I used to see RAOK in my Tweet deck and I couldn’t figure out what it meant. Then it hit me: Random Acts of Kindness.

In real life we call them good deeds and I was reminded of one that happened to me years ago in far away California.

We were on our way to Woodland Hills to give a marketing seminar for our clients at Funrise. It had been a long trip from New York to LAX and I was starving. Whoa! Is that a Denny’s up there? Let’s duck in for something we can gobble down quickly.

And that’s where I met Tim Tallent, our waiter. He understood our predicament immediately and magically brought out our food right away, all the time talking good naturedly. He was funny, too, and by the time we left I felt as if I’d made a friend. Turns out I had.

Time gave me his card, and I gave him mine. When I got back to New York I decided to write about Tim in my monthly column for Target Marketing Magazine. It was all about how he lifted my spirits that day. I sent a tear sheet of the article to his boss, too.

Tim sent a Thank You note and seven years passed. Then yesterday I got an email from him. Click here to read it: Tim Tallent’s E-mail

All the best,
Lois
loisgeller@loisgellermarketinggroup.com

So now when I read the letters RAOK, I think of great people like Tim. Now it seems he manages the whole restaurant.

If only the lady behind the counter at Subway today had smiled and said something, anything, rather than slowly fill up all of her little silver trays with various Subway stuff, I might have ordered a sandwich and written about her today, too.

Last Saturday I cancelled my bridge game to have dinner in Fort Lauderdale with some fascinating people: dry cleaners. A few years ago, I was lucky to get invited to speak at a National Cleaners Association brainstorming meeting in the Bahamas, and then again in New York City.

Whenever I speak to dry cleaners, I learn at least as much as I teach. Mostly, I relearn about how great it is to be an entrepreneur, not to mention the brilliant ideas I hear for generating business. Large companies get bogged down with office politics, endless meetings, bean counters and layers of decision makers. Entrepreneurs don’t.

Dry cleaners usually talk to their spouses, maybe a colleague or a competitor, and then test a program right away. It makes the marketing process more fun, kind of like instant gratification. And dry cleaners are always looking for new ideas.
Last Saturday, the Association’s President, Nora Nealis, idea-woman-extraordinare, asked me to join her, Debra Kravet (owner of Apthorp Cleaners in New York City) and Susan and Mike Sternshein (owners of Cricket Cleaners in Lake Worth, FL) for dinner.

We laughed a lot but in between we talked about websites, marketing, social media and what they were doing to work even harder to satisfy their customers. Oddly, nobody mentioned the state of the economy. So, once again, I learned a lot from these successful people.

Debra Kravet took out her laptop and showed us every detail of how she designed her amazing store in a very small space at 383 Amsterdam Avenue. One great thing about successful people is they’re enthusiastic.

Nora Nealis and I about how she made me jump through hoops when I did my first speech for her. She wanted to see the PowerPoint in advance so we could discuss it and improve it. Successful people want to provide value to their customers (in this case her members).

The Sternsheins were at my first NCA seminar and they said they’d implemented many of the programs I’d suggested. Successful people actually accomplish things now.

So, take a lesson from them, and do some of these things yourself. And you won’t worry too much about the economy. You won’t have time.

All the best,
Lois
loisgeller@loisgellermarketinggroup.com

They bought the house, and you have your commission check in your hot little hand. Why not say “Bye, Bye” to that customer?

Well, first of all, real estate and all businesses are based on long term relationships. People know people, and meet new ones and can refer you, or even become your friend.

In fact, my art director bought a home from a lady named Christy. He’s been happy there, and she’s kept in touch with him. Last Christmas, she even came to his door with a lovely holiday plant. He invited her in, and remembered that his neighbor across the street had mentioned they were relocating to California.

So, he called up his friend, made the introduction right on the spot. She walked across the street and got the listing, and sold the home quickly.

How many sales do we all lose, because we forget to follow up with past customers. We’re always on a quest for new ones, and those old ones are right under our collective noses.

Take a look at your database and get back in touch with some of those past friends, and see what develops. Good luck and let me know what happens.

I recently attended a DMIX (Direct Marketing Idea Exchange) luncheon and the speaker was the President of a large catalog company. She was kind enough to give us each a gift car d  to buy something in her catalog.

There was a book in there I wanted, so I ordered it. First they sent me a letter, saying my book was delayed. Then they sent another letter  (3 weeks later), and said it was on back order, and they’d let me know when it came in.

Months later, I wrote to her about this, and the book came flying to me FEDEX from Amazon (not her company).

She made it right, but only because I was in her industry and write a lot of articles, etc.

Afterward, they should have written and told me they were sorry about the delay in my shipment.

Meanwhile, we’re working on a hospitality client’s business at my office, and deployed a huge email campaign with an error in the offer.

I called the client, and said we have to write to all of them immediately and say we’re sorry and correct our mistake. I sent an OOOPs! email, and we received so many orders right away. In fact, a much higher response than we’d had in many months.

We apologized quickly. We gave them a good offer. We also appeared like real human beings who make mistakes.

So, they forgave us, and bought a lot from us.

When my Dad owned a jewelry manufacturing company in New York City, buyers would come into the showroom and look at his current season’s merchandise.

That showroom was really beautiful, a lot prettier than our own living room at home. There were plush couches and ottomans, and sparkling showcases with
figurines in them.  Black velvet showed off his costume jewelry.

One time I asked him why he had such a fancy place, when we needed a new couch (so I could show off to my friends too).

He said that “you have to make your best customers feel special”. When you stop doing that, they start buying elsewhere. Actually, the relationship regresses and when you see the person again, there is an awkwardness. This happens when companies start changing who they think their target market really is.

I think that happened with Chico’s. They sell women’s clothes, and had lycra kinds of outfits in black and other colors that were easy to coordinate. I bought them all the time, because they don’t crease in my suitcase, and I can put them in the washing machine.

Then Chico’s started going after a younger demographic. They added linen clothes to their racks, and the Southwestern look that might attract new customers. What happened? They lost me, for sure, and lots of women like me who travel all the time.

Who wants a Southwestern look in New York City?

So, consider who your best customers are, treat them very well, and don’t go in some weird direction…hoping to find more customers, and then alienating me (a power shopper)!

Andrea and I are at New Age.

This week I was working in freezing cold New York City, and when the weekend came, my friend Andrea Nierenberg and I went up to the Catskills to the New Age Health Spa.

It was a yoga weekend, and it was calming and good to be in a place we’ve visited dozens of times. Andrea spoke about Time Management and Reducing Stress. I learned so much as she spoke about planning each day, on the night before (and saving time. She also brushes her teeth and does her squat exercises at the same time.

She also managed to help a dermatologist we met there to meet up with the person who books the speakers. The doctor really wants to practice his magic tricks, and so he was delighted. You can visit Andrea’s blog: http://thenierenblog.typepad.com

We ate fresh salads, and I dreamed of owning the place…and how I would market it so that people would flock there for a great get-away from New York. I considered their lack of a real Brand, and how I would create a waiting list for groups to use it as an off-site place for meetings. The database would build and there’d be a great loyalty program for the guests. As I dreamed about all this, I wondered about all the crowds. Would there be room for us?

I think I like New Age Health Spa the way it is. It is a good place to get together with my good friend, now that we live far away from each other. It’s a place to catch up on our stories and smell the fresh cool air in the mountains. It is a good place to escape marketing too.

They are looking at DM (Direct Marketing) because it is a science, and you can track your results. In the years that I worked at major agencies, many clients looked down their noses at DM, as if their product or service was to “high end” to be sold in that way. Now, things have changed.

First the internet changed the direct relationship between buyers and brands. Now prospects can comparison shop, look at products closely and buy them immediately. It is really direct mail…on steroids.

Second, the luxury brands realize that word-of-mouth advertising is a key element of their success, so they’re popping up on websites, and on social media…like Facebook and Twitter.

Third, Luxury brands want to know what their ROI is, and what’s working and what isn’t. They can’t always see the results of on-page advertising, or even their commercials. In direct mail, email, or website…you see the stats right away ,and can tell how many are converting to sales now. In this time of economic uncertainty…DM is a science that can provide measurable results, and that’s what they’re looking for now.

The second speaker last night is a fascinating man, named Stephen Kraus, who works for the Harrison Group, a market research firm. He’s a co-author of a new book, entitled The New Elite, Inside the minds of the truly wealthy.

He told us about the many faces of the American rich and the diverse factors that drive this high end customer (like the fact that a large percentage of them shop at Target and love Costco). I’m looking forward to reading his book.

All in all, it was an interesting evening. I met an old friend there from New York: Susan Schein, and there was quite a large crowd of really nice marketers at the event.

My topic for my three hour seminar: How to Build Relationships With Your Customer Using Your Brand …Virtually! While I was preparing my session, I was wondering: why would a customer want a relationship with their dry cleaner? It is about trust, and delivering great service, and caring.

But, then the night before I was flying out, I tried on my own suit. I couldn’t even squeeze into it. My dry cleaner had somehow shrunk it and I had just worn it to Toronto only two weeks ago. So, I either bulked up two sizes or it was ruined.

I mentioned this to Nora Nealis, the President of the NCA, and Ann Hargrove, who works with her (pictured above),  They said it was probably “wet cleaned”, and had shrunk (thank heavens it wasn’t that I’d bulked up 15  pounds), and she said to mail her the suit when I came back to Florida. I sent it out to her today.

They have a lab on West 29th Street, and they analyze these things, so they can send out information and help dry cleaners not to do this to their customers. I’m one of those  people who just  silently defects. So, I’m searching for a new cleaner.

The dry cleaners that attended this brainstorming event are always the best and the brightest. I told them how to give their websites and their businesses a “brand personality”, and invite people to interact with them online. They can build loyalty, by having some fun with their customers, and starting contests, selling ancillary products. Some had never discovered the magic of search engines, or even tried offering Pick Up and Delivery as an online option.

One website we created at Lois Geller Marketing Group is Apthorp Cleaners (http://www.apthorpcleaners.com), and the owner, Debra Kravet was there. The website features a lady in red walking her dog, and Debra Kravet has expanded that brand to appear as posters on her windows, and in direct mail invitations, and a host of other programs she’s working on now. Soon her New York City trucks will have her “lady in red” doing many pickups and deliveries… which is really a moving billboard for her business.

Please visit her website: www.apthorpcleaners.com

One gentleman there has a dry cleaners in Belize. It is the only one in that country, and he built it from scratch… never having been in the business. He showed us his commercials, and we were all impressed. Here’s someone who has used his great ingenuity to build something wonderful and employ many people. He does quality work too.

So, all in all…it is a joy to teach dry cleaners how websites, and blogs and social media can all help them build their community outreach, and relationships with their customers and prospects.