Monday, January 12, 2009

Thanks for your business. Now get the hell out of the way. I see somebody new.


Karen and I were at the Maryland men's basketball game Saturday and saw some guy at a card table offering these cool funny-papers umbrellas as a premium for new subscribers to the Washington Post.

This seems to me to be a marketing error.

Because personally, I get kind of honked when I see somebody I do business with offering something to a new customer that I can't get. Especially when, in the case of the Post, all I get for years of subscribing is regular subscription increases. (Unless you count the better rain bags they started using.)

The Post isn't the only organization that seems more focused on getting new business or customers than retaining what it has, that's for certain. But with all the hullabaloo about how newspaper readership is declining, it does seem to me that a smart marketing department would realize that retaining readers is at least as important as getting new ones. Besides, your existing customers are not dopes. They can see the cool "new customers / subscribers only" stuff they can't have.

And yet, very few organizations -- certainly not your local newspaper, cable provider or cell phone provider -- offer much in the way of a genuine loyalty reward. A price break after so many years, or maybe a free month of cable service after three years or something. And, frankly, I don't consider the Post's dopey, hard-to-understand Post Points program much of a loyalty reward either, no matter how many times they try to say it is. You have to start an account, spend money with Post advertisers and redeem points or something. It all just sounds like too much trouble. And the major beneficiary is whomever uses all that shopping habit information you're racking up for them.

It's too late to make this short, so I'll try to sum up and get out.

Why focus your marketing on new customers at the expense of existing ones? Go for 'em both, but don't give loyal customers the back of your hand while you woo that pretty New Girl down the street.

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