EMBiz: How to Show Your Customers Gratitude

How to Show Your Customers Gratitude

Cody Owens

Holiday Season is Around The Corner

Hi Cody here with Elevate My Brand, and believe it or not, Thanksgiving is already upon us. So it's time to start thinking now about how to show gratitude to your customers. I have five simple and specific ways that you can do that this holiday season.

Leveraging Email Marketing & Personalization

The first one is pretty obvious, which is email marketing. Sending your customers a message that is personalized that says “thank you” is just an easy way to say thank you, obviously. And it also makes it super personalized, so people feel like the gratitude is more authentic if you're actually calling them out by name. So, sending those personalized messages to say thank you to your customers is great. The one caveat I will add is that if you're just going to say thank you, then maybe you should consider doing something else, like giving them a percentage off or telling them that because you all have been so loyal, we are going to make a blah blah blah donation to this nonprofit partner of ours. Giving them an action that shows gratitude always goes way farther than just saying thank you. So number one is sending that email message.

Reward Programs Show Gratitude for Loyalty

Number two is a reward program. So if you don't have one, starting a reward program sends a strong message that, "Hey, we are so grateful for your loyalty that we are going to start rewarding you for that." If you already have a reward program, consider doing something interesting with it, like saying people who are at a certain level are going to get a percentage off on Black Friday or what have you. So make sure you're leveraging your base of loyal customers, fans, or what have you, in order to do something really interesting to show gratitude in a truly authentic way.

Respond to Reviews

The third is responding to reviews. So depending on how many reviews you have, this may be pretty time-consuming, but it really is an inexpensive way, a free way, for you to sit down and just tell your customers, "Thank you." Respond to each one individually, try to use their first name if you can, make sure you just go through and tell them, "Thank you." You can also use those reviews elsewhere. So you can take those reviews and do a campaign on Instagram, for instance, where you take the reviews, put them in a tile, and share them, then call people out by name. Stories are a great way to do this too. So it doesn't clog up your feed. Just take those reviews, put them in Instagram stories, and call people out by name and tell them, "We're really, really grateful that you had such a five-star experience with our brand."

Thoughtful Gestures: Free Samples

The fourth one is free samples. This may not be financially accessible for every brand, but it's a clear way to send a message that says thank you so much. To be able to send people a free sample in the mail or to give them a free sample when they come into your brick-and-mortar store, to give them a free sample that says very clearly, "This is a message of gratitude to you”, is a strong way to tell your customers thank you in the holiday season. 

Sharing User-Generated Content

And then the fifth and final one is sharing or reposting CPG brands or user-generated content. So whenever people share things on social media, to share that, is a way of saying thank you without really saying the words, “thank you”. It shows people, "We're really grateful that you shared this experience on social media. We're really grateful that you are here and a part of our brand." And it's really easy to share and repost. It costs you nothing to be able to do that other than your time. And even then, it doesn't take a lot of time to do that. So make sure that you're sharing that content from your customers, and not just your customers but also your partners. It may not have anything to do with what you're selling or doing for the holiday season, but if you share something from one of your nonprofit partners or some other brand that's a noncompetitive brand that you really like what they're doing, it's showing gratitude to them for what they're doing, not necessarily doing for you but what they're doing in the world, if they're doing good.

So, those are the five ways that you can really show gratitude this holiday season for your customers and the people in your market.