Every so often I shoot down on Amazon.com and notice the homepage has changed. Instead of seeing my familiar browsing story, the latest Kindle, or some other carefully tailored offers, I find a letter from Jeff Bezos.

A few months past, Jeff wrote to me on a scroll and announced, "Love Muggles," in which atomic number 2 explained that the Molest Putter series would today beryllium free to me for unloose in the Kindle Owner's Circulating library.

On today's visit, Jeff's informatory me that Amazon Prime is celebrating its 7th anniversary and what a success the program has been. And atomic number 2's rightish. It's possibly the Sunday-go-to-meeting $79 per year I've ever spent. Free ii-day Shipping on nearly everything I buy, instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows, and the ability to take over books connected my Kindle.

But why is Jeff always speech Maine? What's with all these personal appeals from the creator of the world's largest online retailer?

Here's wherefore:

In my work with online community owners, I oftentimes talk about the three Cs of customer retention: smug, community, and grapheme. Information technology's the thirdly that often confuses people. What does character have to do with customer retention or building brand loyalty?

Character is really some positioning. In their classical book, Positioning, Al Reis and Jack up Trout incontestible that most people will only remember a few things well-nig you or your company. The takeaway is that you can either decide what those hardly a describe things will be, operating theatre let the commercialise decide.

In other words, you need to decide the most earthshaking things you want people to associate with you and actively work to ensure that those are the things that immediately spring to beware when most people think over about you. And that's on the nose what Bezos is doing.

Often, when I'm talk all but eccentric, I'm speaking to people with unbelievably personality-driven brands, helping them interpose more consistency and congruency into their communication with customers and prospective customers and ultimately helping step-up mark loyalty. But even at well-famous brands wish Amazon, or the NY Multiplication, or Instantaneous Company, it's no disparate.

Conveyance a brand's character or positioning is still many important. As a intellection experiment, imagine that equally a longtime reader of the Wall Street Diary, you picked up nowadays's copy to find the front Page riddled with stories of the fashionable celebrity scandal, the cast of The Jersey Shore, and the summer's hottest weight-loss supplements. Would new customers start reaching for The Journal? They probably would.

But what about you, someone who reads The Journal for a very specific reason? You, who has learned to wait a certain character and has come to colligate yourself with the mar? You would probably exist running for the hills.

More like The Diary stays true to its steel and to its existing guest foundation, Bezos is helping to build a set of expectations about Amazon aside engaging me through with fictitious character. He's using a mechanism that allows him to communicate almost personally with millions of users, to constantly drill home the points that he wants them to ever have at the top of their minds about Amazon.

Information technology's one form of authentic communicating, and it's something that we can all learn much from.

—Noah Fleming is a strategic marketing consultant specializing in businessperson development, residential area building, client loyalty, and client retentiveness. Since 2005 he has worked with finished 500 entrepreneurs and business owners; play along him along Twitter @noahfleming.

[Mental image: Flickr user John Ross Pollachius pollachius]