Relationship Marketing: How to Attract Fans (Not Just Buyers)

Tired of customers buying once and moving on, forcing you to rely on costly customer acquisition campaigns?

Here’s what’s happening: you’re treating customers like one-time transactions rather than valuable relationships.

The solution? Relationship marketing.

I’ll show you how to use relationship marketing to create long-lasting customer relationships, attract loyal fans, and sustainably grow your business.

Key Takeaways:

• Relationship marketing goes beyond transactions, prioritizing long-lasting customer connections.
• If you’re competing on price, use relationship marketing to create a sustainable competitive edge.
• Increasing loyalty by just 5% can improve lifetime profits per customer by up to 86%.

What Is Relationship Marketing?

Relationship marketing is a strategy for building genuine, long-term connections with customers. It aims to create lasting relationships and turn customers into loyal advocates for your brand.

The result of successful relationship marketing? Brand loyalty — customers who repeatedly buy from your brand and spread the word to their family, friends, and coworkers.

To attract loyal fans, you have to think beyond transactional marketing or treating customers like buyers. Instead, relationship marketing views customers as real people with unique needs and preferences.

It focuses on:

• Recognizing your customers as individuals
• Understanding your customers’ preferences
• Anticipating their needs before they ask
• Making your customers feel valued

True relationship marketing isn’t just about being nice to customers or following a script. This type of marketing feels personal because it is personal.

Why Should Brands Invest in Relationship Marketing?

Customer relationship marketing creates tons of benefits for brands, from increased customer lifetime value to a greater competitive edge. Here are a few of the biggest benefits of relationship marketing.

It Creates a Competitive Edge

Take it from me. Almost any product or service can be commoditized these days.

When customers fail to see anything unique about your brand, your only choice is to compete on price. And if you aren’t in the business of offering the biggest discounts, your business will fail fast.

Since relationship marketing encourages customer engagement and emotional connections, it gives you another opportunity to compete. Instead of offering lower prices, you can compete on relationships.

Your Customers Expect Personalization

No longer a nice-to-have, personalization is now an expectation for many customers. 26% of customers say they would abandon a brand that doesn’t personalize their experience.

And expectations are high. Just 16% of customers consider brands’ personalization attempts excellent, according to Twilio.

It Increases Customer Lifetime Value

A relationship marketing approach isn’t about transactions. But when done well, it drives more sales as loyal buyers make repeat purchases — which leads to an increase in customer lifetime value.

Personalized experiences cause 45% of customers to make repeat purchases, according to Twilio. And 43% of customers will recommend brands that do personalization well via word-of-mouth marketing.

Even a small boost in loyalty can make a big difference. Increasing customer loyalty by just 5% can improve lifetime profits per customer by up to 86%, according to BrandKeys research.

It Lowers Customer Acquisition Cost

Whether your company relies on traditional marketing, paid channels, or outbound sales, average customer acquisition costs aren’t cheap. Relationship marketing efforts can help you keep those costs in check.

Acquiring a new customer costs 15 to 22 times more than retaining an existing customer, according to BrandKeys. With good customer relationship management, you can build strong connections and retain current customers longer.

7 Relationship Marketing Strategies to Attract Loyal Fans

To build a loyal customer base, you have to think beyond generic loyalty programs and email blasts. Let’s look at seven strategies to develop stronger relationships with customers.

1. Personalize Your Promotions

Any brand can turn on a drip campaign and automatically send identical emails to every subscriber. While this approach might be easy for your brand, it doesn’t offer unique value to customers.

Instead, personalize your promotions. Use customer data to your advantage. Understand what shoppers really want, and why they buy.

Then, create tailored campaigns that speak to customer needs and preferences. Offer discounts on what specific customers regularly buy. Or anticipate that certain customers will need to restock and send a reminder.

2. Show Your Brand’s Personality

Just because your brand is a business doesn’t mean you need to hide behind a faceless logo. Invite customers in, and you’ll make it easier for them to know you and become invested in your relationship.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to share behind-the-scenes content on social media, in email marketing, or in company updates. Introduce members of your team so customers get to know the faces behind the brand.

To show even more personality, embrace live video. Host ask-me-anything sessions on social media and connect with customers in real time.

3. Connect with Customers on Social Media

Live video is just one option to build relationships with customers on social media. An even easier option? Respond to as many social media comments and messages as possible.

Make a goal to have real conversations in the comments. Answer questions, learn what customers are thinking, and find out what they really want from your brand.

Don’t just engage and move on. Flag product suggestions to consider or content ideas to create.

4. Ask for and Implement Customer Feedback

Looking for an easy way to let customers know how much you value their input and their business?

Prompt them for feedback on your products and services. Ask them how they really feel, including what they would change and what they want to see your company offer next.

But don’t just ask. Listen and implement their feedback:

• Make the change they asked for.
• Offer the product they requested.
• Show them that you’re moving in the right direction.

You’re likely to find that customer satisfaction increases as loyal fans become more invested in your business.

5. Create a Dedicated Space for Your Community

Set up a digital space where customers can talk about your brand, discuss their favorite products, and share their best tips.

Don’t just make the space about your brand, though. Encourage members to connect with each other and build relationships with each other.

From Facebook groups to Discord communities, these spaces are ideal for investing in engagement, collecting user-generated content, and gathering customer feedback.

6. Establish a Customer Advisory Group for Top Fans

Take the community concept a step further and set up a customer advisory group. More than just a space to engage, a consumer advisory board lets you poll customers and request feedback in a more structured way.

Since most boards are invitation-only, you can hand-pick your top customers. And you can offer incentives you know will resonate with customers. Like early access to products or interaction with your leadership team.

The result? Highly invested customers and a better product.

7. Build a Membership Program That Isn’t Just Transactional

There’s nothing inherently wrong with tier-based loyalty programs. They’re great for getting customers to buy more and rewarding those who spend the most.

But when you want to prioritize relationships over transactions, you need a different approach:

• Instead of rewarding purchases, incentivize referrals and reviews.
• Give members insider access to your team or products
• Offer special (unpublished) perks that surprise and delight your most valuable customers

Examples of Relationship Marketing From Real Brands

Now that you have a sense of some effective strategies, let’s look at how this type of marketing works. I pulled together nine of my favorite relationship marketing examples.

Instacart’s Tailored Emails

The more shoppers use Instacart, the better the grocery delivery app gets to know both what they buy and where they shop.

Instead of sending generic discount codes that any subscriber can use, Instacart uses shopper data to send personalized, time-sensitive offers.

Like these email marketing offers for $10 off summer beverages at Sprouts and $5 off health care items:

Because these offers are personalized, they’re more likely to encourage customers to buy. And since they’re related to what shoppers actually want, they’re likely to make customers feel more connected to Instacart.

Spotify’s Custom Playlists

Spotify is known for its annual Spotify Wrapped campaign. It gives subscribers a personalized summary of their listening habits, including everything from top artists and songs to total listening minutes.

Each Wrapped is tailored to the user, which means unique summaries for every subscriber. And because it’s designed to repost on social media, it gives subscribers a simple way to share both their favorite music and their relationship with Spotify.

But that’s just one example of Spotify’s custom playlists. The audio streaming service constantly generates personalized playlists based on subscribers’ musical preferences.

Like this playlist inspired by the user’s Friday afternoon listening habits:

The result?

Subscribers get the sense that Spotify understands what they like. And since Spotify routinely helps users surface more of the music and podcasts they like, the streaming service 

Chewy’s Personalized Social Media Engagement

Known for going above and beyond to surprise and delight customers, Chewy has a particularly strong approach to social media.

The pet brand regularly responds to social media comments, creating engagement that goes way beyond surface level.

Here, Chewy replies to a comment on one of the brand’s Instagram reels. The brand shows empathy for a pet owner, offering to send one of its signature personalized paintings of a pet that’s passed away.

While the memento is a nice outcome, it isn’t the point of the exchange. This conversation showcases the brand’s ability to create an emotional bond, turning an average customer experience into a genuine connection.

Olipop’s Fan Favorite Product

If your brand has been in business for long, you’ve probably heard every customer request under the sun:

• Can you make this color or flavor instead?
• Why don’t you lower the price?
• When will you bring back that product?

Olipop routinely offers limited-time flavors — which customers frequently ask the soda brand to bring back.

In the Instagram post below, Olipop shares that after listening to countless customer requests, the brand has launched a fan favorite as a year-round flavor.

Both the post and the product launch capture the essence of relationship marketing. More than just clever marketing campaigns, it’s about establishing a mutual relationship based on two-way communication.

Spindrift’s Facebook Group

While Spindrift has a strong social media comment game, that’s not the only opportunity the brand has to connect with shoppers.

The sparking water brand also hosts a Facebook group for loyal customers:

This community space is more than 4,000 fans strong. It serves as a place for customers to share drink recipes and discuss their favorite flavors.

Spindrift also uses the Facebook group as a place to host giveaways, run challenges, and share exclusive news about new products.

ActiveCampaign’s Customer Advisory Board

While many companies ask for and implement customer feedback, some take this approach a step further.

ActiveCampaign’s Customer Advisory Board is a dedicated group of customers that weigh in on features and product updates. Members of the board offer critical insights that inform the future of the marketing automation platform.

Like many customer advisory boards, ActiveCampaign’s is invitation-only.

By keeping the group exclusive, the software company can ensure that board members represent the ideal customer profile (ICP) and that they offer high-value input.

Becoming a member of the board benefits the customers, too. Since they get to shape the direction of the product, they’re more likely to become invested and stay long-term customers — leading to higher customer retention rates.

Sendoso’s SuperSender Program

More than a loyalty program, Sendoso’s SuperSender Program is designed for the gifting platform’s top customers.

Members get a wide range of benefits, including priority access to beta programs, invitations to special events, and the ability to influence the software company’s product direction.

The company also celebrates its top customers at the Sendie Awards. This award ceremony highlights the gifting platform’s most successful users, resulting in both recognition for customers and mini case studies for the brand.

This recognition can go a long way toward building strong relationships and reinforcing customer loyalty.

HubSpot Academy

HubSpot Academy offers a long list of free courses and certifications on everything from social media marketing to inbound sales.

Students follow one of the preset learning paths, complete a certification, or take one-off courses. In other words, they can design their own custom approach to learning.

Every HubSpot Academy course is free to take. And most offer substantial value, especially for marketers, salespeople, and customer success professionals.

HubSpot is a software company first and an education provider second.

But by providing free educational resources, the company establishes trust, and builds long-term relationships with students. Which can attract both new customers and loyal fans.

Mandarin Oriental’s Fans of M.O. Program

Mandarin Oriental’s membership program is much more than a standard loyalty offering. Instead of tier-based rewards, Fans of M.O. is a recognition program.

The program promises flexible privileges, personalized touches, and unexpected moments.

Essentially, the more guests stay at the hotel’s properties, the better the brand gets to know them. Guests can take advantage of wellness practitioners, chefs, and local experts tailored to their personal preferences.

Final Thoughts on Relationship Marketing

The brands winning today aren’t always the cheapest or the flashiest. They’re the ones customers actually want to do business with.

In other words, they’re the ones with the deepest and most genuine customer relationships.

When done well, relationship marketing doesn’t just attract loyal fans. It can transform how your business grows — helping you scale and compete more effectively in your market.