Eshin Direct

Happy chinese new year to everyone! I’m still in the process of wishing all the appropriate folks in my life the prosperity and good health they all deserve. It is taking me an age to get through all the Chinese folks I know but I still have a few more days of CNY to complete the task.

Actually, it is surprising because I am getting a lot of responses back from folks that I don’t normally speak to regularly. It was sort of part of (Western) New Year’s resolutions to try and stay in touch with friends more¹

One lesson springs to mind that was taught to me by someone I met at UBS camp some 9 or so years ago who was writing a letter to a friend over coffee. I thought it a little antiquated considering we had email but I never forgot what she said to me:

You have to make the effort to stay in touch with people because people rarely do. But people do appreciate it if you do put that effort into it.

Me being lazy decided to mail everyone through Facebook but I have tried to send everyone of the (Chinese) people I know a personalised message relevant to them. The response, I must say, has been quite amazing as I doubt I would have received such a response from a mass, impersonal mail sent out to my whole friend list.

Of course, as a marketer in this day and age, I shouldn’t really be surprised by the power of 1-to-1 communication but the key thing here is that I’m not shirking from my genuine interest in each and everyone of the people that I chose to add to my friend list at some point by sending out a mass mailing, relying on a fancy script to add that personalization.

Right, enough of the cumbaya spiel and back to sending out those CNY greetings.

1. Most of you have reached the stage of not caring where the hell I’ve been as its been so damned long since you heard anything from me. [↩]

Tags: chinese new year, Friends, marketing, Marketing Rants