Mail in the 21st Century – developing relationships

Janet Hagan: This is a letter from Scottish Widows. I wasn’t expecting it and I was very pleased to receive it because when I opened it was actually a thank you for taking out new business with them. And most people these days, you don’t get a thank you letter for doing business, they just assume that it’s business and you’ve done and that’s it, so it was quite a nice surprise. 
Jose Arvola: When I got the DVD it was a surprise because I wasn’t expecting it for starters. And something hard and your letter, it's not your average thing it's got a bit of substance to it. Yeah, it’s surprising I suppose. It made me go on the website. It's just something, a little gift that makes you feel wanted as a customer.
Blanche Green: It’s a complementary valet from Mercedes-Benz. At the time the car was fairly new so it didn’t need valeting but it's probably due now to have a good clean. I was pleased. When I received it I was like ‘oh that’s nice, I’ll use that’. I actually wrote on it straight away so I’d know what it was. It's nice to give something back to your customers. I thought it was a nice gesture.
 Jim Wilson: Right, this has just arrived. I’m quite happy to see this. This is from VW, as I’ve just bought my new car. It’s obviously the insurance document which they’ve given me, which is very nice to open that up. So I’ll open that up. There we have it; the nice VW headed paper, my policy, and some information about VW insurance.
Polly Symes: Well I get this newsletter every month from this company called Essentially Oils. They’re based in England and every month at the back there’s lots of information about oils and alternative this and that. There’s lots of offers on the back and this month I’m gonna be getting geranium, I usually get something once a month, a soap or a water or something nice smelling.
Brian Hufton: We get a... we get a National Trust magazine, I think it’s every three months and that... with a newsletter in it, a local newsletter for the East Midlands and then a national book for the whole country, which tells us everything that’s going off with the National Trust. We do use the National Trust a lot; I think it’s an absolutely fantastic organisation so we do enjoy anything from the National Trust.
Helen Clark: Companies that are wishing to retain my custom I don’t mind. Like a TV company, a phone company. We were going to leave our last one due to having better deals somewhere else and then our current company wrote to us offering us a different deal, and it was better. And that was quite a pleasant surprise and we’ve stayed with them because of that.
Ray Mansell: I really look forward to getting post that’s giving me something in it that’s got an offer. So that might be vouchers, money off, spend so much. We’ve got something out there from Waitrose. We shop at Waitrose all the time so there’s vouchers there I’ve got to use up by next week. That’s something which I think is worthwhile and I look at and I think ‘yes, that’s ok’.
Jo Flint: Yes, I shop quite a lot with a company called ASOS and I always get a magazine sent through from them. Basically, when the magazine comes through I will open it up and have a brief flick through. I’ll come into the living room with it, have a sit down, and flick through and see if anything catches my eye, if there’s any new clothes out. I’m a bit of a shopaholic so if there’s anything I do like the look of, I’ll then go onto the computer, have look at it and if I like it I’ll buy it.
Jo Papa: I subscribe to Sky, it gives me interesting reading. And I would go through it and use it purely and simply to see what sports on, what music’s on etc etc. And that stays there for the month until the next month’s come along.
Natasha Buttivant: We recently bought a car from BMW. Every sort of few months they’ll send us a magazine informing us of their new models that they’re due to come out, when they’re going to come out, and the features that the new cars are going to have. I think it’s a really good idea. I really enjoy reading the BMW magazine, my husband really enjoys it, and we find it really informative and interesting and definitely makes us... it's an incentive for us to maybe buy BMW in the future.
David Slaughter: Every so often Abbey will send me a little keyring or a little postcard and I kind of think that’s quite nice because it’s not anything to do with the bank. They've sent you almost like a nice little free present which I can either reuse or not. It kind of gives them a good reputation, I thought.
Janet Hagan:  Nationwide send you to vote.  I know they have to do it but it just makes you think they do want every member to vote because they do mail every member. There’s four of us in the family and we had four letters. They didn’t just send one letter to the family, so they obviously value you as a customer individually. Even the children got one, and my son’s only just 18 so they’ve obviously taken notice of his birthday and sent him a letter. Anything like that really that makes you feel special; you’re more likely to stay with them.
Pat Parish: This is the Broadway programme. A fabulous cinema showing some really good films. If I was to go online and try to look at this information, I think I'd be going from screen to screen, I'd be just getting frustrated and I wouldn’t do it. The fact that they send me this every month, I will go and see three to four films out of here every month. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t get this programme. It's just a really good, clever way of getting me to their cinema.