Reward your customers with warmth
For many businesses the Christmas period is a frantic whirl – completing orders, tying up major projects and ensuring that they have delivered on all promises – before closing the doors on another year and taking a well-earned break.
With the year-end coinciding with summer the break can be long by the time your customers or clients are back on board, so there is a lot of pressure to recognise them before you, or they, close for a long, hot summer. Sometimes you miss the boat. And even if you did manage to send your customers a thankyou and season’s greetings, did you manage to cut through all the other information that was sent to them?
If you want to make an impact and recognise and thank your customers, why not shift your gift-giving to during the year? After the overload of Christmas, this is something that many businesses don’t even think about, especially while they’re busy planning for the bright and shiny new year ahead. But recognising and being grateful for the business that your customers and clients bring to you reinforces your intention to provide them with great service and products, and will get your relationships moving along.
Recognising the business that your customers and clients bring to you reinforces your intention to provide them with great service and products.
So what do you give them? Well, the possibilities are endless, but making it something unique and personal, that they can use throughout the year to keep you top of mind, is the best way to go. But we’re not talking the generic ballpoint pen with your name on it here! To stand out you need to get creative, whether it’s with your own products or by putting a gift together that is both meaningful and useful to your clients.
For a service industry
If you’re in a service industry, why not source different items, put them in a pack and label them with your special message? Perhaps you can create the 2015–16 survival pack, or the 2015–16 prosperity pack, with several different items with cleverly labelled, funny messages on them.
If you’re a personal trainer, nutritionist or health professional, labelling healthy foods or cooking sauces and oils with your message and including printed recipe cards to use them, beautifully packaged, will be really useful for your clients. Using printable labels you can create professional gifts that nobody else can replicate.
For a retailer
If you’re a retailer, especially producing your own goods, you have a real opportunity to make your customers feel special and valued. Perhaps you have an email database that you regularly send information to? You can make use of this to invite your customers to come into your store and collect their special VIP gift of a sample basket of your 2015 range of products. By producing sample sizes you can cut down on costs and, by labelling in-house you can still give them a professional product.
If you don’t already have an email list, this is a great way to start one! Invite visitors to your store to sign up to your database so that they can receive their special 2015–16 gift.
Set the tone
Treat your clients and customers to a gift that reflects your brand, whether it’s personal, funny or practical. It’s a sure way to establish the tone of the years to come.
And you don’t have to limit it to your customers – don’t forget you have suppliers and staff too!
