Corporate Gifts: The Key To Customer Retention
The importance of your clients to you and your business is something that can't be stressed enough. The survival of your business is greatly dependent on your clients' support, thus, it is only natural to give them something in return as a sign of your appreciation. By providing your customers corporate gifts such as promotional apparel, mugs, pens, or other promotional items, you are showing your clients sincere appreciation by giving them a personalized gift exclusive for them.
There are two main positive effects in distributing corporate gifts to your clients. First is that receiving an exclusive business gift increases brand recall and loyalty amongst your clients. This, in turn, would increase both the order size and order frequency of your customers, thus resulting to the growth of your business' revenue. Second, the corporate gifts that you would distribute would of course include your brand or corporate logo. By effectively homing your promotional gift strategy to your valued clients, you are most likely to distribute a gift that they will find useful. A useful promotional gift would, of course, entail frequent usage from your recipients giving your imprinted logo on the merchandise great exposure to not only your valued customers but also to their peers who are also most likely part of the market niche you are targeting.
One important question that you should address during a promotional item strategy is how much would you spend for the corporate giveaway? The rule of thumb is to spend between $1 to $5 on corporate gift per person. This so-called general rule is a good starting point for your costing, but you are the best judge in deciding how much to spend since you should know your clients well. The cost for your chosen promotional gift should be dependent on how much you value the client. For example, if a certain group of your customers orders thousand of dollars worth of your products regularly, then it is safe to say that these clients deserve a prestige corporate gift such as an engraved Waterman pen rather than the $3 mug that you would distribute to your other customers.
It is also important to know which giveaway is best accepted by the niche you are targeting. If you want to play it safe, you can always distribute the top corporate gifts based on studies conducted by the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI). The most warmly received giveaways are the following:
Top corporate gifts:
- Promotional Apparel
- Promotional Pens and Writing Instruments
- Promotional Calendars
- Promotional Mugs and Drinkware
- Promotional Bags
But if your market is more of the free-spirited type such as the youth segment, then it will be more effective to utilize the "fun" logo merchandise such as the promotional toy and games and other corporate gifts that fit this age group, like sports and outdoor products.
With over 20,000 corporate gifts out there, there are a lot of merchandise to choose from. But again, the bottom line is to choose the corporate gift that compliments your market niche. Because the more the customers find your promotional item useful and valuable, the more effective your strategy will be in advertising and reinforcing your brand and logo.
