The U.S. Postal Service sent an e-mail to me today. It was about customer loyalty. It reminded me of my responsibilities as a customer--to buy from them. I have 30 days to do something about my poor performance as a loyal customer or they will just have to cut me off and purge my data from their computers.
If you have owned your own business or worked for someone else less than 10 years, you may be saying, "And this is special because?" On the other hand, if you are 40 years old or more, you remember when there was no e-mail and who thought of the U.S. Postal Service acting like a local business, fighting off the competition and wooing customers?
More likely, you think of the U.S. Postal Service as a government agency. And why would any business that has a guaranteed income, no matter how good or how awful the service or product, make any effort regarding customers? If you had a way to make every business in the U.S. send you a big check every month, or else, how much marketing and customer service would you do? We sure don't think small business when noticing that the Postal Service has approximately 860,000 employees and handles about 200 billion pieces of mail annually generating more than $65 billion in operating revenues.
Technology has made it possible for a lot of small businesses to start and do very well. Technology can come up from behind and bite you in the butt, as well. When computer engineer Ray Tomlinson invented Internet-based email in 1971, a lot of speculation began about the future of regular mail and the future of the post office. (Tomlinson worked as a computer engineer for Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), the company hired by the United States Defense Department to build the first Internet in 1968.) Also in 1971, Postal Reorganization began and since then the Postal Service has generated more than a trillion dollars in revenue. In order to compete, they had to innovate and they did by creating Priority Mail, Express Mail, Special Services and the other classes of mail.
Instead of being "put out of business" by email and the Internet, the Postal Service was quick to see where this was all heading and began their own initiatives to be competitive and not assume people would always need them. The USPS did something every business can do and, certainly, smaller businesses can be excellent at it -- customer loyalty programs.
Customer Loyalty has become a catch-all term for the end result of many marketing approaches where customer data is used. It goes by many names, including relationship marketing, database marketing, permission marketing or customer relationship marketing (CRM). Call it what you may but, customer loyalty is about getting customers to choose to buy or visit more.
One way the USPS does it, and you can too, is to use your website and put in a customer service area. The Postal Service did it by providing a way for me to speed through a mailing any kind of letter or package, giving me a place on their website to build an address book which serves as a label generator, and even sells stamps and turnkey direct marketing services.
It appears that I wandered off and may be using the website and shipping services of UPS, FedEx or others. So the USPS did the one thing that every business ought to be doing as part of their everyday marketing activities--initiated the contact to remind me that this loyalty thing goes both ways. They promise to stay in business and provide innovative services and my part of this arrangement is to use them for my regular mail delivery needs.
When we say customers count, we mean there is an accountability for the customer too. They need to behave like high value customers in order to get your prime time and best efforts. Marketing efforts are about more than getting customers. You will probably enjoy a brisk business and good income if you put some energy and money into working on the relationship and reminding customers about why they selected you in the first place and what you've done for them lately.
The post office does this and it got my attention. Oh, I go to the post office and run a lot of mail through my postage meter, but point made by them is I could do a lot of that on-line, where I set up an account.
If the U.S. Postal Service can figure it all out and put a customer loyalty program into play, you can too.
Comments