Surprise and delight marketing is a widely used strategy that aims to attract and nurture customer or client relations by providing unexpected rewards. Although often associated with large brands with big budgets, there are plenty of ways for any business to utilise this approach.
All that is needed from you or your team is empathy, creativity, and spontaneity to do what’s right for your customers.
What is a surprise and delight marketing strategy?
At its core, surprise and delight is about exceeding your customers’ expectations beyond the products or service you provide by using spontaneous offers of kindness to improve their overall brand experience.
Mastercard’s long running “Priceless Surprises” campaign is a really good example of this. Based on the idea of rewarding customer loyalty with great surprises, and developed specifically to engage with their customers over social media, it rewards users of their app with freebies ranging from small gifts to once in a lifetime experiences when they least expect it.
Last year, Kleenex launched its #AllTheFeelings campaign to recognise the importance of emotional and mental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking an empathetic approach to surprise and delight, they gave away 100,000 free subscriptions to the Calm app for customers.
Surprise and delight isn’t necessarily about creating a regular customer loyalty scheme, discounting or introducing offers such as ‘Buy one get one free’ – it requires you to embrace the unexpected to attract, reward and retain.
A brand which has truly epitomised this approach is Pret a Manger. By empowering its branches and staff to occasionally give away free coffee and food to customers, after many years, word of these acts of random kindness has spread. In turn, this has aided customer retention in a competitive high street coffee shop market.
So to summarise, by forming part of your customer nurture and loyalty strategy, surprise-and-delight can help:
- increase customer loyalty,
- raise average customer spend,
- and encourage word-of-mouth marketing.
Ideas for your own campaign
Don’t let the lack of a big budget stop you introducing your own surprise and delight initiatives – here’s our top five ideas to consider.
1) Write a handwritten note or personal message
Do you have a client who you know has been going through a tough time with their business? Are they celebrating some exiting personal news? A simple handwritten message feels more authentic and shows you care.
You could also show your appreciation to your customers by leaving a personalised message with their order. This can prove particularly effective with online purchases. On demand print services such as ours provide a quick and cost-effective way to personalise, then print one-off messages, which can also be automated as part of your fulfilment and despatch process. Unexpected but creative touches such as this, could really help your brand to stick in minds when it comes to repeat purchases.
2) Be timely and pay attention to key dates
Acknowledging special days like your clients or customers birthday or anniversaries (eg when they first worked or purchased with you) goes a long way towards building brand loyalty. Furthermore, there are plenty of ways to mark an occasion, from executive gifts (which we could help you source), to a one-off discounts or a voucher for your products. Just be careful not to come disingenuous by asking too much of them first – this isn’t an upselling activity.
3) Action ‘unplanned’ giveaways or freebies
Branded merchandise and giveaways provide those added touches which could make an experience or interaction with your business that ever bit more memorable. However, simply aligning your promo products to a specific campaign, may not come across as particularly spontaneous.
Therefore, to have more impact, why not have a selection of giveaways ready, and empower your staff to decide how they are used. You may also wish to focus your choice of giveaways on a particular message you want to send, not just alignment to your brand. For example:
- Running vests, athleisurewear and cycling jerseys are great for a sports brand, but more broadly, can send a message that shows you want to support your customers to stay active.
- Flip flops, sunglasses, suntan lotion, towels and luggage tags are appropriate if you are a travel company, but equally as effective at wishing your customers a well-earned break.
You could also consider offering freebies on a regular or random basis as part of your customer’s order. These could be product samples, or again, branded merchandise (We can help with this too).
4) Return the favour
Do you have customers who regularly mention your company recently on social media, or have left you a positive online review? Send them a surprise ‘thank you’ for their troubles. If you know where your customers live or work, you could even surprise them with a gift card to their local independent coffee shop or restaurant. Not only does it show you care, but also sends a message that you support the local community in which they live and work.
5) Don’t take your strategy too seriously
Remember, surprise-and-delight is most impactful at reinforcing greater loyalty and driving advocacy when the recipient is not expecting anything and there are no strings attached to your gesture. Keep it fun, authentic and spontaneous.
Planning your surprise and delight strategy? Let us know if need some help or ideas.
