I came acrossthis recent pieceabout Birkin (needs a WSJ subscription). You know the one with the nice bags. I won’t spoil it completely for you but you have to spend around $100K with them before you can get on the waitlist for a $10K bag. Wait, what?

Yeah really. But the lesson here is not about price signaling quality blah blah. It got me thinking about about helping a new customer appreciate what the company is really about before getting them to “what they want”. That’s genius. It’s the opposite of the design philosophy of getting the user to what they came for and forgetting about everything else.

Let’s say you are an up and coming sports streaming service. Sure you managed to convince the NFL to let you stream live games, that’s cool but others can do that too. Just like a nice bag that you can get from other brands. What you need is to think about everything that comes before, after, and during the NFL games that sets you apart. Maybe its the way you show the scores or player stats, maybe you have instant replay in 8K, or maybe you have the NBA playoffs also. Whatever it is, make that list and build awareness for those items and forget about the NFL games for a bit.

I’m guessing that my marketing friends reading this are experiencing an allergic reaction to this but digital onboarding has to evolve. You know the tours that you painstakingly designed that force users to click four times before they can get going? No one likes that; please stop. Also, don’t abdicate your onboarding responsibility to an email sequence. Email can at best be in the supporting cast when you are trying to build a connection with a new customer. Make that list but also figure out which of those items I am unfamiliar with. Put that together with nice creatives and you have a great roadmap for a new customer relationship.