21/12/2014

Corporate Gifts Attract New Customers

Corporate gifts or to use the more popular term – Promotional Gifts are getting a lot of marketing focus. This is because when marketing budgets are tight, marketing spends have to become more focused and strategic. Every pound invested has to show a return. Every marketing project and communication has to deliver more results than the last.

In the US market researcher J.D. Power & Associates has reported on how large US banks are using promotional gifts and favorable short-term interest rates to beat their regional competitors.

This type of report reminds us that corporate gifts are great when used strategically within the customer acquisition and retention process. They can be used to entice a potential client to take up an offer, complete an application and place an order. Further down the line corporate gifts can be used to reward client loyalty and the take up of further incentives.

Just how much should you spend on corporate gifts? This has to be relevant to the order value off course but you also need to take into account the total sales value of a client over their expected time with you. For example, most mortgage clients (even in today’s switching environment) could expect to stay with a bank or building society for several years if not decades. Therefore you would expect to use higher value corporate gifts to attract a new client, and perhaps less expensive, lower cost corporate gifts at other times.

For financial institutions like banks and building societies, we wonder if there is one final opportunity to use corporate gifts and generate great PR, spreading positive thoughts about their brand. Off course we are referring to the end of term loan or mortgage. Wouldn’t it be great to receive a ‘thank you’ corporate gift when you have paid of your loan or mortgage. How cool would that be?!