Client gifts for Valentine’s Day: thanking your favourite clients

At the end of the year, your gift arrives among dozens of others: gift boxes, greeting cards, calendars. It often gets lost in the pile. In mid-February, your clients’ letterboxes are much quieter. A mailing at that time has every chance of being opened, noticed and talked about.

Valentine’s Day also provides a ready-made message: “you are our favourite clients”. It is a simple way of saying thank you without waiting for an anniversary or the signing of a new contract. The tone is light, almost conspiratorial, which makes a change from the conventional phrases of January greetings.

Finally, February often falls just after annual budgets have been set and as business relationships pick up again. A gesture at this time revives contact, opens a conversation and reminds clients of your brand at the very moment they are planning their purchases for the year.

A Valentine’s gift works better if it is targeted. The idea is not to blanket your whole database, but to choose those who truly deserve the title of “favourite”:

• Loyal clients, who have worked with you for a long time and never receive a specific thank-you;
• New clients from the past year, for whom this gesture confirms they made the right choice;
• Referrers and partners who recommend you: architects, consultants, distributors, business introducers;
• Your clients’ teams with whom you deal every day, rather than the decision-maker alone.

A few precautions are in order. Avoid sending a product that is too intimate to a single named person: a parcel addressed “to the accounts team” or “to the whole agency” stays in the professional register. Some organisations, public or regulated, restrict the gifts their staff may receive: find out about your contacts’ practices before sending anything. When in doubt, a treat to share always goes down well.

The right Valentine’s gift is small, warm and easy to share. Several families in the catalogue lend themselves to it naturally.

• Treats. A box of custom confectionery placed on a team’s desk will be opened the same day. Tea or coffee in your brand colours extends the moment.
• The mug. A custom mug with a well-chosen message stays on the desk for months. It is the product that turns a wink into a daily presence.
• The scented candle. Candles and fragrances evoke softness without ambiguity, especially in an understated case marked with your logo.
• The notebook. A notebook with a red or powder-pink cover, with a thank-you phrase on the first page, accompanies your clients to meetings.
• The small seed kit. Seeds or a pot to grow carry the image of a relationship that grows, a metaphor easy to develop in your card.

To put together a coherent set, for example a mug, a tea sachet and a notebook, the Create my pack page combines several products under the same marking.

It is the text that makes a Valentine’s gift a success. The logo alone is not enough: you need a phrase that brings a smile without causing embarrassment. A few ideas that stay within a professional framework:

• “Our favourite clients” or “Thank you for being there, quite simply”;
• a play on words linked to your trade: “Between us, it just works” for a software publisher, “Made to build together” for a construction company;
• a short quotation about trust or loyalty, rather than about love.

Visually, restraint pays off. A small, discreet heart next to the logo is enough; there is no need to cover the product with patterns. Red and pink work if they stay close to your brand guidelines: a deep red rather than candy pink for an industrial brand, for example. On a glass, metal or wooden product, laser engraving gives an elegant, tone-on-tone result, ideal for a message that does not shout. On a mug or a notebook, a one- or two-colour print is more than enough.

Always add a handwritten card. A few words signed by the person who looks after the client are worth more than any printed slogan.

Valentine’s Day has a fixed date: a gift that arrives afterwards loses all its meaning. So work backwards. First draw up your list of recipients and the number of parcels, then choose the products. The production lead time for each product is shown on its page and runs from the approval of your mock-up: prepare your vectorised logo and your message in January so as not to be caught short.

Then decide how the gifts will be handed over. Grouped delivery to your address gives you time to add the card and prepare each parcel yourself. Handing them over in person, at a sales meeting in the week of the fourteenth of February, strengthens the gesture even further. For teams spread across several sites, see the lead times and delivery page to understand each step, from the proof to dispatch.

Finally, watch the response: thank-you messages, photos shared on social media, meetings secured straight afterwards. A successful Valentine’s campaign quickly becomes an event your clients look forward to every year.