Thanking Customers Without a Discount Code

Why the code undoes it

A message beginning with thanks for your custom this year and ending with a discount code is a promotion.

The reader recognises the structure instantly, because every business sends that message in the same week.

Which means the thanks does no work at all, since it was the wrapper on an offer rather than the point of the message.

A message that asks for nothing is unusual enough to be noticed, and being noticed is the entire objective.

What makes one land

• Something specific to them or the year.
• A person's name at the bottom.
• No offer, no code, no link to buy.
• Short, three or four lines.
• Sent when nobody else is sending.

The third is what does the work and is the hardest to leave out, because somebody will point out that the message could be doing something. It is doing something, and the something requires the absence.

Be specific about something

Since a generic thank you is only marginally better than none.

For a small enough list, name the actual thing: the job you did for them, the year they came back, the awkward request you managed.

Where the list is too large for that, be specific about the year instead: what the business did, what changed, what was difficult, what you are pleased about.

Real detail about a hard month reads as a person writing, and a paragraph about valued customers reads as a template.

Name a member of staff, mention a real event, or say what surprised you.

That is what distinguishes it from the fifty similar messages arriving that week.

The note in the parcel

The physical version, and it outperforms the email considerably.

A handwritten line on a card, in the box, is read by everybody and thrown away by very few.

It does not have to be long: thanks for the order, hope they like it, signed with a name.

Where volume makes handwriting impossible, a printed card with a handwritten signature is most of the effect at a fraction of the time.

Do not print an offer on the back, which converts it into a flyer and is exactly the mistake this whole subject is about.

The cost is a card and a few seconds per parcel, which is affordable even at peak if the cards are prepared in advance.

A worked example

A business sent an end-of-year email each December, thanking customers and offering fifteen per cent off in January.

It performed like any other promotional email and generated a handful of orders.

One year they sent something different: four lines about what the year had been like, what they had struggled with, thanks, and a name at the bottom, with nothing to click.

It was opened at roughly twice the usual rate and about forty people replied, which had never happened before.

Several of those replies became conversations and a few became work in the new year.

The January promotion was sent separately a fortnight later and performed as usual.

Send it when nobody else is

Since timing decides whether it is read as one of many.

The last two weeks of December are the most crowded period in anybody's inbox, and a thank you arriving there competes with every retailer.

Early December, or the first week of January, both work considerably better and are almost empty by comparison.

January in particular suits it, since a message arriving when nobody is selling anything reads unmistakably as not selling anything.

A thank you for last year sent on the fifth of January is unusual, well timed, and remembered.

Expect replies and answer them

Which is the part businesses are unprepared for.

A message that asks for nothing produces replies, because people respond to something that reads as personal.

Send it from a monitored address and be ready to answer, since an unanswered reply to a personal message is worse than not sending it.

Those replies are also the most useful thing the exercise produces: people tell you what they liked, what they are planning, and occasionally what went wrong.

Answer each one briefly and personally, which is an hour well spent.

Where the list is large enough that replies would be unmanageable, that is worth knowing before sending rather than after.

Separate it from the selling

Because the two can coexist if they are not the same message.

Send the thank you on its own, then send the promotion a fortnight later as an ordinary promotion.

Both perform better than the combined version, and the promotion arrives to somebody who has recently had a positive interaction with you.

Do not mention the coming offer in the thank you, which reintroduces the problem in a subtler form.

The discipline is to let one message do one job, which is the same discipline that applies to everything else you send.

Thank the people who are not customers

An extension that costs the same and is done by almost nobody.

Suppliers, subcontractors, the people who refer work to you, and anybody who helped during the year receive these messages from nobody.

Which makes a short specific note considerably more noticeable there than in a customer's inbox, where it competes with fifty others.

Name what they actually did: the delivery they turned around, the job they covered, the customer they sent you.

Those relationships are where next year's referrals and favours come from, and they are maintained by exactly this kind of message rather than by anything commercial.

The counter-case

This is not free.

A message that generates forty replies costs an afternoon, which is real at a busy time.

For a very large list, personal thanks becomes impractical and an honest general message is the most available option.

And a thank you from a business the customer has had a poor experience with reads badly, so the underlying relationship has to be sound.

Send it separately, say something specific, include no offer, and answer the replies.

What to send

1. Write three or four lines, no more.
2. Say something specific about the year.
3. Include no code and no link to buy.
4. Sign it with a person's name.
5. Send it in early January if you can.
6. Send from a monitored address.
7. Answer every reply.

Step three is the whole of it, and it is the item somebody will argue against right up until the message is sent.

When to ask for something instead is covered in the moment to ask for a review.

Frequently asked questions

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