Social Media Marketing

How Are You Saying 'Thank You' to Your Customers and Audience?

By Liana Evans, ClickZ, Jan 20, 2010

Sponsored by Online Marketing Summit

One step that gets overlooked in most social media strategies is how companies go about thanking their audience and customers. Your customers and audiences play a significant role in whether your online marketing strategy will succeed, especially if it focuses around social media. Saying "thank you" is now just as important as understanding where and how to communicate with them.

Don't Say Thank You With Your Own Products or Services

Unless you give your customers a limited edition or personalized version of your product or service, saying "thank you" with your own "stuff" comes off as self serving and a bit tacky. This amounts to silently saying, "I'm too lazy to get you a gift that you'd appreciate."

A mass marketed coupon isn't a great way to say thank you either. If it's a coupon that anyone else can get but is only distinguished by a different tracking code, there's nothing really special about it. It could even be seen as a covert attempt to get the community to buy more of your products or services. The last thing you want is your efforts at building solid relationships sabotaged by a misstep in how you say thank you.

Take the time to understand what the community values, especially if you want to thank a community as a group.

Maybe you're working on establishing relationships with a group in Flickr in which group members add photos of the different ways they use your product and they share and discuss what they did. How could you thank them as a group? Perhaps you could offer each of them a year's Pro Membership to Flickr, or a photo package with Snapfish so they can print out and frame their favorite photos? This would be relevant and a different way to say thank you to an entire group.

Do the Unexpected

The unexpected thank you is likely going to be the most remembered and most talked about one. I had the opportunity to speak on a panel about Twitter last year at SES Toronto. On that panel with me was Rayanne Langdon (@rlangdon) from FreshBooks (@freshbooks). Langdon's examples of how she says thank you or even "I'm thinking about you" to FreshBook's audience and customers are unexpected and personal.

In addition to being touching to the person who receives these thank you notes or unexpected gifts, it also makes these people realize that FreshBooks isn't just another company out for their money. It shows that real people who care are behind the operations at FreshBooks. From sending flowers to a customer who was stood up on a first date, to researching that a client really liked "bamboo" and sending a set of dinner plates, Langdon takes the time to show her audience and customers that FreshBooks values those personal relationships they establish.

Hand Written Notes Go a Long Way

The art of writing thank you notes in today's electronic age seems to be something of the past. Sending a handwritten thank you note nowadays gets talked about because it's so rare. Even online companies can send a handwritten thank you to people in social media communities who help you out.

A company can say thank you many ways, or tell its audience and customers that you appreciate them. With social media, companies need to be even more cognizant of how exactly they're doing that. Saying thank you to your customers or the people you're engaging with can become a conversation all on its own and affect how you are perceived in the community's eyes.

One of the most important assets of your business is your "list" You want to build it in both online and offline ways. The easiest customer to sell to is one you have already sold to. Think in terms of the lifetime value of your clients and not just a one time sale. To keep your customers happy, even referring more clients to you, always remember to say "Thank You" It's good manners, good business, and it just plain makes good sense.  -  Jim