This guest post is part of our ongoing Small Business Perspective series, and is written by Caprice de Lorm, owner of de Lorm Designs in Orange County, CA.
Before I owned my own business, I found it strange to see holiday displays in warehouse stores before Halloween. It felt, well, too early to be thinking about getting ready for sending out holiday greetings.
As it turns out, now is the time for businesses to prepare and implement their holiday greeting plans. The holiday giving season provides an opportunity to extend your marketing while acknowledging and thanking those who have contributed to your success during the year.
When you make the time to create the most effective plan for giving to others, you provide the giving in a way that comes from a place of celebration and authenticity to your business brand. You are able to decide how to maximize this opportunity to best reflect your business and your appreciation during the holiday season. These efforts and thoughtfulness will be noticed by those you greet and acknowledge while providing a means for connecting with and keeping your clients, employees, and partners open to doing business with you in the coming years.
There are many details to consider and organize, which include everything from determining what will be provided to whom will receive the holiday wishes. Greeting options come in many forms, from holiday cards to calendars to gifts to gift certificates. Holiday greetings can be in the form of donations to an organization and can include special offers for current or potential clients. Holiday cards can be printed or sent in an electronic format. They can be personalized with special images, hand-written notes, and/or signatures. Holiday greeting items can also be stock ordered or customized and can be shipped or personally delivered.
When thinking about how your business wants to plan for its holiday messaging, below are a few things to consider.
Type & Budget: What does your company want to create or purchase in celebration of the holiday season? This can include holiday cards, gifts, or perhaps contributing to an organization on behalf of clients and/or employees. When determining your holiday giving plans, it is important to identify how much you want to spend and if you want to vary the giving depending upon the recipient. For example, you may want to provide something different for high value clients or employees than for potential clients or others.
Special Offers: Do you want to include a special offer or discount with your greeting? If so, make sure to create collateral in support of this offer and include a promotion code for tracking the response and take rates for the offer.
Donations: Some companies choose to donate to a special cause in lieu of giving gifts during the holiday season. When this is done, the business often sends a card to its holiday giving list indicating the nature of the donation and the name of the recipient organization. If you wish to donate to an organization, make sure to contact the desired group and obtain the details regarding their processes for receiving donations. The receiving organization may be willing to provide verbiage and/or other materials for your holiday giving use.
List: Who do you want to include on your holiday greeting list? Your list may consist of current clients, potential clients, mentors, employees, collaborative partners, and other people that impact your business. If you decide to provide different types of greetings based on certain criteria, make sure to indicate and track this as part of the list creation and holiday giving project implementation.
Message: What type of message do you want to send? This includes the greeting itself, the tone and spirit of the greeting, and the impact that you want to have on your audience. For example, you may choose to send a generic holiday greeting with a conventional message and images, or perhaps you want to create or select something comedic or light for the message.
Tone: What is the tone of your company’s brand and how does your greeting support that tone? Is your company known for being conservative, funny, innovative, or something else? Make sure that whatever you “say”, through the words and the item itself, reflects the brand of your company.
Customization: Do you want your greeting to be customized in some way? This can include customized designs, messages, and signatures. You can create a greeting that includes images of various aspects of your company or something that your company supports. You can also provide greetings that are customized to support a cause or a sponsored organization.
Personalization: Do you want to have engraved greetings or personalize each card or gift? If you want to add that personal touch with signed messages and/or greetings, you will need to plan for the time that this process will take and identify who will be part of the personalization effort.
Supplies: What do you need to create, order, purchase, package, wrap, and deliver the greeting? This might include gift bags, gift wrap, ribbons, postage, shipping boxes, shipping labels, and special containers. This might also include resources for delivering items to those on your holiday list.
Ordering & Delivery: Will you be shipping, mailing, or delivering the items? You may choose to do a combination of any of these methods depending on what you send and the location of the recipients. Make sure to plan for the time it takes for delivery of the items. You also need to account for the upfront ordering and shipment timeframes. Note that some companies provide shipping or other discounts for ordering early so as to prevent holiday rushes on their end.
Holiday Giving Management: It is important to designate at least one person (which may be you) to manage the holiday giving process on behalf of your business. A good project checklist will help all tasks to be completed and tracked. A simple spreadsheet with a list of tasks, task owners, due dates, and a column for tracking completion and other notes should do the trick.
The holiday season provides a wonderful opportunity to thank all of your partners for their contributions to your business. Implementing well thought out plans for holiday giving allows you to create memorable contacts with your valued base of clients, prospects, employees, and others. Enjoy the season and the special marketing opportunity that the holidays bring!
Caprice de Lorm is the owner of de Lorm Designs, a company specializing in creating out of the box marketing solutions in Orange County, CA. To learn more about Caprice and all of our Small Business Perspective Authors, click here.
