reduces your customer acquisition cost by investing your savings (from not mass advertising) on customer retention and loyalty building programs.     Its important to categorize your customer base to identify your top 20% customers. However, to do this you must first be able to uniquely identify all your customers and the amount that they have spent with you over a defined time period (last 12 months). If you dont have this data, start compiling it right now.   "Business Goes Where Business Is Invited" - A Case Study   It sounds simple but inviting your customers to do business with you is an effective strategy for significantly improving current sales. Take it from Max Grassfield, owner of Grassfields, an upscale mens clothing store in Denver. Max founded the store 35 years ago, and is still running the business.   Max has become so skilled at inviting his customers to do business that he developed a trademarked system called, "Invitational MarketingTM." Max issues personal invitations to his store to a carefully selected group of individuals in the Denver area. His method works.   Several years ago, Max Grassfield asked himself, "What can we do to make Grassfields unique?" (which is a question all small business owners need to ask themselves). The answer, which he evolved after much study, research, and effort, was to develop methods to know his customers "better than the other stores know their customers."   For the last ten years, Grassfields has been collecting a database of information on its customers, who voluntarily provide it. Originally, the data included name, address, telephone numbers, sizes, birthdays, and the wifes name. (He discovered that wives are often heavily involved in their husbands clothing purchases.)   He regularly writes customers on a one-to-one basis that uses the customers first name or nickname (as the customer prefers), their sizes, wifes name, product preferences, and references to what they bought in the previous season. Most communications are programmed to include messages designed only for the particular customer addressed: "Ive been keeping my eyes on the 44 long suits" The customers salesperson who he met while visiting the store personally signs every letter.   Recently, he sent a wave of three different oversized postcards in one-month intervals, to 4,100 regular customers. Each card greeted the customer by name, and was signed by his salesperson. There were 117 respondents (a 2.85% response rate) with an average sale of $451. It was an outstanding success. The final cost per piece mailed was just 48 cents including postage. For a $1,968 investment, he brought in $52,767 in sales. (Compare that with the cost of full-page ads!)   A couple of months later, Max selected eight suit sizes that were overstocked. Using the