Your 1-year-old Merrell Radius shoes

I got an email today that was impressive in its simplicity.  The subject line read: "Your 1-year-old Merrell Radius shoes".  The body of the message read:

           Dear Alison Heiser,
           One year ago, you ordered the following product from Zappos.com:
           Merrell Radius - Dark Taupe/Rust Nubuck - 15/D - Medium
          We wanted to let you know that right now, your size is still available from Zappos.com

It was from the Zappos.com Customer Loyalty Team.

It's hard to overstate the importance of customer loyalty - vast bodies of research, thousands of business strategies, and common sense all tell us that the smart money is on keeping your current customers.  Yet so few organizations execute well against this concept - it continues to provide an enormous opportunity for competitive advantage.

I think most organizations envision complicated programs, rewards, incentives.  So they get started, falter, reinvented, abandoned.

Sometimes the obvious answers are so simple that they are often overlooked.  What if we took the time to tell our customers that we know they bought something specific from us in the past, and we have an idea for something specific they might be interested in buying from us now?  This type of data mining hardly even seems like data mining...it's too simple to carry that description.

Do something simple - write a personal note to your customers and offer them a suggestion that tells them you know who they are.  See if you can follow the Zappos.com model and make it 35 words or less.  I think the results will surprise you.

By the way, I do not wear a 15D.  I bought those for my big-footed husband.