Rich Pusateri
Content Marketing Manager
Managing experiences at scale and across teams is a huge challenge for companies—especially customer success teams who are responsible for a smooth implementation process and continued adoption of the product.
When a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 95% increase in profits, organizations must shift their focus to empowering customer teams with the infrastructure they need to create best-in-class customer experiences.
The best customer success teams focus on building strong relationships with their clients to create an authentic partnership experience.
11 client gifting use cases that build strong relationships
There are many opportunities throughout the customer lifecycle for strategic gifting to help you create a better experience. Explore the following relationship management scenarios and all the ways corporate gifting enhances the post-sale customer experience:
1. Welcoming new business
2. Asking for customer feedback with thoughtful incentives
3. Encouraging renewals
4. Re-engaging with customers who have gone dark
5. Awarding customers for usage or milestones with your product
6. Righting a wrong
7. Finding a new person of contact
8. Bringing your customer advisory board together
9. Incentivizing product adoption
10. Awarding customers for their personal and professional achievements
11. Driving referrals
{{cta}}
1. Welcoming new business
Whether it’s sending an onboarding swag kit when a new deal is signed, or sending a one-off item to your new point of contact, offering a ‘welcome gift’ is a great way to leave a positive first impression.
Our team celebrates the onboarding of every new customer with an item chosen by their Customer Success Manager (CSM), tailored to the main point of contact for the account.
Postal Pro Tip: Automate a swag pack to send to newly onboarded customers using Salesforce triggers. Configure SFDC so that as soon as “Onboarding Status” is moved to “Completed” in SFDC, Postal automatically sends out the swag pack to the new customer.
2. Asking for customer feedback with thoughtful incentives
Customer data is one of the most powerful marketing tools you can use to attract new business. It’s also incredibly difficult to get this feedback via surveys or interviews, even if your customers are raving fans of you and your product.
The number one rule in any type of communication with clients is to always add value—what are they getting out of it? The key is to create a compelling offer so that the customer feels like they are receiving something in return for their time and attention. In your outreach, incentivize customers to take a survey or leave a review by offering a thank you gift collection.
We recently included a call-to-action and link to a customer feedback survey (powered by our friends at UserEvidence) in our monthly customer e-newsletter. The incentive was sending the first 25 people who complete the survey a “sweet” gift collection, giving recipients the option to choose from a few local vendors who offer sweet items such as a jar of honey and brigadeiros chocolates.
The results speak for themselves as 80% of the people who opened the survey completed it. This was an easy and fun way for us to delight our customers and gather their important feedback.
3. Encouraging renewals
It costs five times as much to attract a customer than to keep an existing one. Customer renewals can make or break a business, and for customer-facing teams this can sometimes be stressful.
The standard “your contract is almost up” email won’t yield the results your business needs. Launch a renewal campaign that offers incentivizing reminders 4-6 months before a customer’s renewal date expires.
Post-renewal, sending a unique client “Thank You” gift is another way you can stay top of mind and maintain a positive relationship with your customers.
4. Re-engaging with customers who have gone dark
It’s not always easy getting in front of customers who have ghosted. You may have account info you need to share or you’re trying to get them back in the product to help hit the goals you’ve outlined together. Either way, you need to get in touch with them. Try to capture the attention of your client by presenting a personalized offer in hopes they will respond with gratitude.
We recently included a gift redemption link containing a collection of 6 unique items under $25 to re-engage customers who have not been contacted in several months. It resulted in 60% of the customers who received this email from their CSM booking a meeting on the spot.
Postal Pro Tip: Use calendar booking with your gifting to enable recipients to easily schedule a meeting with the sender, all in one step.
We also used custom form fields in the link to get some extra information from our customers when they redeemed their gift. We asked if there were any specific topics that should be covered in their next sync with their CSM.
This campaign had a low cost per touch of just over $15. By including gifts in the collection that stood out from the crowd—a tree planting kit, caramel corn, a succulent pack, and novelty socks—we were able to execute a high-impact, low-cost campaign to re-engage cold customers who were previously hard to reach.
5. Awarding customers for usage or milestones with your product
Don’t let your champion accounts go unnoticed. Nurture the relationship and encourage more of this type of interaction with your product with personalized customer experiences.
Empower your top clients with VIP gifts from small businesses in their area or gift them a virtual event to enjoy with their team internally. You could even create a usage-based program that lets your top users choose from a collection of items after hitting an in-app milestone or achievement. It’s important to support your customers throughout their journey and reward them for their progress.
6. Righting a wrong
We all make mistakes. Sometimes, a little “I’m sorry” treat is all it takes to ease the dissent that may have come from miscommunication or human error on your end. Let them know you are working on a solution and you appreciate their patience.
For example, “My apologies for not getting back to you on this sooner. I’ll have to discuss this with my team before I can give you a clear answer, in the meantime, enjoy this bottle of wine {insert gift link} and I’ll reach out with a fix soon.”
7. Finding a new person of contact
Offline marketing can be used as a relationship management tool as well. A Customer Success Manager’s worst nightmare is when their main point of contact goes out-of-office, changes roles, or goes on extended leave. All of a sudden, you have to create a new connection with one of their colleagues to ensure your account remains operational and successful.
Asking around with a message such as “As ___ is OOO, I’m looking for a new point of contact within your organization to ensure we keep the partnership moving forward. I’d really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction so we can continue to grow this partnership {insert gift link to desk plant}.”
8. Bringing your customer advisory board together
A customer advisory board, or CAB, can be one of the most valuable product marketing assets within an organization. This hand-selected group of customers guides the growth of your product.
By hosting this meeting in a virtual event format, you will give your CAB a reason to attend. Offer them an invitation including an event kit—an immersive experience. You could organize your next CAB meeting around a wine tasting experience to keep members engaged and wanting to attend every meeting going forward.
Postal Pro Tip: Host a cabernet wine tasting event following your CAB kickoff for everyone to socialize after the initial meeting. To celebrate significant milestones for the group such as the 6-month or 1 year mark, perhaps host a chocolate and wine pairing experience as a ‘Thank You’ for their dedication.
9. Incentivizing product adoption
Any veteran Customer Service Manager could likely share an experience where managing the onboarding of a new account was similar to herding cats. Corporate gifts can act as a lever to encourage usage and adoption in the onboarding phase. For instance, encourage new users to attend a Lunch & Learn training session by providing lunch to their workspace on your dime.
10. Awarding customers for their personal and professional achievements
There are many important moments worth celebrating, in your career and in your life. These moments include promotions, announcing funding, having a baby, or buying a house. Creating an experience for your customer based on an event in their personal or professional life establishes you as a strong partner, perhaps even a friend.
When it comes to appreciating your clients, don't forget to consider welcome back gifts. These thoughtful tokens of appreciation can make your clients return to work that much easier.
Sending boxes from Teak and Twine or other personalized gifts to clients creates a deeper connection and develops your relationship with them.
11. Driving referrals
Sourcing new business through your existing customer network can be an effective way to find clients who fit your ideal customer profile, or ICP. Offering your customers an incentive for referrals is a powerful inside sales strategy.
Create a referral program with custom client gifts to those who provide introductions and help you find new leads. For example, reward customers who connect you to a prospect with a cocktail kit cheers-ing to new relationships.
If you're looking for year-end client holiday gift ideas, be sure to explore our list of client holiday gifts for a wide range of thoughtful options that can help you express gratitude and leave a lasting impression.
Building and managing relationships at scale shouldn’t be a headache
With customer experience as the main focus for many organizations, client gifting and personalized touch points can be an easy and effective program to build and scale. Relationship management doesn’t have to be manual and time-consuming when you have the right tools in place.
Offline Engagement solutions are changing the way revenue teams are delivering these memorable moments. For customer-facing teams, they provide a centralized platform to manage experiences such as events, client gift boxes, personalized incentives, and even handwritten notecards to create unique connections with customers.
For more on the topic, discover our blog where we explore the significance of client relationship skills and how mastering them can lead to better business outcomes and satisfied customers.
Explore all the ways you can create unforgettable experiences for your customers with this technology. Request a demo of Postal today to see how easy it is to implement a customer gifting strategy without managing spreadsheets, sourcing vendors, or collecting addresses.
