This holiday season, let Ideation Creative Brand Management be your partner in crafting unforgettable gifts that truly resonate with your customers. With our expertise in branded merch, packaging and distribution, we'll help you design meaningful gifts that reflect your brand's values and leave a lasting impression.
Over the 25 years of doing holiday gifts for clients of all sizes I have developed a list of tips that will help you make the most of your customer holiday gift planning.
Tip 1: Think About Who to Gift To
This may seem obvious but just because someone is a customer doesn’t mean they should get a holiday gift from you. Things to consider:
- Do you only send a gift to the main decision maker?
- Do you give a gift to everyone in the company that your company works with?
- Is there a spending threshold to receive the holiday gift?
This first tip is going to lay the groundwork for the rest of the tips and how you use them for your holiday gifting.
Tip 2: Figure Out a Budget
You clearly need to identify a budget to help narrow down the gift selection process. It will help you determine the spending threshold for what clients receive gifts. This part is very important as well because you may end up with a list of 500 customers you want to send a gift to but with a budget of $1,000 that may not be enough to get a meaningful gift out. The budget will also determine the distribution.
Tip 3: Think About Distribution
I have had many different experiences with distribution of holiday gifts. That is why you work with experts like Ideation to help you think of options you maybe hadn’t thought of.
Common distribution options:
- Sales rep hand delivers to their accounts (this can be harder if a sales rep covers a large geographic area)
- Ship to each customer individually (this can happen through your gifting company, like Ideation, or can be handled internally)
- Hold an event where people can pick up their gifts (much more common in a B2C situation but still can be done in B2C as well)
The most common problem I see with having sales reps hand deliver gifts is that it is very time-consuming, and you need to have a longer runway to get them distributed. It does allow for nicer packaging, although that needs to be considered as well if they are going to have a lot of them stacked in their vehicle. It saves costs for shipping, but the cost is your sales peoples time. The most significant benefit of having your sales reps deliver is the in-person engagement that can happen with those interactions.
Individual drop shipping has become the most common client gift distribution method because your company has more control over timing of delivery and making sure they get to the correct place. While it may be more expensive to do, it is something that should be part of the budget.
If you do an event where you have people pick up their gifts the issue can be that you only get the gift to the people that can attend and during the busy holiday season that number can be limited. The major benefit is cost savings over other ways of distributing.
Tip 4: Consider Office Gifts
Sometimes when you have clients that have a lot of contacts at one company the answer can be an office gift instead of individual gifts. These can range from the more traditional food tower to custom curated branded gift packages. We have made some great office gifts that included a handful of branded items that had multiples of each item so a lot of people could enjoy the gifts and could remember who it was from. The important thing about office gifts is making sure that there is something with your brand that stays behind with the gift. Nothing worse than sending a $100 gift basket and the only thing that said who it was from is the note on the outside and that got tossed by the receiving person before they put it on the lunchroom table for everyone.
Tip 5: Make It Feel Like a Gift
This is a common problem I have experienced, the branding on a holiday gift to clients, or employees have branding like it is an advertisement. This is one of those situations where the branding should be minimized so they know where it is from, but it doesn’t feel like an advertisement. We all know it is an advertisement at the same time as it is a gift but with some thoughtfulness it can feel more like a gift.
Tip 6: Consider Packaging
Sometimes the perceived value of the gift can be higher just from some attention to detail on the packaging. Think about a nice pen that is given to someone by itself vs. one that is in a simple box that opens to reveal the pen. Such a nice presentation and feels so much more like a gift. If you don’t have the budget for a gift box, what about a ribbon around the item or adding a simple organza bag with the note hanging off it? These additions do not add a lot of cost but can be a huge difference in the perception of the gift. At Ideation we have an entire warehouse team that can help do the kitting and packaging or we can help you think of the ideas and even get you the materials you need if you want to put on your Santa hat and do it internally as a team building activity. Either way, Ideation can help with any kind of packaging.
Tip 7: Consider Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years
The age-old question is when the best time is to distribute holiday gifts. There can be a case made for each of these holidays so here are some things to consider.
Thanksgiving – An easy connection between gratitude for their business and the holiday. Most people celebrate some version of this holiday but also keeps messaging more generic because it is not a religious holiday. The bonus is that there are fewer gifts being distributed during Thanksgiving timeframe, so you have less clutter for your gift.
Christmas – The most traditional time for customer gifting but it is also the time with the greatest amount of clutter. Many companies are sending gifts during Christmas that your gift can get lost in the shuffle. There are also a lot of people taking time off during that time of year so you may miss the recipient. You also may need to be mindful of some people not celebrating Christmas. I love the message Happy Whatever You Celebrate to cover a myriad of occasions but still giving well wishes.
New Years – This is one of my favorite times to give gifts because it can be a message about appreciating their business for the previous year and looking forward to a successful partnership in the coming year. There is less clutter, fewer people on vacation and you get away from potentially offensive holiday messaging. The downfall is that most companies want to do something during the more traditional holidays, so it is often tough to convince leadership to go this route but certainly something to consider.
There is no right or wrong way to do customer gifts because there are so many factors to consider but with the right partner it can take some of the guesswork out of logistics and options that will work best. Let us know if we can help you get creative with your client gifts this year.
