Increasing Customer Loyalty One Cup of Coffee at a Time
The Motley Fool is a multimedia financial services company that provides peer-to-peer sharing of information about building wealth, based on the strategies of founding brothers Tom and David Gardner. They sell no physical products, only advice, and much of it through their exclusive newsletter service, Motley Fool ONE.

The only thing that rivals David’s devotion to his investments and The Fool’s members, is his love for coffee. So when he found his dream mug, we came up with a strategy to get him closer to the most important people in his life. Share the mug. Including and especially with ONE subscribers.

The mug, no ordinary ceramic coffee cup, looked more like it was suited for evening beverages. Sleek, glass, and most worryingly, fragile. To ensure it arrived in one piece, we created and constructed tight, specialty packaging to hold the mug carefully in place during shipment. And we threw in a Starbucks gift card to cover the cost of their first purchase. The same gift card, incidentally, that all Fool employees receive on their first day of work.

The mug and card made ONE subscribers feel intimately connected to The Fool, and contributed to increased brand loyalty during the next membership year. In fact their reaction went viral, with many members tweeting pics of their new mugs and espousing their love for The Fool.