The Thank You Economy.

I wanted to expand on the value of saying “thank you” from our previous blog post on Getting Customers to Write Reviews About You. I firmly believe that marketing in 2012 is like your typical visit to Fred’s Deli in the 1920’s. It’s small town rules. The Internet and all of its perks have given us the opportunity to make things right again. Its never been so easy to reach out to your customer, even if they live in Singapore.

Saying thank you started at a young age. It’s something our parents taught us because it’s good manners. It’s a way of being appreciative of something, and it means a lot to people, especially in business. For businesses, saying thank you is more important because it goes beyond manners and leaks into the highest form of thought, giving gratitude that is happiness doubled by wonder. It’s the last thing the customer hears from you, until the next time.

I’ve been interested in this concept for quite some time. Mainly because it’s proactive to the relationship between you and the customer. It’s playing offense but not on a massive scale, yet. Enter you customers main interests and an example:

Your in the business of selling t-shirts online. You have an active social media presence and follow most of your customers in this space. Frank is one of your best customers, with over 50 t-shirt orders to date. You know A LOT about Frank because of his Twitter feed. Frank is obsessed with Yadier Molina. You see multiple posts daily about Frank’s love for Yadi, and you leverage that. You decide to send Frank a signed Yadier Molina jersey (not a t-shirt) for free because he’s been such a great customer to you.

That example illustrates how to execute on your customers’ main interests. Trust us, your customers’ main interests is NOT your business. You should understand this and take it into consideration when being thankful. After all, Molina is what really pulls Frank’s heart strings.