I went shopping on froogle.google.com ( my secret to all things bargain shopping on the web).

 Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in Amber Trinket

Four: Have 2-3 Day Shipping for only $5.  I placed my order with Eat.Sleep.Knit on saturday afternoon and received the email that it had been shipped a half an hour later!  I'm not joking. My box came in the mail today!!

Five: The details count! Include a little piece of chocolate with each order. For Reals! It really hit the spot when I got home.  There was also a little scratch lotto card for the chance to win a gift certificate.  Who doesn't love a scratch card?

 Lorna's Laces Shepherd in Baltic Sea

The Backstory:  My sister had a really horrible customer service experience with a small local business recently, wrote about it on facebook, and managed to get in to a facebook flame war with the owner who couldn't believe that she would say such horrible things about her business (The Horror!).  I posted, rather respectfully I think, the age ol' addage that a customer who has a bad experience will tell 10 times as many people as a person who has a good one - so you better do your best to not have upset customers.  I wanted to change that up a bit this time.  EatSleepKnit.com  has blown me away with all levels of their business.  They have made a loyal customer of me for life!

And no, no one gave me anything to say these things. Just go shop there!  We need to reward those businesses who do right by their shoppers, don't you think? :)

7 comments:

  1. Absolutely agree! I don't shop too much online, but when someone blows me away, especially when it's a small business and I know that they're doing everything on their own and that taking the extra effort is probably costing them a good deal of their free time, I like to tell people about it.

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  2. Eat Sleep Knit is the best online yarn store, hands down!

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  3. I've bought from them and I agree they are among the best!

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  4. Wow I'd never even heard of this site, but I will definitely check them out when buying yarn. I, too, love celebrating businesses that go that extra mile. My personal favorite is the CorgiHillFarms fiber shop on etsy. Shipping is free and quick, she always includes sample fibers with purchases, also a few pieces of candy. For Christmas, she included home made gift tags and little home made goodie bags for your yarn/knitting. I thought it was really neat! I know you're not a spinner, but if you ever get into it, remember corgi hill :D

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  5. I spent all my yarn money at ESK last year! Love, love, love. :) Welcome to the fan club. :)

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  6. I've never heard of froogle.google.com. Thanks for the tip. I'll be checking that out.

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  7. I love ESK! I buy most of my yarn from them :D Great customer service, beautiful yarn, lovely prizes in the yarnathon, the best prices and the shipping to Europe is amazing!

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