Every small business owner knows personal touch is important. While bonding with customers may be easy to do in store, it doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for online orders, and customer care packages are a great way to differentiate yourself.
Adding some type of customer care package to your orders is almost expected by customers at this point, people that shop small want to feel rewarded for their choices. Handwritten thank you notes are a great starting point, but thinking outside the box can lead to even more of an increase in sales.
Not only are customer care packages a great way to end a sale, they’re also a great way to start the next one. Done correctly, customer care packages can make your customers feel appreciated, help them learn about your company, and incentivize them to get back online and make another order.
In this article, I outline the steps I took to create my customer care package, how I made sure it would stand out in a crowd, and what you can do to make your own.
Step 1: Research and Goals
My journey to create a kickass customer care package began like any other: with diligent research. Through scouring the web, I found the top goals and incentives people are using in their customer care packages.
Here are the most common things included in customer care packages:
- A handwritten thank you card
- A coupon code
- Social handles
- A referral card
- Product samples
- A small gift
- Free swag
- Product care information
- How-to guides and tutorials
- Recipes or cookbooks (if applicable)
Step 2: Deciding What’s Right for Your Business
After creating this list, I began thinking about which items would be applicable for my store, The Snarky Raven. My number one goal for the customer care package is to increase sales. To that end, I knew that coupon codes, referral cards, and some type of free gift would be best. On the other hand, this business is just starting out and I don’t have the margins to really be including anything that raises my costs. Plus, I wanted it to feel more personal than just a coupon code, I like the connection that the handwritten thank you cards provide.
Ultimately I couldn’t decide on including just one of these, I wanted to include as many as possible to have a better chance at connecting with customers and converting into more sales. Armed with the decision to create a customer care package with as many features as I could jam in, I sat back and thought about how my customers would be experiencing it.
Step 3: Thinking About Your Customer’s Experience
Obviously the easiest thing to do would be to print off the information I wanted my customers to get, and include it in the packages I send them. However, I kept reminding myself of a necessary reality: no one cares about your business as much as you.
I knew that unfortunately, no matter how great my thank you note and coupon codes were, if they were just on a slip of paper, they had a high likelihood of being ignored and immediately thrown away.
As I thought about all my nice, glossy printed, appreciative words being glanced at for a second and thrown out over and over again, I decided I had to do something that forced people to pause and consider. How could I turn the chore of throwing away coupons into an interesting customer experience?
Luckily, it was at this point that my lack of budget coincided with this train of thought. While I can’t afford to include a free gift, I had considered including fancier packaging as a way to entice people. Between these two thoughts, I realized that small metal tins could solve both problems.
These metal tins are super affordable, ($0.30 a piece on Alibaba), and better yet, they turn the passive action of throwing away paper into the exciting action of opening a mystery tin. Plus, in all my months of being sent samples by Abound brands, I hadn’t seen one used for this purpose, so I knew that the uniqueness of my idea would stand out to customers and create a memory.
Lastly, a metal tin could feasibly be kept permanently instead of thrown away, and since I was going to include my logo it would be free advertising for me. I was ready to start putting all the pieces together.
Step 4: Creating Curiosity
Now I had the beginning of my vision. A customer excitedly opens their package from The Snarky Raven, and reaches inside to pull out their order. They notice that in addition to their product(s), there’s also a… tin?
My goal from this point on was to create memories and evoke emotions, my general idea being that everyone is opening a mystery tin, and the longer that experience lasts, the more the customer is going to remember my store.
Because my store is Wicca themed, I also knew I could play on the general vibes of being a witch, intrigue, and playfulness. I wanted to make people feel like they were discovering something exclusive, so I decided that the first text they would see is, ‘Welcome to the Coven.’
I wanted each layer to force the next action, and because ‘Welcome to the Coven’ doesn’t do that on its own, I also decided I was going to include text that said ‘Choose Wisely.’ On the back of that paper I’d have two different coupon codes, and only let the customer use one. I made this decision because receiving a coupon code is passive, but asking yourself which discount you prefer is active.
Step 5: Fitting Everything
Now that I had some pieces together, it was time to make it all fit. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to include some kind of thank you, because that’s such a standard in small business packages. I also wanted to include some type of free gift, and settled on a sprig of lavender and a small amethyst crystal, because those are on theme and about a penny each.
With all of this, I still had some free space: the back of my second circle of paper. I decided to use it on another active task: a riddle. I looked up riddles until I found one that seemed reasonably easy but still on theme, and if you enter the correct answer at checkout, it will take 20% off your whole order.
Hopefully this will encourage customers to either solve the riddle or look up the answer, and be curious enough to put items in a cart and start to check out. Plus, if that doesn’t float their boat, they still had the coupon code from the first circle to use, so this technique wouldn’t lose me customers.
Step 6: Making it Happen
After this entire journey was in my head, it was time to realize it! Even though it seemed relatively simple to me, it took a lot of work to make all the pieces come together.
Throughout this process I kept reminding myself that when I was complete I would have a pretty distinguishing and interesting customer care package, and that would lead directly to more sales. The final cost for each tin is under $0.50, so if there’s any increased sales it’ll have been more than worth it.
Step 7: The Final Product
Here’s an unboxing video of what each customer is hopefully experiencing. Even rushing through it would still take 10-20s just to process everything, creating a much more meaningful memory than if I had just printed everything out on an 8.5×11. Let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this customer care package, and what you plan on doing for your business!
I love this idea 🖤