Connect with a Human
How one tweet, a handwritten note, and one short email can create an evangelist in thirty-seconds
This past July, I ordered some fitness nutrition produces from The Feed. They came across my radar by sponsoring something cycling related (I’m an avid cyclist, if you don’t know me). When I opened the box I found a handwritten note:
Todd,
Welcome to The Feed! Enjoy your first box and feel free to email with any sports nutrition questions. Stay hydrated fuel well and have fun!
-Tally
tally@thefeed.com
She also encouraged to post a picture of the feed box with a hashtag with an incentive if I did. And I did.
How long did it take Tally to write that? Maybe 30 seconds? So the next time I needed some hydration, I placed an order with The Feed. I’m a fan of my local cycling establishments, so I try to spend my money locally when I can. However when things like this happen, someone is really thinking through the experience and they want to make a connection.
I follow Buffer Open. If you do not, you should. It’s excellent content and wonderful to see how this company is being built in a way that goes against established norms. I’m also a customer of theirs as I schedule and post most of my tweets using their app.
I tweeted about their recent funding round post and applauded their transparency.
https://twitter.com/iamctodd/status/526782618202021888
Not only did Buffer favorite the tweet they wrote a specific thank you reply to me on twitter. This is a twitter account that has over 240,000 followers!
Not long after that tweet I receive this in my inbox:
Hello there!
Thank you so much for your awesome tweet and kind words about our funding round!
We’d love to send you some Buffer stickers as a small measure of our thanks — do you mind sending me your mailing address?
Thank you again and we hope you have an amazing week!
Cheers,
Nicole & the Buffer team
Since I was a customer they easily looked up my email from my account and reached out personally. How often does this happen? While I expect it is happening more frequently, the feeling I was left with, in this instance as well as with the The Feed, was something like this:
“She took the time to personally write and thank me”
A few days later the stickers arrived in my mailbox (the real mailbox).
I was a fan already, and now I’m even more of a fan. They both created a relationship with me, even if it was a brief one. I also created a relationship with real people, Nicole and Tally, not just a company, and they both have generated, in 30 seconds or less, an element of loyalty from me.
These are micro-interactions, and they can add up: Consider what Taylor Swift recently did with her 1989 album. She invited small (relatively) numbers of fans to meet with her in the 1989 Secret Sessions to preview her new album. She took Polaroids of them with her and then posted them to her Instagram account. More importantly, she spent time listening to her fans, and creating relationships with them that went far beyond the I-make-the-product-and-you-buy-it type of relationship. She made the relationship a human one and in the process solidified her fans’ loyalty.
http://instagram.com/p/uB7wUXjvGZ
With technology more often pushing our faces into screens, and less with people, finding ways to incorporate a personal touch is of growing importance, and a way to make you stand out from others.
Humans connecting with humans. Who will you connect with?
