42:3 Giving gifts to your clients

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Welcome to episode number three of the Holiday Season. My name is Lee and you are listening to Trailblazer.FM. In this episode, we talk with our agencies on how they give gifts to their clients and what that means to them. There are some great ideas on what you could be doing for your clients this holiday season. So sit back, relax and enjoy.

Ali Green:
We always go through our list of clients. And honestly we have about probably pushing 200 clients, so 150 managed clients. So we go through and we pick out some of our largest clients, the ones that we’ve engaged with at a higher capacity over the past year, and they all get gifts.

Ali Green:
So every year we do spend a little bit of time to go through our client list and pick out the ones that have been most active this year. This year, and we’ve been doing this I want to say for two to three years now, we sent them all a holiday cake. We have a company here called Piece of Cake, they do make it a piece of cake, to send out gifts and we literally send them just a spreadsheet of all of the addresses. And we actually mail them some branded greeting cards that we create and they go ahead and put those greeting cards in every box, along with the coffee… It’s like a coffee bunk cake.

Ali Green:
And it goes to all of our largest clients. This year we had about 45 of them go out, and they handle shipping and packaging and addressing, and it just makes it easy. Now this year we did change it up, we typically do it for Christmas, this year we decided to send Thanksgiving cakes. And it makes more sense from our perspective that we’re thankful for our clients, we’re thankful for the work that we do. And we’re able to put a message in those boxes that’s more about being thankful. And it just feels like the right fit.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I guess there’s two real positives here. Number one, you get to try the cake if you wish, because you’re-

Ali Green:
[Crosstalk 00:02:23].

Lee Matthew Jackson:
… Ordering it and you need to make sure they pass. But also you get to send the cake at Thanksgiving, which means it’s more likely that team members are going to get a piece or a slice because-

Ali Green:
Bingo.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
They will be back after Thanksgiving, whereas Christmas, they may be off for a week so one person gets to enjoy the whole cake.

Ali Green:
Bingo. Plus they get to share it with their family for Thanksgiving, which is the feast of holidays anyway.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Absolutely.

Ali Green:
So it just one less thing they have to think about for preparing a large meal.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That was Ali Green from GreenMellen agency, sharing how they ensure they make the act of giving gifts, essentially as simple as possible. They’re able to get their database together and hand it over to somebody who can look after everything. Now, Chantal here changes things up. She’s looking at making something really personalised for her clients.

Chantal:
So yeah, historically I had quite a different sort of take on this really because in the bad old days, before I went online and went international in my offering, I had local clients. I used to try and get them something. So I get them something like charger thingy majiggy or power pack thingy, some sort of tech thingy majiggy, I would send them off.

Chantal:
But now of course, all of my clients, or most of my clients are internationals though, it’s not so easy from South Africa to send a little thingy majiggy. So, I think what I’m actually doing this year is I’m going to make use of my Amazon KDP account and I’m going to actually design something, some sort of journal or some sort of book, and I’m going to order it and have it delivered to my clients where they are in the world.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That is such a cool idea. And for those of you who don’t know what an Amazon KDP account is, neither do I, Chantal.

Chantal:
So it’s pretty simple. It’s like where you go and publish books that basically Amazon prints and distributes for you and you make a com. So it’s just another sort of passive income thing. I mean there’s people making gazillions of oodles of dollars, selling everything from colouring books to puzzle books, to empty journals. But yeah, it’s a pretty cool thing because you can make use of that Amazon ability to deliver anyway and create something and design something, put it up yourself, it’s all free. And then you just order it and send it to your client.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s amazing. I will go check that out and put links in the share notes for that one. And I presume that was an exact number as well of billions of oodles and [inaudible 00:04:55]

Chantal:
Billions and gajillions, yes.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Nicole shared with me how she makes gift giving fun, reflective of her personality and personal to the client she’s giving to.

Nicole:
I completely love sending gifts to my clients. And to be honest, I don’t even wait till Christmas. It’s so important. And that people feel appreciate it. So just yesterday, someone did their LinkedIn profile and as a reward, we’d agreed that I would send him this cube, but you can use it to time yourself. So when you need to do something you don’t want to do, you just put in that cube for 20 minutes and you just do it. But for Christmas I have, in the past, sent some event calendars because in Germany we’ve celebrated the Advent seasons. And I think Lee, I might have even sent you one haven’t I with Lego? I hope I have. I think I have.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
You have. Yes.

Nicole:
So I tried for it to be something fun for some of my female clients. I’ve sent them a Christmas tree where they can put on bobbles and star lights from Bloom & Wild, because I love that company.

Nicole:
So that’s the other thing I really try and do. I try to use smaller companies that I can. This year I’m feeling absolutely privileged because one of my Wunderstars, she actually has a subscription box service, so I’m using that for some of my clients. So where I can, I buy for my Wunderstars. And other than that, I always try and do something thoughtful, something which connects really with present to them and to what Wunderstars is about. So it’s not always that easy, but I think gifts for clients should be fun. You shouldn’t make it this really hard exercise. So I’d encourage you just to think of something which inspires you and just to go for it because you can’t really go wrong, I hope.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well you can’t. And just to reiterate, as a client of yours last year, I was absolutely overjoyed to receive that Lego Advent calendar. Me and my daughter built every single item. Some of them were quite complicated as well. And then at the end of Christmas, I was able to gift all of them to my daughter’s Lego collection. So that really stuck with us and it meant a lot. Emily shares the unique way that GoWP will send branded gifts to their clients.

Emily:
And I think we do it pretty well. So of course we send t-shirts out and that’s not just for clients. We basically offer anyone who wants one, a t-shirt, when they join our community, subscribe to our newsletter, that sort of thing. It’s in the PS of the welcome email. Hey, you want a t-shirt? Let me know your size and your shipping address and I’ll get you one. So that’s one thing, and I love doing that because I love hearing back from folks, be like, “Hey Emily, thanks so much. Yeah, I’d love one. Get me a large send it here”, and I get it sent off and that’s great. But apart from that, we do send gifts to clients too, that are a little bit more personalised and more thought goes into them. So past examples would be when a client of ours hits anniversary with us, one year, two years, three years, whatever it might be, we will kind of think about what we know about them, how we know them. And we do get know our clients pretty well, for the most part.

Emily:
So we know, for example, one client has a camping theme and outdoorsy and that sort of thing. So we sent them a wool, really nice wool camping blanket with their logo on a leather patch sewn on. Some camping mugs that had leather stamped with their names, every name of each member, they each got a mug. So things like that, that we think that they’ll appreciate that we thought about them. And it’s not just a GoWP swag item. There’s been a client we know who is a photography buff so we sent him gift certificate for custom framing. Something that maybe they don’t invest in themselves, or maybe they do, but it’s nice to not have to pay for it, right?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Totally.

Emily:
So getting some of their own work custom framed and that sort of thing. So it’s really fun, it’s great to see the appreciation and just kind of the wow factor of it. But it’s just nice to know you’re doing something nice for somebody. And we love to show that we appreciate our partners and our customers. So that’s something that’s really fun, and I love doing it. And sometimes it’s challenging, you can get down a rabbit hole there trying to figure out what’s the perfect gift for somebody, but it’s a fun challenge.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Morayo from go WP also shared the power of relationship. And I suspect after hearing this, a few people may be getting in touch for their custom Preston.

Morayo:
I really love that sense coming to GoWP, I love the buy-in that I notice from our partners. It’s not a one way delivery of service, we are truly in relationship with our partners. I think when I started too, I was working closely with different agencies, creating case studies for them so I had to ask probing questions, I had to get to know them more. And it was really awesome to get messages from some of their team members, “Hey, my t-shirt, I’ve had for a while, can I get one in blue”?

Morayo:
Or one of our partners out in Seattle, their weather is a bit chilly and it was middle of the summer, and he was like, ” what about a hoodie? I love hoodies. Can I get Preston on a hoodie”? And it’s a pleasure to fill that request for them, create that happiness. But again, to just reiterate, we are truly in a relationship with your agency. You’re not a checkbox. Again, if getting you a customised hoodie makes you know that I’m here for your agency, then so be it.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Tom Amos from Design Box shares how they see gift giving for clients as a real token of their appreciation.

Tom Amos:
So we don’t go too overboard with our gifts, but I do think it’s important to give recognition to the clients that have done the most for you in the year. So generally we would give out cards to all of our clients. So everyone would get a Christmas card just to acknowledge and make them remember that we haven’t forgotten about them. And some of them clients that are handing out referrals or that do a lot of business with you, I generally get them a bottle of wine and maybe something else to go in the card, maybe an Amazon voucher, just to say, “thank you”. And I think that’s, yes, just quite a nice little touch there that they remember that you do appreciate their business.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I love how passionate Michael MacGinty and his team are at supporting local businesses and charities.

Michael MacGinty:
What we actually do is… I’ve probably said this to you, before, when we do a new website or a large body of work for a client, what we will do is we’ll send them a print from a local artist, ideally of a coastline, we like the coastline. Started doing it a couple years ago because we had a local artist, became a client. And I guess maybe investing in a website probably was more than she expected. So what we did in return was we started buying artwork off her and it’s been a big hit. At Christmas time what we do is we send an email to all of our clients to say that we’re making a contribution to Simon and Vincent on their behalf. And we do that every year. We would contribute to if few local charities, but we just say to people, we’re not sending Christmas card, we’re not sending gifts, but on their behalf we’re making contribution to some local charities.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
In this next clip, Travis highlights how sometimes you might not be the right person to select the gift, so involve your whole team.

Travis:
Oh man, this has been a contentious subject in our office. So it’s been kind of a thing in our office for a while. And as a company, we were shopping around four different gifts that we could give our clients, not just for the holidays, but for long term customer appreciation and sales. My mission really was to find a gift that said, we want to grow with you, to our clients. But we also want a gift that represents tech companies. And I had to be unique, I didn’t just want to be a thumb drive or mouse pad. The discussion was happening right at the spring of 2020 when people in America were freaking out about coronavirus, things were shutting down. So my brilliant idea for a client gift was a coffin branded with our agency’s name.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
A coffin?

Travis:
Because either you-

Lee Matthew Jackson:
A full size one?

Travis:
Well, no, they were tiny ones with little candy bones inside. I was going to say, either you or your business might need this, this year.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
But if you stick with us, we got you back. Was that the message?

Travis:
Yeah. Kind of. I’m a practical gift giver. So my team was horrified, of course. I was banned from the search committee for these and thank God for my staff business partner, otherwise I don’t know where my business would be at this point. And so without me derailing it, they came up with what I wouldn’t say is a perfect gift, but it’s certainly a gift that keeps us top of mind to our clients. Our clients now receive a high tech looking planter pot. Yes, for living plants and trendy succulents. But the planter has Bluetooth speakers in it, you’d touch a little leaf or something, it plays music. So the idea is that the plant element alludes grow with us. And you never forget a company that sends you a planter that can play your favourite songs. I’m still not sure if the Bluetooth planter speakers were the best to convey the message.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, that was the tech. But the growth element mate, that’s deep. I like it.

Travis:
Yeah. And it’s definitely better than the coffin.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m sure, dear listener, you will agree with me when I say I am really glad Travis’s team have his back. Now then finally we have Abby. She is from Ireland and she shares how she gives gifts globally, that reflect where she’s from. But also gifts of appreciation that again are more personal to the receiver.

Abby:
So what I tend to do is Christmas gifts, holiday gifts are an absolute must. I do tend to send out kind of anniversary gifts as well. And very occasionally I’ll send a happy little postcard, because a lot of our class would be in the U.S And Canada and Australia as well. It’s nice to get a little postcard from Ireland with stereotypical pictures of sheep and cows and stuff on. But yeah, no I think it’s really important to kind of show your appreciation for clients, so I definitely give Christmas gifts. And the type of gifts I give tend to be very personal. We’re a very personal relationship content agency. You get to know each client very well, so you can pick out Christmas gifts that they actually want and that they’ll enjoy. So kind of… I don’t tend to do corporate hampers or anything like that. I try to kind of pick out something that will be meaningful or really enjoyable.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That wraps up this episode of season 42. I’d like to thank Cloudways for sponsoring this season. You could find out more about them over on trailblazer.fm/cloudways. I’ve said this every episode so far, I’ll say it again. We trust Cloudways with our mission, critical projects, and we believe you should too. So why not give them a try? In the next episode, our agencies share ghosts of Christmas past and how they’ve either dealt with them or avoided them for the future. Thank you so much for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe. Also, share if you’ve had value, also comment if you have an opinion over on trailblazer.fm. And finally, we’ll see you in the next episode.