Thank You Gifts for Clients

If you have found yourself stumbling across this page, it means that you are in the same dilemma as many other Americans across the United States. Whether you are working in an office, a realtor, a wedding photographer, or really any industry where client gifting is a part of your culture, you have often asked yourself, do I REALLY need to be spending my money trying to acquire, keep and build client relationships.

Just like I mentioned, often client gifting is built into the culture of your business nationwide. For example, a real estate agent is likely to give a closing gift to their client as a way of saying thank you for your business and support. Some companies may use gifts to try an onboard clients. This is often where you are going to start seeing the classic fruit baskets sent to a generic office with a business card attached. In this article I want to talk about three important things to consider when you are thinking about client gifting.

1. Do I NEED to be sending a client gift?

2. Are the client gifts I am sending giving my best ROI (Return on Investment)

3. What specific steps can I take to make sure my client gifts are a great representation of my brand and will be appreciate by clients?

Upscale Client Gifts

1. Do I NEED to be sending a client gift?

This is the first question you should be asking yourself when considering the investment that is sending out client gifts. To put it bluntly, many fields of work have the gift giving culture built into their system. Careers such as realtors, wedding planners, corporate event planners, construction and even interior designers have this culture ingrained into them where, yes you need to be sending out client gifts in order to maintain the base of your practice. If you are questioning whether you in your specific field needs to be sending out client gifts, look at your competitors and colleagues. Are THEY sending out client gifts? If so, it’s a no brainer. You MUST send out a client gift that will wow your constituents, or you will simply get lost very easily in the crowd of your competition.

Now, if you are in a field where gifting necessarily isn’t a huge part of your culture, it’s time to think about what your goal with potentially sending out client gifts includes. The clear and most obvious goal for sending out client gifts consists of two things.

1. You want to thank a client for working with you.
2. You want to onboard a client or make a good impression on clients that currently use your services.

With either of these scenarios it is crucial to think about the relationship with the client. If this is a client you are hoping to keep a long-lasting relationship with (i.e. an Investment Banker situation) it is never a bad idea to give them a gift to how them that you care about their patronage to your business. 

When trying to onboard clients, gifting is a great idea for going the extra mile with your gifts. The best way to implement client onboarding gifting is to learn what the client likes before sending the gift. Really pay attention in the first few meetings with them for things that they like, need etc. For example, if they mentioned that they have a hard time trying to find pens while taking notes, you could send them a gift that includes a pen as part of it.

As a general rule of thumb, client gifts can be a great way of investing in the relationships of your clients. Maybe it's old school, but client relationships need to be nourished in order to grow and have the most potential.  

2. Are the Client Gifts I am Sending Giving Me by Best ROI (Return on Investment)?

As much as you would love to be the kind and thoughtful person who sends out gifts “just because”, in business every dollar you spend needs to be giving you the ROI equivalent to the gift you sent. Let’s share an example about a wealth management company on the east coast who used Shadow Breeze for their corporate gifting needs.

• Johnsons Wealth Management company wanted to send a thank you gift for some of their clients to show they were “thinking of them” during the Covid-19 outbreak of 2020. They decided to send out 127 gifts to some of their top clients. These gifts cost about $55 dollars apiece after discounts and included free shipping and a tumbler engraved with their logo. They obviously were quite hesitant about the almost $7,000 price tag, who wouldn’t be. They had quite a good year, had the budget and they decided to follow through with their client gifting. Within one week of the gifts arriving at each individuals home, they had already earned over $22,000 dollars back in investments from those top clients. In addition to this they had onboarded 4 new clients who had been referred to them by one of the clients who had received the “thinking of you” gifts. Their ROI (Return on Investment) was amazing! They have since decided to make client gifting a part of their regular routine and are seeing great benefit from the time and effort it takes into making the perfect client gifting experience.

**Name has been changed for confidentiality and privacy

As you can tell from the story above client gifting can be VERY successful if applied properly. This wealth management company has 1,000’s of clients yet decided to only send 127 gifts to some of their top clients. Client gifting doesn’t mean you have to give everybody something, but you can strategically think about who you send your client gifts to.

If you are wanting to send something to every client but don’t necessarily have the budget to do large and fancy gifts for every client (or even employee) consider scaling gifts. Maybe depending on the number of years using your service, amount of money they have spent with your company or other various factors could go into giving the perfect gifts. When doing this it is crucial to make sure that the gifts you are sending out go to every client. It goes without saying, that if you forget one client, and they hear about the gifts from other acquaintances, they may be upset that they to did not receive a gift.

 As a general rule of thumb for scaling gifts we recommend doing 3 layers with the base of the gift remaining the same.

Example:

      Layer1: This gift would include a personalized water tumbler and a bag of gourmet popcorn.

      Layer2: This gift would include the personalized water tumbler, a bag of gourmet popcorn, a bag of nuts and a small scented candle.

      Layer3: This gift would include a personalized water tumbler, 3 bags of gourmet popcorn, a bag of nuts, a small scented candle, a wooden pen and a leather journal engraved with their name on it. 

When sending out gifts, you must be thinking of the ROI. Therefore, maybe not every client will be receiving a gift from you. For example, if you are a wedding photographer, maybe you only send gifts to couples who have booked your full-service package (i.e. Bridals, First Look, Full Wedding Day + Reception). Or maybe you send a larger gift for full service couples and a smaller gift box to couples who do 3-hour shoot. 

The ROI for a wedding photographer (for example) could be anything from word-of-mouth referrals from clients who loved your gift, having your couples share in their Instagram stories or even leaving a positive google review about your work. If you do decided to send out a client gift, it is crucial that the gift represents your brand. 

3. What specific steps can I take to make sure my client gifts are a great representation of my brand and will be appreciate by clients?

PERSONALIZATION, PERSONALIZATION, PERSONALIZATION! I can't emphasize this enough. Without the gift fitting your personal brand or style, there is almost no reason to be sending a gift. Let's use the interior designer example. If your interior design style is light-airy-and has homey feels to it, sending a black moody gift box does not make sense. The ideal with your branding is that once they see or open the gift, they immediately know who it's from without having to even read the card. I know that this is hard, but if you really want your gifts to stand out from the competition, this is key to keeping, and onboarding new clients.

There are numerous ways that you can brand a gift that will represent your company or organization. It could be as simple as the color scheme of the gift, gift tag on the packaging, included items in the gift or even the packaging itself. The one thing that we always recommend when sending a corporate gift is some sort of personalization with the gift. 

Below I have listed some items that Shadow Breeze can brand that can be included in your corporate gifting:

Cutting boards, water tumblers, margarita glasses, compact mirrors,  coffee tumblers, leather journals, champagne flutes, coasters, cocktail glasses, wine tumblers, pine crates, glass diamond keepsakes, wine glasses, sealed shipping boxes (that you have to open with a pry-bar), stemless wine glasses, cocktail shakers, pina colada glasses, glass food bowls and much more. 

With any of the items listed above (and many other potential items) you can add your brand/logo or an individuals name. To make it even better, most of these items can be engraved/personalized for FREE. 

It really is as simple as adding a logo or a name to a gift to make the gift values 10x over. It also will get your company and organization in front of them in the most subtle ways. For example, if you have a branded cup, everytime they go to drink out of the cup, your brand is being reinforced in their mind (consciously or subconsciously). 

Best 2020 Client Gifts

Now that we have talked about whether you need client gifts and the best way to get ROI and brand out in front of others, i'm going to show you some of my favorite client gifts that are perfect for 2020.

Gifts for Employees

No matter what gift you decide to get your employees, co-workers or clients, it is crucial that you take the time and put thought into it in order to get the best ROI. If you are looking for help creating a gift, planning out a client gift or more, reach out to one of our gifting experts at info@shadowbreeze.com and they can help you plan the best gift that will give you a great ROI.