Talk to marriage experts and they’ll tell you one of the secrets of a long-lasting relationship is having a weekly date night with your mate. It’s a great time to focus on each other like you did in the glory days of new love. I understand the thought behind this practice and it’s well-intentioned. I happen to think that you shouldn’t save all that emotional connection for one night of the week. I think a date life is much more significant in building bonds of trust and intimacy than a date night. This applies to brands as well.

Are you hopelessly devoted to your customers, or do you just think you are? This has nothing to do with the flowers and chocolate one-day burst of affection that happens on Valentine’s Day, but everything to do with a long-term, intentional interdisciplinary plan (with top management support) to show love and loyalty to your customers all year long.

Customers know if your affection is brief and fleeting or if you’re in it for the long run. The best brands know that deep and meaningful customer relationships are built on trust and one considerate action after another. They value and express their gratitude to their customers in unique and thoughtful ways, just like you would towards your true friends, mates or family members.

Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Samsung, Sony, Google, Amazon.com, FitBit, Facebook and Wal-Mart — what do you think these brands have in common? Accenture Interactive recently named these companies the Most Loved Brands of 2016 in the U.S. No doubt, you’ve interacted with many of these brands; they’re part of most Americans daily lives. But Accenture discovered something else that these brands share in common. It developed a LOVE Index and saw that the above-mentioned brands gained high marks on these five FRESH dimensions:

  • Fun: Holds people’s attention in an entertaining way
  • Relevant: Makes it easy to find clear and customized information
  • Engaging: Identifies with people’s needs and adapts to their expectations
  • Social: Helps people to connect with each other
  • Helpful: Is efficient, easy and adapts over time.

It’s a good lens to view your brand through! This LOVE Index reminds me of the work Kevin Roberts pioneered years ago with his research and development of LOVEMARKS. “A LOVEMARK is a charismatic brand that people can’t live without,” Roberts shared. “The fact is that LOVEMARKS are created and owned by the people who love them. Where you have a customer in love, you have a LOVEMARK,” Roberts declares. Brands that continually woo and wow new and existing customers exceed expectations and solve a problem for their customers.

Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen’s important axiom: “Your product (and I say, your brand!) has a job to do for your customer” has guided my creative branding and merchandising work with clients for years. He highlights the important lesson that beloved brands serve their customers by treating them as friends and doing amazingly useful things for them.

Recently, two brands that I love started campaigns to tell their customers just how much they appreciate them — and both had nothing to do with a one-day event but everything to do with their internal brand ethos of truly making their customers top priority in all they do. I know because I’ve experienced their customer attentiveness firsthand.

Nordstrom launched a campaign last fall letting its customers know just how much it appreciates their business by telling an evocative story using several dozen vignettes from real customers. Each customer featured a product they love from Nordstrom in the retailer’s integrated multimedia event. The brilliant brand leaders at Nordstrom dedicated a main holiday catalog cover to this as well as digital and in-store space, and even created a video showcasing employees singing “Thank you for being a FRIEND” to all the brand’s beloved customers.

SmartPak, the Zappos of the equestrian industry (and a brand I’ve had the honor of working with) also created a campaign this past fall, not with customers but with employees, as a giant “thank you” note of appreciation to its customers. Each department of the business developed a creative blog that expressed how they take care of SmartPak’s customers’ needs each and every day and how they live out the company’s brand mission of celebrating healthier horses and happier riders. Take a peek at how each department connected the best of what they had to give with what their customers’ needs. Sara Florin, SmartPak’s vice president of creative, shared the campaign with me. It was a thoughtful, total brand-encompassing touchpoint that lets the SmartPak tribe of equestrians know that their beloved brand is caring for their needs day in and day out.

Inspired by these two exemplary brands, why not compose your own love letter to your customers in your own brand-centric fashion? Invest more deeply in long-term relationships that keep things FRESH and keep your customers feeling beloved for a long date life! Your customers will LOVE you for it!

Andrea Syverson is the founder and president of creative branding and merchandising consultancy IER Partners. Andrea has more than 20 years experience providing clients with innovative approaches to branding, product development and creative messaging. She’s the author of two books about brand building and creating customer-centric products that enhance brands: ThinkAbout: 77 Creative Prompts for Innovators, and BrandAbout: A Seriously Playful Approach for Passionate Brand-Builders and Merchants.