Corporate Gifts: Build Better Client Relationships, Increase Customer Retention & Drive Revenue

 

Corporate Gifts: Build Stronger Client Relationships, Increase Customer Retention & Drive Revenue

Why should your client retention strategy include corporate giving as a vital component? Money! Simple and direct. It's simple math to compare the costs of

acquiring new clients vs. the costs of keeping and increasing revenues from existing clients. Increase client loyalty and cut down on client acquisition expenditures. With a clever corporate gifting strategy, you can increase your average order values and lower the dreaded client churn.

A thoughtful corporate gifting strategy can tell a client a lot about your company. By demonstrating to clients that your business is always willing to go above and beyond for them, you can increase client loyalty and build a more powerful client- customer relationship.

 

Challenge Your Thinking: Ask Yourself the Hard Questions

1: How satisfied are your current clients?

2: Are you continuously wowing your clients? Or are you dialing it in?

3: How likely are your clients to recommend you? Would they say you are good, great or exceptional?

4: Do you think your clients feel like you go above and beyond to meet their needs?

5: Is ensuring that your clients have a consistent positive experience a challenge?

 

Corporate Gifts: Increase Customer Retention & Drive Revenue

Establish your corporate gift-giving objective, for instance, to improve customer experience by sending consistent, periodic gifts that resonate with clients to build a stronger client-customer relationship. Corporate gift-giving is not promotional branded items with your logo on them, such as pens or other freebie; throw away trade show items. While sales prospect gifting is effective and relevant, it is not the client demographic you should be focusing on to realize the maximum potential of corporate gift giving because it does not meet the primary objective of building stronger existing customer-client relationships.

Recurring sales from devoted clients can increase a business's revenue by 16%. To see the maximum return on your marketing investment, focus your time and budget on customer retention and building stronger business relationships with this revenue driving sector of your business. According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), as small as a 5% increase in your customer retention rate can result in an increase in profits by 25% to 95%.

Corporate Gifts: Tips to Deliver the Right Impression the First Time

The effectiveness of corporate gift giving has a solid correlation to its psychological impact on the recipient. You want to make sure you don't give your customer an unintentional message because corporate gifting is intended to leave a lasting positive impression on the recipient.

 

1. Quality Matters

The message your gift conveys will determine how you are perceived by the recipient. Giving a customer a watch, for instance, that breaks down and is built of inferior materials leads to them questioning the standards of your business. While your gift does not need to be expensive to leave a good lasting impression, it does need to be of high quality and be relevant to a client's values.

Your ROI will rise if you provide your recipients business gifts that are both personalized and of the highest caliber. During the Christmas season, many companies spend a lot of money buying beneficial, yet practical gifts for their clients. However, there are other times to send business gifts that could provide a higher impact. Corporate gifts during the holidays or for the new year are almost expected in today’s increasingly competitive business landscape. It is always better to give quality over quantity.

2. Personalization Matters

The art of giving a corporate gift begins with personalization and appropriate branding. Research shows that clients value gifts that are more personal and do not look like somebody pulled them from the company's promotional swag closet. So, keep your company logo small on the gift or, better yet, add it to the packaging nice and large, but save the product personalization to something more meaningful to the client, such as their name or initials. As a result, they are more likely to keep, display, and value the gift. Keeping your company and your relationship at the forefront of their thoughts.

Your ability to deliver on this subtle art of giving personalized branded corporate gifts the right way can go along with building the client- customer relationship and delivering the personalized customer experience (CX) necessary to improve client retention rates.

 

3. Packaging Matters

Just as much as the corporate gift itself, how it is presented makes a lasting impression. Consider this. You recently celebrated your birthday and got the newest iPhone. It was given to you in a crumpled brown paper bag with the words "Happy Birthday" half-carelessly scrawled on top of a sticky note.

Awesome, right? Absolutely, but consider the alternative, you receive the same iPhone in a black satin box along with a thank-you message for all your late nights and unexpected travel on the latest project you just completed for the company. Which do you appreciate and value more?

According to a study by J. Waldfogel, the value of a gift may be diminished by up to 33% if the giver's expectations and the recipient's sentiments are out of sync. Even more importantly, in regards to business gifting, the study found that it was especially true for people you don't know well; the wrapping gives you an indication of the relationship that extends to the present.

4. Give with Intent

Corporate gift giving is mutually beneficial, symbolizing how important corporate connections are to one another because no company can survive without its clients. Give with purpose. Know the recipient. Do they value technology? Do they golf regularly? Do they value sustainability? Corporate gifts made from recycled or upcycled materials, organic or sustainable fabrics, or ethically sourced are all highly prized by managers and executives alike. The personalized statement you provide with any corporate gift sends the clearest indication of purpose. The message offers the corporate present significance and meaning, enhancing the client-customer relationship and setting your business apart from the competitors.

Corporate Gifts: Top Implementation Strategies That Can Improve Your Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

 

Segment Your Client List

While all clients are valuable, you probably have a list of clients that are your best referrers for new business, highest profit margin clients, lowest profit margin clients, highest volume clients, etc, You get the idea create your client bucket list from the start, so you have a better idea of where to spend your budget for the best return on investment (ROI).

Get to Know Your Clients Better With a Well Intended Survey

Want to learn more about your clients? You don't have to rely on speculation. Surveys are a powerful relationship marketing tool for finding out in a direct, precise way what your clientele wants from you and what you could be doing better.

However, they also need some of your client's time, consequently make sure your surveys are brief and to the point if you want them to be completed by your clients. Don't waste your time or your client's time. Be selective with your queries and have clear objectives in mind. Each query should work toward that goal. Before sending these out via email marketing, decide precisely what you want to learn. Finally, show your client you resect their opinions and time, follow-up a completed survey, with a curated personalized gift for your client.

Deliver on that personalized experience in two ways: with a pertinent, customer- centric survey and a personalized thank you gift that demonstrates your concern and desire to learn what is most important to your client and their business needs. If you invest wisely in a personalized customer experience, you can reap the benefits of an increased customer retention rate and, as a result, sustainable revenue and profitability.

Client Referrals Build Client Relationships

 

 

Want a higher ROI for your business? A strong brand loyal client is worth their weight in gold. They will be your top salesperson dramatically lowering your costs and increasing your profits with their quality referrals. Think about it. How likely are you to talk about a company that offers an okay experience? Not likely, right? However, if you offer a terrible experience, everyone knows about it.

What about an exceptional experience? Wham! Your brand loyal client just became your biggest asset for growth. Not only have you just lowered your lead generation cost but your new lead is automatically a top quality lead that is further down in the sales funnel. Referrals also help you build stronger relationships with your existing clients. Since, referrals are based on personal relationships and trust, they are effective at driving client engagement and conversion.

 

Corporate Gifts: Use Relationship Marketing to Cultivate C-Suite Engagement

 

 

Top-level executives value and actively cultivate long-lasting business relationships because the benefits can result in significant financial gains. An automated (AI) technology, such as emails and text messages, cannot deliver the human interaction valued and required at this company level. But it may be cultivated using a clever corporate giving approach that prioritizes a pro-active relationship development strategy. In turn, providing the requisite loyalty, trust, and open communication required to conduct business at this level.

Finding ways to connect in a meaningful way with VIP business executives, such as vice-presidents and chief executive officers (CEO), can be challenging, but it can be done. They value the personal experience as much as their employees. They want to know that you understand their company values. They are not impressed with gifts with your logo. They value personalized gifts that show you understand their interests and the interests of their company.

Because the C-suite is a more formidable audience to market to, you must adjust your communication to address their unique demands and expectations. Relationship marketing in conjunction with a smart corporate gifting strategy you can begin to develop meaningful C-suite-level relationships.

Corporate Gifts: Ways to Measure ROI

 

 

Brand recognition, client development, and customer retention are the three main decisions for companies to give corporate gifts. All three reasons are tightly interconnected. A lot of companies struggle with trying to measure the return on investment (ROI) of corporate gift giving.

When developing your corporate gift-giving strategy, ask yourself, how does your corporate giving approach humanize your business, promote a favorable company image, create relationships and goodwill, and improve brand recognition? A closer relationship, according to 94% of senior executives, is necessary for business success.

While brand recognition might be hard to precisely measure, an increase in your customer retention rate, as well as an increase in the order sales and volume for existing clients, should all be solid signs of a successful gifting program. Whereas referrals, repeat business, and thank-you calls from customers, are all other good indicators that your giving program is effective and that your investment is paying off.

Corporate Gifts: Key Take Aways

 

We have a more dynamic, competitive, and lively marketplace thanks to tough competition and rising global trade. Building strong client relationships has emerged as a key area of attention for businesses. Today's clients are better informed than ever thanks to technology while rival businesses vie for their business. Customers can readily switch to other businesses that promise better services at lower prices.

 

 

Because customers are more interested in businesses that can provide comprehensive, tailored customer experiences (CX), cost competitiveness has partially lost some of its former significance. Customers now place greater importance on customer service, a company's reliability, and product quality than on pricing. Businesses that can provide a customized client experience are in high demand. When done right, corporate gifting can significantly improve client relationships, increase client retention rates, and increase revenue.

Data Resource

1. Reichheld, Fred. "Prescription for Cutting Cost." Bain & Company, - accessed July 2023.

2. "Know Me: The Key to an Individualized, Personal, Customer Experience." KPMG Customer Experience Excellence
   Report. 2018. https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2018/customer- experience-report-know-me.html
3. "The Age of the Customer: Focus on Retention." Hoover a D&B Company. Accessed July
   2023. https://www.dnb.com/content/dam/english/business- trends/ebook_anticipate_customer_needs_pt2_retention.pdf
4. "Unwrapping the American Corporate Gifting
   Opportunity." Coresight Research Study. May
   2021. https://coresight.com/research/unwrapping-the-american- corporate-gifting-opportunity/