Pedaling Success 🚴🏻
Hello Reader,
I've ridden bikes most of my life—it was something to do growing up in the country. Then in college having a bike made life easier on a sprawling urban DC campus, and in grad school I got fed up with slow, stinky busses the meandered around Dublin, so I bought a bike and suddenly had freedom. Which led me to actually writing my thesis about the person I believe to be the world's first woman cycling journalist.
But then life lifed, I moved around, and didn't ride a bike for a number of years. A few years ago I bought my first new bike in a long time, and the floodgates opened and I got back into it in a big way—this time for fun instead of transportation, since my commute is all of 30 feet.
Like any 40-something cyclist, of course I have multiple bikes for different purposes, including my recently acquired road bike.
When I bought this bike I sought out a road bike (a lightweight bike with the curly handlebars) with the same drivetrain (the gears) system that my gravel (like a road bike but burlier, for rougher surfaces) bike had because I was familiar with it and liked it and didn't want to have to get used to a new system and go back forth. (For bikes with electronic shifting, mostly we're looking at Shimano or Sram, and mine are the latter.)
New bike acquired, I set up my drivetrain.
There's an app because you can customize a bunch of things with this system, so the company has my email address and all that. Now here's where things get interesting— I think this is something we can all learn something from.
Everything activated, the drivetrain company started sending me emails every third day or so with all kinds of information-packed tidbits. How to customize my shifting, different tricks for getting more out of my gears, info about charging and using the app. All stuff that made using the product better. Now, this wasn't my first bike rodeo, and I already had the same drivetrain, but it was nevertheless useful. I actually saved all those emails to refer back to in the future.
Their emails helped me have MORE SUCCESS with their product. How cool is that?
Most companies—large to tiny—forget that current customers/clients are part of their marketing ecosystem. At best, companies who view current customers as important to their marketing see them as a potential upsell or cross-sell.
Instead, Sram went in a different direction. For me, their new customer messaging definitely inspired me to think about how our team can add support to help clients and students create success right away.
On other hand, around the same time, I bought some new pedals for my hybrid "town bike." I ended up getting them directly from the company because I wanted a specific color (turquoise, of course) instead of a local shop, and of course got into their email system.
What happened? Well, the day I received my pedals I got an email. Encouraging me to buy a dropper post (this is thing you can add to bike to make your seat drop down, like this Slovenian professional cyclist does in competition on occasion).
Now, I'm not a mountain biker, nor am I a fearless pro who likes to get wild and crazy going downhill. I'm not the audience for this product at all.
There was nothing wrong with the emails, but it was a stark contrast from the Sram messaging. I ended up unsubscribing because they weren't useful to me, it was just all product, and nothing that would help me use the product better, therefore building trust in and loyalty to the brand.
And before you say, "But Sarah, what on earth could they have told you about pedals," let me tell you, A WHOLE LOT.
This company marks the left and right pedals in a different place than is typical so they could have sent an email with photos and notes about that. They could have talked about what shoes work best with these types of pedals. Or maintenance! There were a lot of opportunities!
The thing is, as a marketer, there's a part of me that's happy this company did anything at all to engage me as a current customer (again, because this is an often forgotten piece of the pie) and I wouldn't have thought much of it if I hadn't gotten such excellent, smart emails from the other company at the same time. It was a very "normal" sequence of messages.
But why be typical? Why not try to make an already-engaged audience into raving fans? Why not turn everyone into a success story?
Talk soon,
Sarah
P.S. Our office is closed entirely today and will reopen on Sept. 12 for a planned break. We appreciate your patience in waiting for replies. If you'd like to get on my calendar for a strategy call in Sept/Oct, you can do that here. And if you would like to schedule an Alignment Call to discuss working together later this month, start here.