Marketing, especially through social media, is all about communicating with your client, giving transparent feedback without prejudice. Sometimes sending a few freebies along the way to show appreciation to your customers brings them coming back. Sainsbury’s set an excellent example of this when they received a great letter from Lily Robinson, a 3 year old girl who had a question that needed to be answered.
“Dear Sainssssssssssssbbbbbbbbbbbburyyyys,
Why is tiger bread called tiger bread? It should be called giraffe bread.
Love from Lily Robinson age 3 1/2″.
The customer manager from the nearest Sainsbury’s read the letter, and shared his love for his customers by replying to Lily.
“Dear Lily,
Thanks so much for your letter. I think renaming tiger bread giraffe bread is a brilliant idea – it looks more like the blotches on a giraffe than the stripes on a tiger doesn’t it?
It is called tiger bread because the first baker who made it a looong time ago thought it looked stripey like a tiger. Maybe they were a bit silly.
I really liked reading your letter so I thought I would send you a little present. I’ve put a £3 gift card in with this letter, if you ask your mum or dad to take you to Sainsbury’s, you could use it to buy some of your own tiger bread (and maybe if mum and dad say it’s OK you can get some sweeties too!). Please tell an adult to wait 48 hours before using this card.
I’m glad you wrote in to us and hope you like spending your gift card. See you in store soon.
Your’s sincerely,
Chris King (age 27 & 1/3)”.
As marketers we can learn the following from Chris:
1. Listen: Always listen to the feed back of your customers. Don’t be prejudice about their age or circumstance. Even if you think they might come out with something silly, give them the opportunity to communicate with you.
2. Give them the power to change something: You never know what customers could say to improve your service. Make it clear that their ideas are important, and collect their responses e.g. in a poll. Follow up by trying to make that change.
3. Communicate: Reply to your customers. Don’t leave them hanging, if possible reply to every single customer with your comments.
4. Show gratitude: Tell them that you value their efforts in communicating with you.
5. Answer: Answer their questions in the best way possible, even if you don’t know the answer at that moment, offer some insight that might help them.
6. Reward: Reward your customers with a kind gesture. Don’t be stingy with your service, give them at least the most basic offer for free, or a discount. This will bring them coming back, and in return you can receive some positive recommendations.
7. Suggest: Suggest the best way to use the freebie. This could help you influence where you want to build results.
Look through the letter and the list, and try to see where you are going wrong in your strategy. Are you communicating with your customers? What could you improve?
