As they prepared for the 2014 holiday season, Christina Welch and her Keller Williams Jacksonville Realty colleagues figured they had come up with a perfect gift for their clients: A pretty, iridescent Christmas ornament that fit nicely into a greeting card.
“It was a wooden snowflake with a little blue ribbon and glitter all over it,” Welch said.
The Welch Team members made their list of hundreds of recent clients and checked it twice.
They knew the Oriental Trading Co. ornament’s height and width, but didn’t account for its half-inch thickness. Thus, the cost for postage — about $2.25 apiece — was more than four times what was budgeted.
“The ripple effect of the cost of postage was sort of overwhelming,” Welch said.
Lesson learned.
This holiday season, 499 Welch Team clients will receive a much thinner trinket in the form of a colorful stocking to adorn their trees.
With the costly hiccup behind the team, an annual holiday tradition is well underway.
“Before, we hadn’t really done anything special except for calling customers and thanking them,” Welch said. “Now, we’re giving our customers something that not only thanks them, but for them to remember us by and to look forward to receiving every year.”
Sally Suslak, Jacksonville’s Traditions Realty’s managing broker, says reaching out to customers with a thoughtful expression during the holidays is a proven marketing technique that inspires customer loyalty.
“Of course, we want people to think about us positively all year around,” said Suslak, who also is president of the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors.
Suslak’s company spreads holiday cheer to its customers each year through the gift of music.
“We give them a CD with holiday songs,” she said. “It’s different, but you want to try to stand out from the pack with your gift.”
Lisa Barton, broker associate with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Florida Network Realty in Ponte Vedra Beach, joined colleagues in delivering more than 100 pumpkin pies to customers the week before Thanksgiving.
“We’ve tried a lot of different things over the years. We’ve dropped off poinsettias, done Christmas cards and had a big customer-appreciation party,” she said.
But Barton says agents showing up at customers’ houses with a pie, a hug and a “thank you” may be their best-received holiday gesture yet.
“Our customers seem to appreciate the fact that we are thinking of them — and who doesn’t love a pumpkin pie?” she said. “And I think doing it the week before Thanksgiving is less intrusive than doing anything during the holidays.”
Coldwell Banker Vanguard agent Kim Knapp and her colleagues on Team Knapp also delivered pumpkin pies to customers this Thanksgiving.
“A customer of mine has a bakery, so we get to give her business, which makes it even better,” she said.
But Knapp’s team doesn’t stop there with expressions of appreciation to customers during the holiday season.
They send Christmas-themed return-address labels to customers for their holiday cards and, for nine years, hosted a much-anticipated holiday shindig.
During one party, the highlight was a flash mob choir from a local choral program, to which Knapp made a donation.
“A girl started singing, ‘Joyful, joyful we adore thee,’ and kids started coming out of everywhere and joined in,” she said. “When you do genuine and authentic things for other people, they remember.”
Knapp’s big production, though, is an annual Christmas parade through Fleming Island Plantation, where she lives, works and has sold many homes.
Each year on the day after Halloween, the Knapp team buys hundreds of dollars of discounted candy for the parade, which features a fire truck, the Grinch, Frosty the Snowman and Mrs. and Mrs. Claus.
This is the parade’s 12th year.
“People plan their day around it,” she said. “They sit at the end of their driveways, they have bonfires and a lot of them have their Christmas parties to coincide with the parade.”
Knapp says as much as she loves the holiday season, customer appreciation is a continual responsibility in her business.
“The holidays are another opportunity to connect with customers,” she said. “If we didn’t have Thanksgiving, I’d be calling them for a reason to send them pies.”