The Art of Planning Client Appreciation Events

One of the best ways to nurture your relationship with your database is to hold periodic customer appreciation events. It's a great way to have everyone come together and, at the same time, offer something different.

There are two advantages to this approach for customer appreciation events:

1. It gives you a chance to provide added value to your customers and mingle with them socially.
2. You can suggest that they "bring a friend," which will then allow you to add them to your database and expand your numbers for future follow-up.

Beyond just putting an event date in your calendar, your CRM makes it easy for you to plan and manage all the tasks that need to be done in order to pull off a successful customer appreciation event. Starting with creating and sending all event-related correspondence including invitation emails, direct mail, event reminders, and follow-up communications to your event – similar to how you would manage all of your listing and closing activity plans.

Here are some ideas that have been successful for many of my coaching clients.

• Sleigh ride or hay-wagon ride
• Farm visit at Thanksgiving – pumpkin carving
• Movie showing Saturday morning for children at a theater
• Evening boat cruise
• Christmas festival in the local park
• Skating party
• Family picnic
• Potluck supper event