What Thailand taught me about marketing 🇹🇭

10/10 retention tactics

Tom Orbach

May 24, 2024

Thailand was awesome. 🥥

But as a marketing nerd, my biggest takeaway wasn’t the pad thai or elephant feeding... it was the genius retention tactics weaved into Thai culture. 🇹🇭

Two traditions that I found particularly interesting:

🤝 Serving with both hands
👞 Leaving shoes at the door

Let’s see how we can use these tactics online to boost retention. Let’s dive in!

🤝 Serve with both hands

In Thailand, you’ll always be given things – money, food, gifts – with two hands. It’s mindblowing. Full focus always. 100% respect.

How to show customers the same level of love:

(1) 🎩 White glove EVERYTHING:

Real humans must sign all emails (especially automatic ones)
End all emails with a question to start a chat
Send personal intro videos
Offer live Zoom calls

Example: Superhuman assigns each new user a dedicated onboarding specialist who conducts a live video call (with each new user!) to tailor the app to their specific needs.

(2) 🍰 Help customers skill-up:

Create free courses/webinars (not only about your product)
Give certifications for users to prove their expertise
Build interactive challenges (e.g. Capture The Flag)

Example: Canva’s Design School empowers users to develop their design skills and achieve their creative goals (…and become better at using Canva).

(3) 🌪️ Give ultra-proactive support:

Monitor feature usage to provide help
Proactively offer resources to help customers maximize their use of your product
Add them on LinkedIn even if they don’t need your help

These tactics require a lot of manual work—but their effect on retention is huge.

👞 Leave your shoes at the door

Entering a Thai home, store, or spa often requires removing your shoes.

It’s like saying, “Everything is clean inside, so you MUST be clean too.”

This shoe policy instantly creates a sense of a community with ‘house rules’ that visitors must follow. Becoming part of the community suddenly feels earned — making us want it more.

How to give your customers the same house rules FOMO:

(1) 🐕 Dogfooding to the max:

Apply your internal company culture rules into the product UX.

Example: Basecamp, a project management software, is famously anti-meeting. This house rule is reflected in their product - which lacks any meeting features.

(2) 🦜 Coin new terms:

Create insider lingo. Prove you’re the category king by inventing a new language. It makes people want to be ‘in the know’ and understand those terms — to feel part of the community. It’s like a secret handshake!

Example: TimeOS, a productivity software, introduced terms like ‘Time Developers’ and ‘Hacking Time’ to redefine how people think about time management.

(3) 🕯️ Include playful easter eggs and rituals:

Create weird rituals that users “must” participate in to use your product. This could involve anything from quirky onboarding challenges to secret features that unlock after specific actions.

Example: Duolingo uses daily streaks, levels, and XP points. These hacks create a sense of community among users who share their progress in the leaderboards.