Giveaway and Gift Ideas to Help Increase Customer Loyalty
March 15, 2023 | Read: 10 minutes
You can increase customer loyalty with existing customers by offering useful benefits and rewards.
Alongside delivering an incredible service, these perks can go a long way to encouraging customers back, time and time again…
But what rewards work best? And how do you choose who to reward, and when?
By using software to manage customer data, you can easily find the answers to these questions. The more data you have, the easier it will be to provide a bespoke service, too, which will really get customers excited about using your services.
Below, we’ll explain how your customer database can help your team to deliver a great service experience, boost customer retention, and even lead to more sales.
Join us and explore 10 ways you can increase customer loyalty and really make the most of you job management software:
Why Should I Have a Customer Loyalty Strategy?
First and foremost: it’s a great marketing strategy and if you’re not promoting your brand, you’re not going to attract more customers.
Marketing is all about getting attention, engaging people, and encouraging them to buy your product or service.
The best way to win people over, is by establishing rapport and winning their trust.
This is what makes giveaways and gifts so great: they provide you with opportunities to show customers that you care and are invested in them, too. Especially when your gifts are worth receiving.
Whether a gift is a voucher for money off of a job, valuable advice about maintenance, or a freebie of some kind, people enjoy the experience of getting something for nothing. And it’s gifts like these that can play a big part in how you increase customer loyalty.
Providing customers with perks, often as the result of a loyalty programmes (which might even be helped along by a paid subscription service) can reinforce that your service really is a customer’s best option.
What Gifts or Giveaways Should I Offer My Customers?
Below are 10 giveaway and gift ideas to help you attract and reward customers.
The key to choosing great gifts is to make sure you’re offering something customers want and attracting the type of customers that you want, too.
Let’s explore:
1. Give a customer a free additional service.
Getting something for free feels great. Sure, discounts are useful, but offering an extra service for free has value, too.
For example, let’s say you’re servicing a boiler: you could also offer to perform a quick energy efficiency survey, free of charge.
Gestures like this can help demonstrate that you’re happy to go above and beyond and acts at no extra cost indicate that your service is good value for money (especially if it’s a task that takes you expert engineers next to no time ot perform).
Acts like this will inspire faith in your brand and how you increase customer loyalty, too.
2. Listen to your customers and personalise their gifts.
With rival businesses also offering giveaways and gifts, it pays to find useful gift options that appeal to customers.
Customer loyalty surveys are a great way to find out what customers really want.
Have engineers speak to customers as well. After all, your engineers are your closest point of real-life contact with your customers and this makes them the best people to find out what they want and enjoy.
Of course, digital interactions being what they are these days, you can also find out information through your website.
With chatbots you can have conversations with customers and work to understand their likes and dislikes. As a data-collection tool, they can be incredibly helpful.
Other ways to provide personalisation might be to giveaway promotional products that are personalised with a customer’s name. It could be your 10,000th job and a fun way to attract attention, or perhaps you’ve worked with the customer for 10 years: sending them a personalised gift will make them feel valued and add a personal touch.
Wondering if the personalised touch really matters?
82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content.
Better yet, 78% perceive a relationship between themselves and a company using custom content.
Forbes
Personalising your approach is more important than ever.
3. Record a thank-you video.
The use of video for inbound marketing is on the rise with the likes of explainer videos becoming increasingly common.
Video marketing is no longer just for big businesses with massive marketing budgets and social media has made it easy to create and share short, snappy videos. Once customers see your thank-you videos, they’ll share and spread the word about how great your services are.
Your thank-you video doesn’t have to be complicated. People appreciate the simplicity of a short, simple message and a genuine “thank you” isn’t something you need to spend time overthinking.
4. Increase customer loyalty with a loyalty programme or VIP club.
There’s a good reason so many big retailers run customer loyalty programmes: they’re one of the best ways to grow your customer base.
Customer loyalty programmes can also give you access to an increased amount of information and opportunities to learn about their preferences, suggestions, and other data that you would not have had otherwise.
Loyal customers are also far more likely to leave reviews of your business and can be fantastic at attracting new customers, too!
Loyalty programmes don’t need to be expensive or complicated to set up.
There are a lot of packages out there that will do the job for you; in fact, you can even find how to improve customer loyalty programme apps, specifically for smaller businesses.
For your most loyal customers, creating a VIP programme with long-term relationship rewards makes sense.
5. Turn your loyal customer’s experience into a video.
One of the most effective tools that a company can use in their marketing strategy is a testimonial.
If you can turn a great job into a case study that you share online, you not only stand to reward existing customers, but their experience can help you to attract new business, too.
Asking a customer to provide you with their feedback is a great way to make them feel valued; it shows you care about their thoughts and want to engage with them.
For example, this might come after you’ve made a recent change to how you operate, whether it’s about a new booking system you’re using or how frequently customers like to be contacted.
If you decide video is the right method for you, then be sure to take a look at DemoDuck’s customer testimonial prep. They have a great article designed to help you prepare customers (or even yourself) to be on camera.
6. Send new customers a treat.
There are few people who don’t like getting a treat. And in the world of customer giveaways and gifts, a treat can be a wonderful thing for a customer to experience.
Treats could take many forms: from flowers, to gift cards, to a tool giveaway.
They can be timed to either reward great customer behaviour (like leaving reviews, and referrals) or celebrate significant dates (such as birthdays, or anniversaries with the company).
7. Offer loyal customers a gift card.
Gift cards aren’t just for local restaurants and cafés. You’ll find that even “practical” businesses like petrol stations and grocery stores successfully offer gift cards.
Gift cards are a great option for giveaways even for field service businesses like yours. They offer customers flexibility, meaning they can choose whichever of your services they need most.
8. Reward loyal customers with a discount.
Simple but effective, getting a bargain is a satisfying experience and a popular way to attract customers.
However, undervaluing your services with discounts could lead consumers to question your quality.
Note: Use discounts wisely.
Overuse can lessen their impact and could cost you money in the long run. In addition, be sure you’re setting prices that you know are reasonable, fair, and still turn a profit: all whilst being attractive to customers, too.
you can use our blog how much should I charge to figure out pricing. But keep in mind that Commusoft job costing software allows field service businesses to track labour costs, travel time, and parts used for a job. Working out the impact of a discount is also part of this tool.
9. Teach your customers something new.
Teaching your customers something new helps to build confidence in your expertise.
For example, after installing a new heat pump, you could go on to provide other energy-saving tips that will save them money on bills, too. Educate them about how to get the most out of the solutions you’re providing: they may be grateful for it!
You don’t have to do this in person, either. You might consider creating a blog post, an infographic, or record a video that they can watch. Resources like these are a great way to intrigue customers and get them invested in your brand, too.
10. Give away promotional items to increase customer loyalty.
Sending out company-branded goodies to customers is a good way to keep in touch, particularly if you have long gaps between services.
Magnets, coasters, stress balls, and mugs are always popular.
For example, on EverythingBranded you can buy 250 branded ice scrapers for £1.00 each.
This way you can give customers a useful product at minimal cost to your business.
Quick fire tips to increase customer loyalty:
Rewarding loyalty is one thing, but here are a few quick tips that can reinforce positive customer relationships:
- Ask for and listen to feedback: customers are the best people to learn from, so ask for reviews and feedback so that you can improve your services!
- Respond to customers’ requests quickly: the longer you wait to reply to a customer, the less valued they’ll feel. Odds are, they’ll go to a competitor if you’re not interacting with them quickly.
- Don’t forget to personalise responses: creating a rapport with customers isn’t difficult, but it is impactful when you make an effort to be kind, professional, and friendly.
- Create clear and easy-to-understand proposals: that goes for any communications you send. Be clear and give customers the information they need (especially in a sales proposal) to take action. They’ll thank you for making their lives easier.
- Be open and honest with your customers: nothing builds loyalty like transparency: if customers trust you and your staff retaining customers comes naturally.
Take action to increase customer loyalty!
While it may be a long time between jobs for your customers, particularly if you’re committing to regular servicing of assets, it doesn’t mean you have to lose touch with them in the meantime.
On the contrary, by using the options we’ve listed above, and taking steps to ensure that customers are keeping you in mind, it won’t take long to reap the rewards!
You can watch your customers’ loyalty grow and if you win their trust, you’ll win more work. When that’s the case, you’ll want to make sure your communications are on point!
Fortunately, we’ve got just the thing to help you out…
