A friend of mine stayed at a hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel, a while back. She’d been there once before and decided to return.
When she checked in, there was a letter waiting for her in the room.
It wasn’t elaborate. It wasn’t signed by hand. It wasn’t even personalised beyond her name. But it said something along the lines of, welcome back, you’re practically a local, we’re glad to have you with us again.
That was it.
She posted it online. Told everyone about it. And I guarantee she’ll go back next time she’s in Tel Aviv.
The hotel spent almost nothing. A piece of paper, a printer, and someone who bothered to check whether she’d stayed before.
That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.
Now I know what you’re thinking. That’s fine for a hotel, but that doesn’t apply to my business.
It does though. And it’s simpler than you think.
Say you run a restaurant. When someone makes a booking you ask for their name and number. That’s it, that’s all you need. Put it in a basic database, note what they ordered last time, and when they walk back in you can say something like, hey, we noticed last time you were in you had the linguine, would you like that again or can I suggest something similar?
The customer’s reaction? Instantly they feel at home. Like they belong there. Like you actually pay attention.
You didn’t spend anything. You just remembered them.
The same thing works at a bike shop, a clinic, a hair salon, a boutique. Anywhere people come back more than once. Which, if you’re doing your job right, should be most of your customers.
You don’t need a fancy loyalty program. You don’t need to run email campaigns or offer discount points or any of that. You just need a small database and a habit of using it.
The thing that gets in the way for most businesses isn’t the tech or the cost. It’s the effort of setting it up in the first place. A bit of work upfront, and after that it practically runs itself.
The obstacle is usually nothing more than a little bit of laziness.
Because once you’ve got the system in place, acknowledging a returning customer takes about ten seconds. But the impression it leaves? That lasts a lot longer.
Your customers don’t expect you to remember everything about them. But when you do, even just a little bit, it changes how they feel about your business entirely.
That’s the kind of loyalty money can’t buy. Which is fitting, because it doesn’t cost any either.