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2 min read

Client Holiday Gifts During COVID? An Entertaining B2B Process Using HubSpot

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We enjoy using the holidays as a good excuse to say THANK YOU to our clients and supporters who hang in there with us through thick and thin. And this year, of all years, we felt we needed to take holiday gifts up a notch. BUT HOW? We could not send boxes of goodies to empty offices, or carefully curated gift baskets of orange things to our favorite CMOs as we didn't know where they were holed up (although we could see them in their homes on Zoom). WHAT TO DO?

 
For "the year who must not be named" we decided to use technology and have a little fun. We curated a list of gifts that would appeal to almost anyone on our list and used HubSpot landing pages, templates, forms, and lists to generate an easy and amusing process! 
 
We then sent personal emails (using HubSpot Sales Sequences) to all our clients and and let them choose their own adventure! Our biggest concern was that clients would feel weird "asking for a gift." We were wrong. 
 

Positive client feedback

The feedback we have received from people both on the initial selection email AND the receipt of their gift has been incredible! One of our clients has actually duplicated our process to use this year for their top business associates.   
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Another client said his wife reminded him to thank us for the best cookies she has ever had. 😄 But more than anything, letting people customize their experience made this an enjoyable holiday gift process for the clients and us. 
 

The process

1) Select your gifts! 

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The above are the gifts we selected. We cast our net wide and catered to a variety of tastes. The client who requested this campaign after they went through our experience included different options, such as a classic champagne basket, cheese collection platter, a brunch bundle set, and a meditation tea gift set. We both selected this little guy below. We thought it was a good idea to include something clients can give as a gift to a little one—and quite a few have selected him!
 

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2) Landing page and form

Next, create a landing page with a form in HubSpot where clients will select their gifts. We are so sorry, but we are not accepting any more gift requests, and we made sure this page would not index on Google. 😀 
 live landing gift page

 

3) Create an invitation email.

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4) Create a thank you email

emal thank you

 

5) Create new fields in HubSpot

You'll need to add some identifying fields in HubSpot to manage the process smoothly. We added:
 
  • Client mailing address fields
  • Gift choice
  • Holiday gift status (Target, Requested & Fulfilled)

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6) HubSpot lists

Create lists to help manage the task.
 
  • Holiday Gifts Distribution List 
  • Holiday Gift Fulfillment 
  • Holiday Gifts Waiting for Fulfillment (Requested)
  • Holiday Gifts Fulfillment Complete (Fulfilled)

7) Connect the form, lists and sales sequences with workflow

You can use HubSpot workflows for the most part to automate the entire process except of course the actual fulfillment itself. And you can do that too if you REALLY wanted using Zapier or the tools of your choice.
 

8) The Results

First, of all we had a 50% response rate. So that made us happy. And we knew the people who responded ACTUALLY wanted our gift. Even better. Zero gift waste.
 
Because we sell into SaaS startups, our demographic tends to be a bit male dominated. So it wasn't surprising that the BBQ Crate was the number one choice. But we are glad we had picks for everyone!
 
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We had fun with our holiday gifts this year and our clients got a kick out of it too. Win-Win.

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