Personalizing holidays

Article from October, 29th, 2003.

The big dilemma for a lot of professionals is how to personalize your sales when you employ the techniques of mass marketing. You may think that it is completely impossible but this is not entirely so.

One of the ways to go about it is direct marketing - there are thousands of companies that use this method and hundreds of books devoted to the topic. And there are a countless number of examples when direct marketing can do miracles. Unfortunately, nowadays direct is starting to be less personalized; the other drawback of this way to market products is that each sale has to generate a substantial amount of money.

Anyhow, here are some examples of what personalizing marketing means. A lot of people have received coffee mugs, t-shirts and pens from other companies. With their logos, of course. Supposedly, this is the way those companies say "thank you" (that is "thank me"). I got a better idea. If you do business with somebody, why not ask him or her to send you their photographs (or a company logo). Clever, is not it?

Would you like to receive a t-shirt that says MyCompanyName or a t-shirt with your own photograph, free of charge. Of course, if you are a marketer, somewhere there you will squeeze in www.mycompany.com.

Next idea - most likely you are anticipating holiday sales. That means people will buy goods (from you, hopefully) and then they will buy cards to mail them to their friends. When someone buys your goods, why not offer them a set of free cards and envelopes. Just make sure they are not some ugly cards with a huge corporate logo. No, these should be very pretty cards with a tiny logo and website address. Want to go further? Include a handwritten note that says "Dear Peet. We'd like to thank you for buying our goods. Please accept this $5 ($10/$15/$20 …) gift certificate and a set of holiday cards, so you can present them to any of your friends and relatives. Not cool enough for you? OK, send a humorous message to your most valuable customers that says something like this "Dear Jane. Holidays tend to completely suck the money out from people's wallets and bank accounts. You are one of our most valuable customers and we certainly would not like this happen to you!

After all, we count on your generous spendings next year. This is why we decided to share the burden of holiday expenses with you. Feel free to select gifts from our webiste for $… and tell us where to send it. We will do the shipping free of charge. Here is the e-coupon code … bla-bla-bla". Like that idea? Got something better to offer - send us your e-mails!

Next week: Think or die
Preve week: Getting ready for the holiday sales season

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