5 Things to Decide Before Outsourcing Your Client Gifts

Wouldn’t it be nice to simply outsource all of your client and corporate gifts to a gifting business and not have to think about it again? The wandering through Home Goods looking for JUST the right thing for each client. And when THAT doesn’t work, you head to Target, only to get lured in by that new section of beach bags that you swear is speaking RIGHT to you. And before you know it, there goes $300 because guess what? They have a sale on bar carts. Oh, but now you STILL have to hunt for the client gift contents and you’ve already been away from the office for two hours.

Image: Lissa Ryan Photography

You get the idea. It’s good to outsource. But you should decide on a few key things first and it will guarantee a much smoother process and better return on your investment.

Know Your End Goal

Aside from deciding whether to outsource or not, know why you are client gifting in the first place! Knowing this will increase the chances of you seeing a return on your investment. If you don’t know why you’re sending client gifts other than perhaps because “everyone else is doing it”, then it won’t benefit your business the way it should. Some possible reasons I hear my clients mention to me are: elevating their client experience, reinforcing their brand message, standing out in a saturated market, elevating the perception of their brand, introducing themselves to a new client, etc. There should be a goal established with ways of measuring the results. 

Image: Lissa Ryan Photography

Who Gets a Gift

Make sure it’s uniform. If you’re gifting to everyone, make that decision and stick with it. If you’re only gifting to full-service clients, then stick to that as well. You just don’t want to be in a situation where you’re posting your gifts on social media and a previous client sees them and wonders why they didn’t get one. If you have a system in place and it makes sense for your business, then it becomes much easier to explain without feelings getting hurt. Deciding your recipient list ahead of time also helps guarantee that you'll stick within the budget you've established. 

When to Send the Gifts

Decide the best point in your workflow to sent the gift. Do you want to send it as soon as the client books with you as a welcome gift? Or, do you prefer to send it at the conclusion of your project? This depends largely on your business type. I'll give you a few examples. For our wedding planner and wedding photographer clients sending gift boxes to their couples, they usually send the client gifts as soon as the couples book with them as a “welcome to the family” and "we're so glad you decided to book with us" type of message. Most of our wedding industry clients are commanding a high price for their services and gifting can really go a long way in preventing their couples from having post-contract-signing buyer's remorse if sent at the proper time. On the other side of the spectrum, our web design and branding clients often send their custom client gifts to their clients at the conclusion of a project to celebrate the end of a long journey together. It really depends on your business and clientele, but whatever you decide, make sure the timing is the same each time so you have a workflow in place that you can remain consistent with.

Image: Lissa Ryan Photography

Know Your Brand Message

When designing custom client gifts for our clients, one of the very first questions we them is “How would you describe your brand in 3 words?” Most people answer easily and quickly while others stumble a bit. Your client gifts should reflect your brand and for this reason, it’s super important that you know how to communicate your brand to whomever is designing your gifts. If you say “bold, modern, and confident” then, as a gift designer, that immediately gives us one definite direction to go in versus saying “feminine, soft, ethereal” which is something entirely different. Our goal it to reflect our clients' brand aesthetic AND brand messaging in the form of a gift box and the clients who can best articulate their brand, beyond just sending us a logo file, are the clients who end up with the most impactful client gifts. 

Who Delivers the Gifts

Decide if you prefer to hand out the gifts to your clients face-to-face or whether you’d like your gifting company to drop-ship them directly to your clients. This depends greatly on how often you visit with your clients face-to-face and at which points in your overall workflow you see them, but in all of the client gift projects we’ve completed here at Marigold & Grey, 95% of our clients have us drop-ship gifts directly to their clients. To be honest, clients of ours who plan to hand-deliver or even package up and ship the gifts themselves, especially around the holidays, usually end up regretting it and are begging for drop-shipping service the next go-round. If you are making the investment to outsource your client gifting to a gifting service, then you've decided to do this for a reason. (i.e. you're busy, your time is worth a lot and better spent doing what you do best, you're not creatively inclined, etc) If you're outsourcing, then outsource completely and get it off your plate entirely. After all, isn't that the whole point of outsourcing in the first place?

Image: Elizabeth Fogarty Photography

If you've made it through this list and feel you're ready to outsource your gifting, we'd love to chat with you and see if we're a good fit. Please reach out here and you'll hear back from us very soon! We're excited to learn more about your gifting goals and how we can help you, in turn, achieve your business goals too.