How often have you heard someone say he or she “gets me.” It means that person understands your preferences, knows what you’ll do before you do it. It can be a superficial knowledge of your likes or one that gets at the heart of what drives you. But either way, there’s a certain amount of pleasure involved in being in that kind of relationship. They know what you’ll order for a drink before you even sit down and will have it waiting for you. They know what makes you happy and they do their best to surround you with a lot of that. You don’t (always) have to tell them what you want. They just know. They set you at ease and make you smile because it appears effortless.
Is this magic? No, they’ve just been around you long enough to know how you like your eggs, for instance. Is it really a big deal that they know how you like your eggs? No. It’s not the lack of necessary directive that is special, it’s how expressing that knowledge (or you and your preferences)Â makes you feel. You are a part of their world. They reserved a small spot in their memory for a detail about you. That’s what feels good. That’s what makes an impression.
Today’s technology, can help us make our members feel special even those we only see once a year. With membership management tools we can remember details about their lives and our past conversations. We can survey their preferences, we can even figure out what pieces of our content they are most interested in.
But just as in the example of the relationship above, it’s not enough to “know” this information about someone. You must act on it. How are you customizing your offerings based on your members’ preferences?
