Winter is Coming! The end is here! Well, instead of white walkers, the end of a fantastic year is coming.

Yep, it’s that time of the year where we look back at all the fantastic memories we made and the people we met. It’s also that time of the year where we send the year-end greetings to our valued clients. It is a tradition and a ritual that we follow every year in order to tell our clients how great it is to be connected with them and how important they are to us. It’s our way of expressing gratitude and appreciation.

Since it’s our yearly tradition, we have always tried to experiment with newer and effective ways. This post accounts on how we have sent different gifts from India to the USA and the gaffes that have happened with international shipments.

Before starting on any such exercise make sure that you have the right address and contact details of your customers. Sending an email asking the same is ok, rather than delivering on a wrong address later. Even if you have the address from their website or signature, it is advised to double check. Once that is done, you can think about innovative ideas to make holidays even better for your clients.

 

01. Getting Some Self-Made/Customized Stuff Across:

For us, it is imperative to get that feeling of belongingness across to our clients and what’s better than sending hand-written customized notes right? Accompanied by a project-specific team picture just to add a cherry on top of the cake.

This is a fantastic idea, right? What could go wrong one must wonder?

Well, we used a company for the same that had an app to put across handwritten notes and ship them via UPS. What we learned the hard way is to go for receipt option so that you know whether it’s delivered or not. If untracked, you just don’t know which packets got delivered and which ones did not.

 

02. Sending The Essence Of Your Culture:

If a handwritten note is not your style, you must have thought that sending something which symbolizes your culture would be a good option. Like sending something which isn’t really available in your clients country, could be an excellent way to connect and exchange culture with them. One of the years, we chose to send handmade elephants to our clients.

We chose to ship internationally from India. The delivery rate was high but the cost of shipping every item was way higher than the cost of the product.
Lesson learned - Take shipping cost into account while you plan.

 

03. Sending Gift Box Through Amazon:

Let’s go with a simple method of sending a gift box using Amazon, well why not? right. Amazon has basically everything. Yep, Last year we tried this too and found that our clients received the gift boxes unlike the case when we sent from UPS, but we had chosen gift wrap option and we figured out that most clients did not see our name on the box. This meant they didn’t know who sent these gift boxes to them. It was only after we asked our clients later on how they liked our gift, they told us that they realize it now that it was us. The chocolates were delicious though, they reported.

 

04. Gift Cards Are A Good Option:

Gift cards are good, who doesn’t like gift cards right?

We have discovered them to be nice and easy to send over option. While sending gift cards, make sure of certain things like -

*Making sure that there is ample amount of time to avail the offer.
*Making sure that the offer you are providing is accessible in their country.

 

05. If nothing else is possible, A Simple Email Greeting Can Go A Long Way:

It’s the end of the year and a holiday season; it is entirely possible that your clients have already gone out of office. Now, what to do? A simple email greeting would be best in cases like these. Moreover, many time clients are juggling with different phases like changing office or going on a long holiday and they may also prefer virtual greetings.

Year-end greetings are a great way to express gratitude and importance towards the client. It’s a way to appreciate people who were a part of your journey throughout the year.

Well, a lot of effort does go into planning and working out gifts for clients- the special people of your company. Here is a quick glimpse of us working out on the same this year -

 

 

What are some year-end greetings and gifts that you have sent to people? Did you also face any issue? Let us know.