Catchy, huh?
Most businesses I know say that their existing customers are the most important people out there, so why not treat them accordingly? None of us are Apple: fans aren’t going to tune in to our product launches with the excitement that comes from realising they’re the first to know about something. If we’ve got an announcement as prosaic as an improved new blue widget, we need to extract everything we can from it. Making customers feel a bit special by telling them about things first is an easy win.
A home delivery food company I buy from frequently recently introduced a subscription service. It was a big thing for them. I saw a social media post from them saying they had “a big announcement coming next week”, which was fun. However, later in the day I got an email saying “you might have seen us teasing what we’re doing, but don’t worry, as a customer, we wouldn’t want to keep you hanging on”. It went on to explain everything.
Of course, in reality I wasn’t hearing about the new service in advance. They’d just put off the announcement for everyone else. But it made me feel a bit more valued …and of course I read the email in full.