Random Acts of Kindness

In August, Fanscape will celebrate our thirteenth year in business.  We started as a viral marketing company centered around helping musicians connect with their fans, and we've grown into a social media marketing agency focused on helping major brands connect with their customers.

There wasn't a MySpace or a Facebook back in the early days.  Nor was their eCommerce or Email / CRM marketing.  Most music artists just communicated with their fans from the stage and only a handful kept up fan clubs through traditional mail.

The idea we had at Fanscape was to take the mailing list sheets that artists often left at the merchandise counter and actually enter the information into a database (something that rarely happened). Our theory was that if we could keep track of the fans and actually communicate with them, you could tell them when the next album was coming out or when there would be another show in their town.  All the research showed that the reason people didn't buy a new album or come to a show was because they didn't know about it.  Our goal was to create a deeper bond between artists and their fans.

Here was another theory we had.  What if you surprised fans with something no one else could get?  Access!  Our very first client was an extremely popular punk rock band from Seattle called, MxPx.  Their fan base was rabid.  When they toured, they would sell out every show.  We helped build their database into the hundreds of thousands.  We also created a paid subscription fan club where one of the special privileges was that as a member, you were always guaranteed to get a ticket to the show, even if it was sold out.  About a year in, we had this idea; what if when you pick up your tickets, we surprised you with a backstage pass?  We tried this in one city and you should have seen the fans faces when they picked up their tickets and realized they would actually get to meet the band.  As you can imagine, the word spread and membership to the fan club doubled seemingly overnight.

We've tried to repeat this over the years and we still work it into many of the creative concepts for our brand marketing campaigns.  Providing value to your customer is the key to great Customer Relationship Management (CRM).  Always step back and put yourself into the shoes of the customer you are trying to reach and ask this question, "why would I care?"  Why should they chose you over a competitor?  Random acts of kindness go a long way in answering that question and creating a better bond between you and your customer.