I’ve spent much of my professional life trying to figure out how digital media can enhance relationship marketing programs - backed by the evolving conventional wisdom that “digital changes everything ” (for the better…presumably).

So it’s not without a smirk that I often see the best relationship marketing principles at work in completely offline situations, from unlikely sources:

On Christmas Day our mailman delivered a package from a relative - and, responding to my rather surprised stammer “you guys are working today?” he replied “yeah, today we try to deliver all the packages with hand-written addresses that we couldn’t deliver before; the printed labels we do afterwards.”

A hand-written address means personal , and, to the US Mail , personal means “priority.” If it sounds simple, that’s because it is simple. Take the trouble to understand your customers, identify opportunities to reward their involvement, and execute simply and consistently - this communicates “you’re a priority” - and engenders goodwill (and, inevitably, repeat purchase) arguably the holy grail of relationship marketing.

So I guess that digital doesn’t change everything - the fundamentals of relationship marketing are the game changers…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under other, relationship marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.