One of the hotels that I regularly layover at in Minneapolis has all new front desk staff spend a day at the airport, familiarizing themselves with every element of the operation. They do this so when some stressed out women with three screaming kids calls from baggage claim at midnight and they lost her luggage and she’s not sure if she’s in the Humphrey or Lindbergh terminals, they can more effectively help her. What a concept. Because no one ever checks into an airport hotel after 10 pm who has had a good day.
CBS launched a station a couple of years ago that sent a personal note to every single person who liked them. It’s the simple stuff. Seriously.
Steve Woods at 94/9 friends every listener who friends him. Why? Why wouldn’t you? He sends them notes on their birthdays, congratulates them on jobs or babies and sends them notes of condolence when they’ve had a set-back in their life.
Back when Radio at least pretended that we cared about our listeners, it was standard to every December send a Christmas card to every listener who’d won that year. Personalized. Signed. Not some auto-generated spam that’s Facebooked to them. The first time I got a birthday message from Al Franken I was genuinely excited. And then I kind of realized I was in the database and some chip sent it to me.
Strom Thurmond was the senator from South Carolina for 48 years and from all accounts was a pretty despicable human being. But he knew that politics was more than putting up boards and handing out lawn signs. He had the largest staff on Capital Hill and the majority of their work was “working the constituents”.
- He had 150 interns a year. All from connected families that he knew could be to his benefit. They did their month and went home to a better future job because they’d interned in DC. Mom and dad were going to remember that.
- His staff sent out 400 letters a DAY. Congratulating kids on graduating. Offering sympathy over a death. These were researched and personalized.
- One staff member a day went out with a stack of US flags and one by one ran them up a pole for a minute or two, brought them down and these were mailed to constituents. A flag that had flown over the Capital.
That’s how you get elected. It’s a lot of work but it pays off. If you haven’t read this, do. Jo Jo is Strom Thurmond but with much more enlightened views on race relations.
When I was a kid the Minneapolis newspaper would send out a copy of the paper from the day you were born, specially wrapped, for your parents to give to you when you were older. (I finally read mine: Fatty Arbuckle and another sodomy charge. Could that guy EVER catch a break?)
If I was on the air now (and why aren’t I, damn it) I’d spend an hour a night watching TV and sending youtube links of the #1 song on the day they were born to a dozen or so friends/followers whose birthday it is. http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/birthdayno1 Why not? I can watch “Pregnant 18 y/o Transgender Little Person Widow” on MTV and still dork away on the computer.
As we head into the last part of 2015, you should:
- Have a friend come in to pick up a prize to see how they’re treated.
- Call the studio line occasionally to see if the talent picks up.
- Regularly scan Facebook to see if people have posted questions or comments that should have received an answer, but didn’t.
- Regularly scan the competition’s Facebook for disgruntled people. One of the CBS promo people was peeping the competition and saw that one of their listeners was getting progressively angrier. “When are you going to give away Bruno Mars tickets?” A couple of hours later he repeated the question. A couple of hours later he asked “Hey, is anyone there?” A couple of hours later he commented “I guess they don’t work on weekends.” At which point our guy posted to the guys page “We work on weekends and your free tickets will be at the (station) front desk starting at 9 am on Monday! Enjoy the show.” Dude then spent three days raving about his new favorite radio station.
- Find out a way that you can reach out to people on their birthdays. And devise a way to hit them with something personal during the holidays.
It’s work but its work that will pay off. Nothing great in life was ever easy.
Proof? Here.
And yes, I just realized that this is probably my next blog piece. Thanks for sitting through it.
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