Customer Love/Appreciation Program - Has Anyone Launched One?

Hi There

I'm looking to launch a low maintenance, inexpensive "customer love program" that would provide IC CSMs a framework to send customers a small gift when certain events occur. This could be company/product related:

processes first transaction
Crosses a large threshold in volume processed or merchants boarded

Or unrelated to our product impact:

fund raise
Acquisition
Promotion
New baby/animal joins our champions family

Has anyone seen this done well with a basic framework? Or has anyone seen it completely fail and has some good lessons learned from this?

Cheers,
James

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Comments

Anita Toth

Love this stuff James!

I've been using Giftology with my clients to strengthen the relationship and to build a referral system.

The book is called Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Client Retention

I've been using their methods for years (free version is to read the book) or you can hire them.

I've had remarkable results in terms of building long-term relationship quickly and respectfully.

The key is to make it very personal to the individual.

And to pick the right time to send.

Happy to share more about what I've done because it simply is the best strategy I've ever used.

Here's John Ruhlin (author of Giftology) talking about what Giftology is and how to use it.

@James Fisher @William Buckingham @Jordan Silverman @Seth Dovev

Seth Dovev

@Jordan Silverman Thanks, for the shout-out ?!

@James Fisher - I think you're on the right track. We've been exploring this quite extensively here at Chili Piper (we've been known to send some branded hot sauce to our customers now and then). We've used multiple vendors for different types of appreciation. Some vendors allow the customer to choose from a selected list of gifts within an allocated budget amount (Snappy Gifts - does this quite well via an email and directs the user to a list of items) vs. a more custom gift experience (receiving Wine, flowers, branded swag at their doorstep -Sendoso). So how the gift is sent can be as important as when you send it. Here are some milestones to consider incorporating into your appreciation program:

Automated:

Launch Day
- Champion/Admin/Product owner
  - Messaging: Congratulations + what to expect
  - Gift
- Executive Sponsor
  - Messaging: Thank you suggested times to touch base (ie. QBR, EBR)
  - Gift: Different than Admin/champion
Product Adoption Milestones (3-6 month achievement goal; surprise)
Renewal - Trigger (renewal opt closed won)
Advocate/Case Study or Submitted Review
Holidays
- Winter/Summer
- Related to the customer's business

Not Automated:

Series Funding
Success Plan Accomplishments
"Fluffy File"
- Wedding
- Birth
- Birthday
- New Home
- Promotion
- Bereavement
- New Pet

A few other points to consider:

What are the outcomes you're trying to drive with this program? How would you measure success?
Can you incorporate this data into your CRM/CS Tool?
When a customer sends a thank you note for the gift? What do you want the CSM's to do with that opportunity?

Hope this is helpful!

Cheers,
Seth

processes first transaction
Crosses a large threshold in volume processed or merchants boarded

Or unrelated to our product impact:

fund raise
Acquisition
Promotion
New baby/animal joins our champions family

Has anyone seen this done well with a basic framework? Or has anyone seen it completely fail and has some good lessons learned from this?

Cheers,
James

Jordan Silverman

@Seth Dovev could give some insight here perhaps. I know Chili Piper does a lot with customer care packages. Perhaps he can share some of their secret sauce!

processes first transaction
Crosses a large threshold in volume processed or merchants boarded

Or unrelated to our product impact:

fund raise
Acquisition
Promotion
New baby/animal joins our champions family

Has anyone seen this done well with a basic framework? Or has anyone seen it completely fail and has some good lessons learned from this?

Cheers,
James

William Buckingham

Hi James,

The first solution which comes to mind is Postal.io or similar solution. I only really know a bit about Postal, and nothing really about any possible alternatives if there are some. Postal integrates with a couple CRMs and that typically makes it pretty easy for the integration to make the gift sending very low maintenance. I think you could easily leverage a solution like that to achieve what you are looking for.

All in all, I love the idea here and definitely think it's wise to leverage gifts not only on the Sales/Land side, as well as for customer milestones outside of the product/relationship.

Best of luck with your efforts.