Puppy Love - New Milford Dog Park Opens

Puppy Love – Community INteraction


My family has always been invovled in the communities in which we live.  From running for office to our churches to local civic groups.   Since moving to New Milford, CT, I have tried to emerse myself in the community.  One of the projects I have been deeply involved in bring a fenced dog park to the town. 

We were really fortunate to have Kimberly-Clark donate the land for the park next to their plant. For the past year, we have been selling t-shirts, magnets, skate-a-thons, movie nights, trivia nights and “tag” sales (yard sales everywhere else in the country) and a host of other fundraising activities to try to fund a fence around the 1 acre of land. In the spring, we had a bittersweet announcement a former principal of one of the schools, Fran Terry and her family would be our angels and donate the balance of the fence in memory of her husband, Norman Terry. WOW!

On Saturday, August 28th… Over 50 New Milford four legged residents and their humans dedicated and opened “Candlewoof Park at Kimberly-Clark”. It has been the “woof” of the town. Now as a Board Member and a citizen, I have been bringing my dogs to the park to play with existing and new friends. I have to admit getting choked up last week after work when stopping by to give the pups a quick romp. There had to be 25 dogs and their owners. Bark about multi-cultural diversity! There was every type of breed from a toy poodle that had a thing for my Golden to a Mastiff. Their owners were smiling and INgaged in their dogs as well as meeting each other.

Social community exists online and off. Tips and stories were being shared and commented on as the dogs did their own version of social networking… I shed a happy tear. All the hard work was worth it. Hopefully, being part of this wonderful venture has helped me get closer to the quote:

“My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am. “

Social Measurement

On the bell curve of social strategy adoption, there are the early adopters and those that want so much proof of a roadmap of success they will forever being playing catch up to their competitors. If you are one of these companies, I ask you to answer this question. Do you know what every customer is worth to you over their lifespan? I am guessing the answer is no. Even with customer loyalty programs and CRM systems, I am positive most rank and file employees do not know this number. 
In a case study in "I Love You More Than My Dog" by Jeanne Bliss, she highlights Zane's Cycles. They know that each customer is worth $12,500 over their life span of purchasing bicycles and associated products. (More in our case given my husband and I are avid cyclists) As a result, they are rabid about service. Ms. Bliss isn't the only one to notice this as Zane's is also a featured business in American Express' OPEN Forum. This is a community targeted at the small business owners with OPEN cards to interact with each other to share best practices. Getting noticed and having the over the top success is a wonderful achievement for Zane's. Let's be honest, they are located in Connecticut. Our winters are as conducive to year round cycling as say a shop in Texas.

If you want to know if a community is going to drive and product ROI, understand the worth of a community member (insert happy customer or valued customer). Also, by understanding what a well educated customer worth to you walking in the door, you can understand the importance of a welcoming and nurturing first impression is to your business. Your first impression is often what they see on the web. Think about how many times you "Google or Bing" a business prior to purchasing an item or walking in the door. A community for your customers discussing your business is a wonderful way to welcome existing and new customers looking to verify prior to trusting you with their hard earned capital.

Let's do some math. I am going to use some base line numbers. A new community is a first year investment of $75,000 - $100,000. An average customer spends $600 a year with you. This is $50 a month. (I drop that easily at a local nail salon.) This means a social community must produce an extra 175 customers to be profitable a year. How is that for an ROI number?


If you are a large enterprise, that is an easy number to commit to achieving. Say your average customer is worth $5,000 a year. That is only 20-25 customers you have to secure. A more realistic target is adding 100 more customers. That is ½ million in gross profit. Have I got your attention yet?


More math (sorry), add this to the number of community members that will increase their annual spend with you or not be as swayed by the competition because of the relationship and value you are expressing to them. Let's get scary… So your biggest competition deploys a robust uber friendly community and lures 200 customers away from you. What is that worth?


If you are looking for ROI, seek no further than the worth of one customer and divide it by the cost of deployment. It really is peanuts. I will ask it again... Do you know what every customer is worth to you over their lifespan?