How I Wished My Best Customers on Their Birthdays

marketlocomotion.com

18 points·mburney··5 comments

This is great. For the past two holiday seasons, Discover has sent me a seasons greetings card in a non-business envelope with an actual stamp and my name and address handwritten.

Both times, the card included a $5 gift card to Starbucks and a "thank you" for being a Discover customer. Both times, I opened the card expecting to find a message from a friend or relative based on the appearance of the envelope.

That's much different and more personal than an automated birthday message or an automatic discount on an item during the month of your birthday. It might sound cheesy, but these kinds of things really do stay in your memory and help to create a human connection, even with big companies.

Great reminder on building and maintaining relationships. The only part I disagree with is 'not bothering with spell check.' Even your best and most familiar customers would like to see intelligent, competent emails from the vendor they spend the most money on (no matter how close you are to them).

It's true. Something more than lip service is also nice; I'm not sure if I'm one of Zappos' best customers, but I get free overnight shipping with them. That makes me happier than yet another piece of spam in my inbox.

How do you collect your customers birthdays?

A few ways:

-Ask them when they are inputting in any kind of sign up form for your product (if you have one). Probably best to make it an optional field though

-Mine the data using facebook (if your clients are on your facebook list)

-Send out a survey with some incentive, and with some q's that would gain some knowledge about them plus their date of birth

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