What is the DNA of a valued gift?
‘Tis the season for brand, community, and marketing managers to come up with forms of acknowledgment to bestow upon their users at the end of the year—so how can you do something without a massive user base, budget, or internal team?
We’re well into the holiday season, where most of us will spend a good chunk of time wrapping and unwrapping gifts for and from friends, family, colleagues, etc. During this time, each one of us will receive some form of “gift” from a brand, community, or organization.
Many of these will be digital, in the form of eGreetings, discounted promos, a Newsletter “thank you”, or a 2022 year-end wrapup of your personalized usage (Spotify, Duolingo, etc.) — some more sharable than others and few will be tangible.
Setting expecations.
Due to everyone of us having different constraints than others, I won’t debate who wins between digital vs. tanglible gifts, nor will I prescribe what you should give. But I will describe how I work through this process and provide some basic tips for how you can evaluate a good way to acknowledge your users.
Disclaimer: My direct examples are mostly tangible but my favorite digital “gift” is Spotify Wrapped which is now unsurprisingly being mimiced by a number of brands. ex. Apple Music, Duolingo, etc. I also liked Strava when I was more active—2022 was a depressing look back, lol.
Personally, I loathe shopping and am incredibly frugal. While this may negatively impact my fashion choices (special shoutout to Goodfellow & Co.), I think it has positively impacted my propensity to give unique and thoughtful gifts.
I attribute much of this to growing up with art being everpresent in my life—and (as I have known), art is as much tied to resourcefulness as it is to inspiration. Additionally, the average artist isn’t known for having much disposable income, so frugality and a sense of scrappiness are a big part of the lifestyle.
Anecdote time!
Growing up, my uncle Kimmo always gave me art supplies and memberships to local museums as holiday gifts—all with the contingency that I produce something for him in order to receive a similar gift the following year or receive nothing as a result of my lack of artistic production. So, I created “art” with the various mediums he provided, every year, which quickly established itself into a habit.
Since then—whenever faced with a moment where I needed to show my appreciation for another individual—I’d take whatever was at my disposal, think a lot about who I was creating for, and then make something for that specific person.
That’s not to say this habit has always been well received. I still recall a person in grade school for whom I made a wire statue. Their vocalized disappointment to our classmates that their “Secret Santa” didn’t buy them something was so embarrassing that it was difficult to move on from—obviously since I still have a strong memory of it. However…
The thing about established habits is, they are:
a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.
I love to create and surprise people (even though this grade school incident has made me very self-conscious when I create something for someone). The euphoria I feel when someone appreciates my gesture always outweighs the fear of unappreciation or outright rejection.
This intrinsic feedback from people (along with a passion for creation, creativity, and expression) is what drove me to get into advertising and marketing, and has since led me to more community-focused roles.
As someone currently working to connect people, I believe this habit of creating thoughtful forms of gratitude for others (or users, in this case) makes an indelible and long-lasting impression as it is personal, unique, and difficult to scale.
How can you do the same?
To give a great gift, I try to regularly focus on improving my empathy and understanding of others. This usually enables me to have a better “feel” for them—who they are, what they like, how they think, etc. I won’t spend time detailing how to do this as there are many experts in this field—but for me, I have gained a lot of value from the book, “Search Inside Yourself” as well as other more philosophical books that have more or less engineered me to be curious about how people “tick.”
IMHO you must care about bettering your understanding of someone otherwise whatever you give tends to fall flat.
If you feel you have a strong pulse on your community members, users, etc. then I think you can follow these three simple tips to create amazing forms of acknowledgment for them:
Personal for you, personal for them. People who give you their time and (in many cases) money want to and deserve to know who you and your team are — on a more personal level than name, title, and being a LinkedIn connection. Likewise, to build your community, you should know as much as possible about the people loving what you’re building. To build that relationship, give them something personal. Handwritten letters are great but there are infinite options so leverage your creativity and have fun with it.
Example: I have always appreciated that Maker’s Mark annually sends their ambassadors physical gifts every year that deepen your experience with the brand, their team, and most importantly, whiskey.
An element of mystery. There are the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why) and 1 H (how) of journalism, but this isn’t that—so don’t incorporate them all. For the sake of logistics, I recommend only using who, where, and how (which basically translates to getting someone’s address and letting them know you are going to send them “something”). If it is a shirt or a yearly usage recap, some of the mystery will be revealed when you ask for their preferred shirt size or the calendar nears the end of December, but that is fine.
Example: I’m sure this happens in a more predictable manner than I notice but I always enjoy the surprise factor when I open up Spotify in late November and see the prompt to look at my Wrapped stats.
NO Call-to-Action. You don’t give a gift in order to receive something in return. You give because you want someone to receive a symbol of your appreciation. This process is not and should not be transactional—but if you accomplished Tip 1 then it will be sharable so if it happens to be a digital gift just try to make that process convenient.
Example: I don’t have one here that is top of mind, unfortunately. This is a bit of my personal propaganda/opinion.
All in all, I believe these tips are free from needing a ton of users to benchmark usage data, a big internal team to build custom experiences, or a significant budget to purchase a swath of personalized gifts. These largely hinge on your team’s creativity and understanding of who you want to send thoughtful forms of acknowledgment.
In my case, I have been recently sending our most active Databutton users short letters of appreciation — the letters are made of watercolor paper, so I paint everyone something unique and typically abstract. Below are some of the kind responses I have received.
Now, it’s your turn!
Please share with me what you have recently created for another user in your community or fun ideas you have for such things. I’d love to exchange some inspiration.
The TLDR of Van’s Rules (not all his rules):
1. All gifts should contain an element of surprise.
2. Respect the gifting Holy Trinity: Nice, Made, Thoughtful.
3. Made gifts should not be bigger than one’s hand.
4. Dating and/or Monogramming a gift gives it extra power.
5. A postcard counts!
