I sometimes wonder if franchisees who choose to go into a retail or service business are off their rockers. What attracts them to it-the long hours, the constant demands of customers, the prospect of having to get up early and go home late?

And then there are the customers. You get to deal with cranky customers, cheap customers, slow-paying customers, customers who demand the impossible and complain when they get it that you didn't deliver fast enough.

Problems with customers might be a situation that comes with the territory for those engaged in retail and service businesses, but there is a way to improve that situation. The resolution is to get more customers and get better ones. That will allow you to pick choose the customers with whom you want to deal.

The first step toward achieving that goal is to begin tracking the results of everything you do. With any kind of marketing or advertising campaign, you have to pay close attention to results in order to learn what is working and-just as important-what isn't.

Without accurate tracking, you won't be able to make intelligent (read, "less costly") decisions about which parts of a campaign to pull the plug on and which to continue.

You need to track response to determine which media you should use again because it was most effective (read, "made you money"). Without tracking, you will not be able to figure out what worked, what didn't work, and to what extent it worked or didn't work.

It is important to find out how many people each part of the campaign brought into your business and how much revenue it generated. So reliable tracking must be built into every campaign.

It's easy to track response if you know this simple trick: Leave a memo pad by each phone. When you receive a call, at the very beginning of the conversation ask, "How did you hear about our company (or business or store)"

Write down the response on the memo pad, along with the customer's name and any other relevant information you can gather from the conversation. Then toss the slip of paper in a drawer and forget about it.

At the end of each month, gather all those little slips of paper together, tally them up, and you'll have a pretty darn good idea about which elements of which ads, promotions or other marketing initiatives brought in the most customers.

With the customers' names on each tracking sheet, you will be able to figure out which campaign brought in the best quality of customer. With tight tracking, you can even figure out how much revenue each customer produced.

Marketing tactics and strategies vary in effectiveness and cost from industry to industry, business type to business type and even place to place. However, some are definitely more effective than others, across the board.

Mailing to your house list is one marketing tactic that is consistently effective. No matter what type of business your franchise is engaged in, no matter what kinds of products or services you sell, mailing to your house list is the lowest-cost, most effective marketing you can do.

Start by collecting current customers' names and addresses. If you don't have a customer house file-a list of the names and addresses of all your customers-start one now. This will be your most valuable asset.

Add fresh names to this list every day, every week, every time you possibly can. Post a sign by your cash register, front door or both that urges everyone who comes into your store to "Sign up for our FREE mailing list!" Verbally encourage customers to fill out the sign-up cards.

As customers go through the checkout process, recommend the mailing list by telling them you offer special deals and private sales to preferred customers. Write "Preferred Customer" on top of the card, then ask for their name, address, phone number and email address.

You might offer a $5 gift certificate good on their next visit as an incentive for filling out the card. Include on the card a question asking where the customer heard of your business. Most won't recall, but a few will-and even the ones who don't know may give you a clue as to the magazines and newspapers they read.

The next step is to mail to your prospect list. If you don't have a good prospect list, start one now. This is a database containing the names and addresses of the absolute best prospects of which you can think.

Write down the names and addresses of five or six new prospects each day, and mail to them all next month. If you write down five names each weekday, you will end up with 100 news prospects every month.

Gift certificates can be a cost-effective prospecting tool. Ask some of your better customers if you can send $5 gift certificates to some of their friends-with your customers' compliments, of course.

As an added incentive, mail an additional gift certificate to the first customer with a nice note thanking them for the referral. Then send the referral prospect a nice letter along with the gift certificate-compliments of your original customer and from you, personally.

The cost for this campaign is just 74 cents per prospect-the cost of the postage. What about the $5 gift certificate? That doesn't really cost you anything; it's just the discounted cost of your goods or services.

Best of all, the $5 gift is an expense only if the new customer actually shows up and buys something to redeem the certificate. This campaign doesn't cost you anything if it doesn't generate a sale, which is a nice added bonus.

If no original customers come in to claim their gifts, there is no cost. If no new customers come in, there is also no cost. But you still benefit from the branding message that has been delivered.

You have left your image by reaching and touching your original customer, subtly reminding that customer of your service and how great it is. Plus, you leave a nice impression on the new prospect.

A referral is the best way to get a new customer who immediately has faith and trust in you, your business and the products or services you sell.

The gift certificate is inexpensive to print and low-cost to mail. The letter is the same. The goodwill this promotion generates is invaluable. It's a triple-function piece: good for the customer, good for a referral, and great for you and your business.

Post cards are another good marketing tool. Personalized letters sent to customers over a period of time can be a very effective sales tool, but they are a lot of work. Post cards are a clever alternative.

Post cards are hard-working marketing tools because they are cheap to produce and cheap to mail.

Since a post card is just a single sheet of paper, it's always cheaper than sending a letter and a brochure stuffed into an envelope. Post cards also incur no letter-shop charges for folding and inserting. Just image a name and address on one side and away they go.

The postage is cheaper, too-just 23 cents for first class, as opposed to 37 cents for a first class letter. There are also postal discounts available, and they can be substantial. Mailing post cards allows you to take advantage of first class delivery while still enjoying postage savings.

If you use a mailing house, those costs can be reduced or even eliminated by the postage savings of using post cards. If you take your post cards to a mailing house, their entire cost of inkjet addressing, tying, bagging and delivering to the post office may still cost less than if you mailed them yourself. It's like getting their service for free.

You save money because their payment is recovered from all of the postal discounts they get for you. It's a win-win situation: You have less work, get better delivery and save money.

Post cards also have a high rate of readership. Almost everyone reads post cards, even people who usually throw out bulk mail.