Loyalty Gives You Options

There are probably at least two ways to define loyalty.

• Customer Purchases At High Rates, Repeatedly.
• Customer Pays Attention To You.

I can't even believe I'm typing the second bullet point. But 2026 is not 1996. Or 2006. Or 2016. Times change. Attention matters. In my website visitation models, each visit adds to future value, regardless whether the customer purchases anything or not. Which means each time the customer reads your Instagram Post or watches your YouTube Video or actually bothers to look at your Email Campaign, the "attention" is adding long-term value. 

I've measured it.

Loyalty gives you options.

Want an example?

Do you know which post I wrote in 2025 that attracted the most eyeballs?

Are you ready?

It's this one.

I mean, are you kidding?

When your customer pays attention to you, you are able to steer your customer in interesting directions.

What are the four topics I write about that generate the most email communications from you to me?

1. Headphones, In-Ear Monitors in Particular.
2. Politics ... I don't generally write about politics, but some of you will somehow connect a topic to either "Trump is God" or "Trump is Satan".
3. The impact of "paper" in marketing. Just a stunning thought given it is 2026 and it has been 30 years since paper mattered.
4. Pickleball!

Almost none of the topics have anything to do with what pays the bills.

At least directly.

It's hard to ascertain what talking about Headphones and Pickleball does for business. It can't hurt. Someday I'll expand into another hobby (weather), and we'll see what happens.

Loyalty gives you options. You get to step outside of "TODAY 60% OFF PLUS 85% OFF CLEARANCE!" In 2026, we need to step outside of our standard messaging and start relating to our customer base.