The Perfect Gift for Our Customers

It's the holidays again and we all want to do something for ourcustomers, right? We want to let them know how much weappreciate them and their business, and we want to wish them andtheir families a wonderful holiday season. Mostly, though, we'dlike to score some big points so they will continue to be ourcustomers! (Maybe we're just afraid we'll look stupid if wedon't do anything at all…)What to do for them? Buy a gift they may or may not want orneed? Wine? Maybe they don't drink. Candy? Maybe they arewatching their weight. Calendars? Desk stuff? When's the lasttime that you received something like that from someone that youdo business with? Did you like/want/need/appreciate it? Myguess is "No". So what can you do that everyone will appreciatewithout breaking the bank?Consider this: donation cards. I have used this concept withgreat success. Here's what worked for me.Print post cards that are self-addressed/postage-paid on oneside. On the other side put a holiday message to the effect"Thank you for your continued support during the past year. Inlieu of a gift of some sort, we felt a charitable donation inyour name would be more in keeping with the holiday spirit….", aplace for name and address, and a list of charities from whichthey could choose. (You can see and borrow a sample fromhttp://www.TheStayAtHomeCEO.com/donationcard.htm )For AOL users:Click HereBingo! Holiday shopping is complete, you have complete controlover the cost, and your customers will love it. Some thoughts:1. You can decide ahead of time how much you want to spend, andthen write the individual checks in proportion to the responses.2. Send each charity a copy of the cards that selected them, incase they send acknowledgements.3. Historically it has been cheaper to put stamps on the cardsthan pay a business reply rate on only those that are returned.You could let the customers pay the postage, but that woulddefeat the purpose!4. Printing the cards for several years in advance makes themreally inexpensive, and including them in my Christmas card getsthem into my customers' hands at no extra cost. The down side,however, is that if something changes, the cards may be unusable.5. I wouldn't suggest letting individuals write-in a charity...you'll get too many different ones, which will be very expensiveby the time you write a check that is an amount worth sending,research addresses, and keep track of it all.6. We tried to select the charities so that there would besomething for everyone: three major diseases (Heart, Cancer,Diabetes) and one for animal lovers (Actors and Others forAnimals). Now, something for September 11 might be appropriateas well.7. Several of my customers have told me that they always lookforward to getting my cards every year (we always use humorouscards), and appreciate the donation.8. Many companies object to vendors sending gifts of any kind,but we have never run into an objection with this technique.How can you adapt this idea for your business?