Although Fall has just barely arrived, it’s time to start designing your holiday customer appreciation campaign. I know we’re sick of those x days until Christmas memes too.
HOWEVER, there are times when it is important to think early about the holiday season. Whether you want to recognize or thank your customers for their business by sending a holiday card or email, purchasing a gift, or organizing a cocktail party, it can take considerable time to plan and organize. Read on for some ideas to save time and stress in designing your holiday campaign.
Five Tips to Make Your Holiday Recognition Campaign Go Smoother:
1. Ensure your Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) database is up to date
Add in any new contacts that you haven’t had time to yet. Make sure address changes and spelling corrections have all been done. Delete all old contact records that are no longer relevant. Ensure you have a holiday campaign code field set to yes for all contacts you want to include for easy filtering of your database. Ie: Holiday Card – Yes
2. Set Your Budget
It is so easy to over-spend in the holiday season. Therefore, it is important to determine how much your business can afford to allocate to your holiday appreciation campaign. Organize your contacts into at least three categories, for example, bronze, silver and gold. How you categorize them can be determined by revenue generated but also how awesome they are to work with, have they referred other business to you, etc. Determine how much you want to spend on each category and multiply that by the number of contacts in each category to determine your total budget. Adjust the category amounts up or down to fit within the amount your company can afford to spend.
3. Design your Holiday Message
As we live in a globally diverse world, it is important to respect every culture’s way of celebrating through the holiday season and keep your message neutral. Keeping the message light, upbeat and thanking your contacts for their business is a great way to round out the year.
4. Determine the style of your campaign
Are you environmentally conscious and want to save trees and postage and send out emails? Would you rather make a charitable donation than send gifts? Do you want to throw a cocktail party for your Gold-level clients? Does your choice fit well with your brand and your company’s values?
5. Outsource your holiday campaign
Consider engaging a virtual assistant company like It’s Your Time, to take care of everything for you! We can clean up your database, process the mail or email merge, find the printer for your cards, purchase the gift baskets or bottles of wine and arrange delivery. We can assist with planning your holiday party by making reservations, arranging catering and can decorate the party space or your office reception.
By starting your planning early and following the tips above to keep organized and on track, you will create a holiday appreciation campaign you can feel proud of and avoid the stress and frustration of throwing things together at the last minute.