Recently I mailed out hand-written thank-you cards to every single sponsor of our Inbound Marketing Summits and Inbound Marketing Bootcamps, all of our clients and a handful of other people who have helped us at New Marketing Labs over the past few months. I figured that a personalized, hand-written thank-you card would mean a lot more than a standard email.

Plus, who needs another email? I know I sure don’t. As I continue to see the amount of physical mail I receive decrease due to paying bills online, receiving email newsletters, and communicating mainly via email and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, when a card or note from someone arrives, it means so much more. I actually take time to sit down and read it. I save it. It means more to me because I know that everyone in my circles run their lives from digital dashboards.

When I sent the thank-you cards I didn’t expect anything to come of it. I mean, all of these people have given us money or donated their time has a cost to it as well. The least I could do is take 2 minutes out of my life to send them a thank-you. Granted, I could’ve still sent everyone a piece of physical mail but made it a lot easier by typing a standard letter, printing 120 copies, signing them and then having them mailed out. But I chose not to. Why? Because that takes away the personal nature of the thank you. As great as standardization is for effectiveness, it does not translate to being more personal.

Right after I had mailed out all of the cards I had watched a MSNBC special about President Obama and the White House. While there were many things that I found fascinating during the 2 hour special, one thing that kept sticking with me was the fact that President Obama reads 10 letters from the public every single day. Now, I know that 10 letters doesn’t seem like a lot. Especially seeing that the White House receives over 100,000 emails, 1,000 faxes, and 2,500-3,500 phone calls every single day and over 65,000 physical letters every week (real numbers, not just estimations). A mere 10 letters per day isn’t even a drop in the bucket. But, before looking at it through that lens, stop and think about this for a minute.

The President of the United States is personally reading 70 letters from the American public every week. These letters aren’t being digested for him into a quick one-pager. These letters aren’t being scrubbed (except for security reasons) before the President sees them. Here’s the real win, not only is the President reading these letters every day but he personally responds to about 15 of those letters every week. No, not his secretary, not his Director of Communications, not his personal aide, or an intern, but the President is responding to them personally. Guess what? He hand writes every single response!

Check out this video of the President talking about why it is so important to him to stay in touch with the public:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Love him, hate him, you have to respect him for it. This is not a political debate but instead a look into a powerful tool that you can and should be employing into your businesses. Whether you’re an account executive, sales representative, manager, Director, VP or further up the structure, are you reaching out like this to your customers? I’m not talking about the obligatory holiday card or “thank you for your business” type stuff. I mean personalized, thought out, responses. How do you think a customer would feel if after calling into customer service or tech support, a few days later they received a hand-written note from that team member? Think you would win them over? Think you would create brand loyalty?  I think your chances are pretty high.

Need some other examples of people who are keeping their ear to the ground and listening to their customers?

*Tony Hsieh of Zappos is a perfect example. Tony is behind the company’s main Twitter account, currently hovering around 1.1 million followers. Tony responds to as many people as possible given the crazy schedule of a CEO of a $1.2 billion company, an in-demand public speaker and someone who has been featured in 2009 in every major business magazine. While I’m not sure whether Zappos reps send hand-written notes, they are empowered to help the customer in any way possible and they believe very strongly in building culture.

*Fritz Henderson. Fritz is the recently minted CEO of General Motors. Fritz has just a few things on his plate if you ask me. But, Fritz actively listens to customers by reading and responding to blogs, monitoring what’s being talked about in the media, and taking time to learn from people like Chris Brogan.  Fritz has even launched an online community called “Tell Fritz”.  Yes, I’m sure that Fritz has a substantially sized PR and communications teams as well as multiple agencies that work with those teams. Fritz also has my friend Chris Barger working social media for GM. But, besides all of those reports that he can call upon, Fritz takes an active role in listening and responding directly to his customers.

Want to listen like Tony, Fritz or many other executives now are?  Start by growing bigger ears!

Imagine how you would feel if Tony, Fritz or the President of the United States responded directly to you whether it be digital or hand-written (more points for the hand-written!). Now take that feeling and imagine how you could provide that same feeling for YOUR customers, business partners or your employees.

It’s not always the flashy things that make the biggest impacts. Something as simple as hand-written notes or a simple message to let them know you’re listening can win you a customer for life.

Are you doing this within your company? Do you know someone who is doing this and you want to recognize them for their efforts?

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Photo by: athena

Besides what I seek to share, I also learn from you every single day.  You help me to grow both personally and professionally.  You give me ideas for ways that I can be a better leader, manager, business partner, friend, and husband.  You motivate me, even if you don’t think you’ve done a thing.  For that I will always be thankful.

One of the things that you’ll see Chris Brogan do over on [chrisbrogan.com] from time-to-time is a subscription drive.  It is a way of providing you multiple ways that you can choose to receive the content from his blog, whether it be via email or your preferred RSS reader.  I always thought the concept of the subscription drive post was interesting especially for the number of people that just land here on a daily basis from clicking through from profiles, my email signature, or from doing a search for something.  So, today I want to run a subscription drive but I want to do it a little different.  I want to run a “connection drive”.

I routinely will encourage people to find and connect with me on different platforms.  For example, I will post my Facebook link on Twitter or vice versa.  This allows me to learn more about you.  It provides a multi-dimensional glimpse into your world instead of just your voice on one network.  I especially sites like Facebook and FriendFeed which allow me to learn more about your interests, see pictures and videos of you with friends, family and co-workers, and see what you find interesting via Google Reader, Delicious or through a number of other channels.

Though I have buttons in the far right sidebar of this blog that give you a few of the ways that we connect, I realize that many of you read this blog through a feed reader.  That means that you never have to click through to the site and thus miss out on the chance to connect via those other channels.

With that being said, if we’re not connected through one of these channels, please reach out and say hi.  I want to keep learning about and from you.  I want to keep having meaningful conversations with you.  Again, thanks for everything.  It is truly humbling the support that you give to me.

Subscribe via Email

Don’t have time to check in with your feed reader but still want to get any new content?  Sign up via email and receive any new content in your inbox every morning.  What’s better than a little bit of Justin along with your coffee?  Let’s be real now….

Subcribe via Google Reader

Google Reader happens to be my favorite RSS reader and I highly recommend it.  I love that we can share and learn together using something as simple as a feed reader.

Subscribe via RSS Reader

Realizing that Google Reader isn’t the only feed reader out there, feel free to grab add to your reader-of-choice.

Subscribe in a reader

Twitter

Twitter is a vital source of communication for me.  In my office, I have a dedicated screen just for Twitter.  This is where I connect the most often throughout the day.

Facebook

I absolutely love Facebook!  I use it to share a lot with you by pulling in from the many other networks I’m active on.  This gives you probably the best 360 degree view of me.  I post a lot of pictures, videos, interesting blog posts, and a ton of other info here.

LinkedIn

While I’m not as active on LinkedIn as I really want to be, I find huge amounts of value in it.  If you’re wondering what I’m up to, where I’ve been, who I’d recommend for anything, this is the place to find it.

Delicious

Delicious is a fun place for me and I think it might be for you too.  I read scan approximately 500-800 articles per day and I have so many diverse interests so I save a lot of things here.  Make sure you check out some of the tags and find something that interests you.

Flickr

Flickr is where I share all of the pictures from my various trips, interests, businesses, and other aspects of my life.  Most recently I’ve been uploading a ton of pictures from my wedding.  I love spending hours looking of your pictures too so make sure you add me as a contact on here.

FriendFeed

I had gone through a period of time where I didn’t use FriendFeed a lot but I’m starting to use it more.  I think it is an interesting platform and, like Facebook, it allows me to get a 360 degree view of who you are and what your interests are.

Thank You

Finally, thank you for all of your continued support.  I love every minute that I get to spend with you either here, on one of the various networks or, even better, in real life.  Keep doing super cool stuff!

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]]> http://justinrlevy.com/2009/07/connection-drive/feed/ 3 http://justinrlevy.com/2009/03/the-importance-of-face-to-face-interaction/ http://justinrlevy.com/2009/03/the-importance-of-face-to-face-interaction/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:39:12 +0000 Justin Levy http://justinrlevy.com/?p=979 Something that is very important to me is getting to meet people face-to-face.  I love the relationships that I’m able to build using social media tools but nothing beats then taking it to real life face-to-face conversations.  Today I wanted to share my thoughts on meeting people in person and why I want to meet you while at SXSW or any of the other conferences, meetups or other events I will be during 2009 (and beyond).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Since I’ll be traveling over the next few weeks I figured my time to actually write will be hard, especially while at SXSW.  So, I have decided to do a lot more videos over the next few weeks.  I hope you enjoy

What are your thoughts?  Do you agree that face-to-face interaction is important?  Why?