“Loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like you’re not.”
– General Colin Powell
My apologies for the late post. I got tied up with the holidays. This post was intended for publishing 12/24.
Loyalty – the right kind of loyalty – earned, not given or bribed, is a beautiful thing. Some say it’s the most important thing.
As I reflect upon 21 years of Interfanatic, it’s hard to discount that latter thought. Twenty-one years ago, Carroll Smith came to me and said, “can you build me a website.” Then, seventeen years ago Carroll passed away, and my business shifted to his son, Chris. Chris wanted to change the terms a bit, and we did, but it works better for him now. We did what was required to ensure loyalty, because we’re loyal to our customer.
We give it to each other honestly, whether we think the other will like the opinion or not.
Loyalty: An Interfanatic Quality
Efficiency is ingrained. Of course, we have to constantly fight for it. Our business is on an entropic trend with efficiencies fighting inefficiencies on every front. Efficiency doesn’t have to be impersonal, but it does have to work.
We’re constantly on the lookout for ways to make things happen faster, simpler. Any time there’s a complicated process, we seek to simplify it. Our business is rife with new tasks, new processes, and these are not always beautifully efficient.
Over time, we hone new processes to make them simpler and more efficient. It helps us save time and money. And then we can pass that efficiency to our customers through savings.
CarrollSmith.com, the Result of Two-way Loyalty
As we enter 2021, I’m filled with pride and humility (at the same time – weird, I know) – that we’re still running CarrollSmith.com some twenty-two years later.
This is not an accident. It works this way because we both want it to be this way and because our arrangement works for both parties. The arrangement works both ways because we make sure it does. We make sure it does because we’re both loyal.
“We work together to ensure all goes well and all are happy, and we do it for loyalty.”
Chris honors his father’s work. We at Interfanatic honor his father’s work. We work together to ensure all goes well and all are happy, and we do it for loyalty.
Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Basic Weekly Email Marketing with Setup
Nothing has the potential to inspire loyalty gently like email marketing done right. Nothing has the potential to piss customers off slowly, violently, like spam – email marketing done wrong.
Email marketing done right, email marketing done the Interfanatic way, is like most things worth doing – it’s hard work. You have to constantly strive to find and deliver value to your customers. Not through sales or promotions or making them spend money, but through informing them, helping them, teaching them what they want to know, but they didn’t know to ask you.
Keep it interesting, and you keep customers coming back. Let it be boring, or even worse, all about you, and watch those customers you earned run away.
Interfanatic: Inspiring Loyalty
I’m pleased with our relationship with Carroll Smith Consulting. And I know that any day, if I don’t keep working at it, if I don’t stay loyal, it could go away. As it could with our other clients who have been with us for decades. There’s always somebody trying to do better. That’s why we keep after it for our clients – to keep them improving, to keep them thinking, to help them. To make them wish to stay loyal.
This week’s image:
Interfanatic‘s founder, Ryan Delane, takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.
Ah, the vivacious blood-red heart. An eternal symbol of loyalty. Fill it with chocolate and you’ve got something that would keep me loyal. And what do you do when you need a great gift? Get them what you would want, of course. And so this was a gift for my wife, who has spent years putting up with me. I don’t know if it exactly inspired loyalty, but she didn’t leave me yet, so this was not the wrong answer apparently!