For many businesses, the idea of sending gift cards to clients may seem a little excessive. However, little gifts and signs of your appreciation can be an excellent way to build strong relationships with your clients, improve your outreach, and stand out from your competition. Today, we’ll be looking at all the advantages and disadvantages of sending gift cards for clients.
Choosing whether gift cards are right for your business
Gift cards can be a wonderful way to engage on a more personal level with your customers. Gift cards give you the power of being “general yet specific” ie: “not everyone loves coffee, but everyone is sure to find something yummy at Starbucks”. Curious whether they’re the right tactic for you? Here are the pros and cons of including gift cards in your marketing strategy.
Pros of sending gift cards
Improve customer loyalty
Customer loyalty is a hugely important and often overlooked facet of customer relations and business longevity. According to Smallbizgenius, 65% of business tends to come from existing customers, so it’s important to keep your current customers feeling attached to your brand.
Gift cards are an excellent way to encourage more loyalty from your clients. Just as gifts from personal friends can strengthen bonds, by gifting your clients with personalized, thoughtful gifts, you’ll encourage your clients to feel a stronger bond with your business.
Improve top-of-mind awareness
Top-of-mind awareness refers to the phenomenon in which customers immediately associate a type of product with a specific brand. For instance, you may immediately think of a specific clothing brand like Levi’s when you think of jeans.
Sending gift cards to your clients will help to keep your business present and percolating in their minds, so the next time they need your product or service, your brand name will come to mind.
Create a more personal relationship with clients
It can be pretty tricky to build personal relationships with clients. Even if you work with people on a personal level, they will probably subconsciously think of you as part of a corporation. By purchasing gift cards for clients and sending them, you can begin to build a more personal, intimate relationship with your clients.
As Forbes notes, building personal relationships helps you to shed the overly corporate persona and interact with your clients as individuals rather than statistics.
Cons of sending gift cards
It can be an expensive investment
For some businesses, gift cards may work out to be too big an investment. If you’re just starting out, you may find that gift cards are just too expensive for your marketing budget.
However, if you plan your gift card budget carefully, and pick and choose which clients you send your gift cards to, even the smallest businesses can work gift cards into their budget.
Choosing a good gift card requires careful thought
Gift cards aren’t a marketing tactic you can do quickly. Choosing the right gift cards requires careful thought and time. If you have limited staff or time, sending out personalized gift cards may prove to be too time-consuming for you.
Nevertheless, while gift cards may seem like a painstaking process, finding other types of physical gifts will probably be harder. If you have the time and budget to invest in customer relations, this tactic can work wonders.
How to send a gift card that your clients will love
What type of gift card to send
Looking for the best gift cards for your clients? Try to think of gift card ideas that complement your business, or ideas that everyone will love. Starbucks can be a great option for companies on a budget. Everyone goes past a Starbucks at least a few times a week, so this gift card is bound to be appreciated.
Or, for businesses with a bigger budget, you could try a gift card to online retailers like Amazon or a local department store. And of course, gift cards to wine companies will always go down well!
When to send gift cards for clients
Choosing your timing is also an important thing to consider. More common times for sending gift cards are around the client’s birthday or Christmastime, when clients might be in the mood to make another purchase with your business.
You could also stand out, however, by sending a gift card for one of the many random holidays there are!
How to send your gift cards
You can either email gift cards or send them by post. While emailed gift cards can save time and money, we recommend opting for snail mail. Not only will this option be more personal and more memorable, but it will also put you miles above your competition. Wondering how to do this? The Birthday company will make it as easy as a couple of clicks. Show me how!
An average of 293.6 billion emails were sent every day in 2019. Avoid getting lost in the sea of emails and opt for a hard copy instead.
Summing up
Gift cards can be a wonderful investment for companies that want to create a stronger tie with their clients. They will help your clients to remember your business and give them a stronger sense of loyalty to you, resulting in a longer and more fruitful relationship.
Sources:
https://blog.flightmedia.co/buy-clients-starbucks
https://www.moneycrashers.com/company-gift-ideas-business-clients-employees-coworkers/
https://www.giftcards.com/gcgf/small-business-giftcards
https://www.moneycrashers.com/company-gift-ideas-business-clients-employees-coworkers/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/14/want-better-relationships-with-your-clients-swap-stories-instead-of-stats/
https://www.annexcloud.com/blog/why-gift-cards-make-spectacular-loyalty-program-rewards/
https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/customer-loyalty-statistics/
https://review42.com/resources/how-many-emails-are-sent-per-day/
Still not convinced?
Have a free sample of one of our business birthday cards mailed to you and see for yourself why you should use The Birthday Company for all your corporate birthday card needs.