If you don’t like gifts, don’t read this.
But I don’t know who doesn’t like gifts, generally speaking. Every time we get more than we expected, it somehow stays with us. I’ll abstract about gifts and then get to the point — feel free to scroll down now to the “how that translates to business” heading if you don’t care about the philosophy aspect.
Gifts and ritual offerings are the same.
I had this thought the other day that gifts are sacrifices. Ritual offerings are part of religions/cultures and can involve killing an animal and offering it to the deity. Or maybe offering something else.
Unless you’re part of that culture, you’d be looking at this practice and say:
“Why in the world would they do that? It makes no sense ?!?”
But let’s take a step back and look at gifts. Why the hell would you gift things to people? Why would you sacrifice part of your money and time for someone else? Not to say you have to walk/surf the internet to get it. And there are other efforts involved. Lest to say, maybe the idea-generation process is the hardest.
If “making the most money” might be your goal, how does it make sense to spend it for someone else?
I think the answer becomes obvious: we’re sacrificing ourselves, our position, for the sake of someone else. Because we care about her or him and we want to show that. Plus, it feels good. It’s a message that we don’t dissect anymore in today’s society but I would put it next to animal offerings.
(By the way, I think it feels good because of evolution. I’ve got no science to back this but it makes sense for me how doing good to other people has a reward system in our brains.)
By sacrifice, I understand renouncing something for another party. And it certainly has to be valued, otherwise it’s a “gift that sucks”. Or so a teenager might say.
As a consequence, when you’re giving someone a gift, you’re renouncing some of your resources, at your own expenses, for their sake. By the way, there’s the fine print: “some of your resources” — it pretty much means you have to have in the first place to be able to give.
Which is why random gifts are not so common: the wealth disparity is a real thing.
How that translates to business
Gifts are sacrifices.
What’s so special about that though?
Well, here’s one reason. Yesterday I went out to print a poster and along the interaction between me and people from this place, they’ve gifted me a bag of sweets. And look, I’m young but I’m no toddler — I wouldn’t get that excited over a bag of sweets but it was a nice gesture from them.
But why bother with giving something extra to your customers?
A nice and indeed an authentic sacrifice in this case. They didn’t have to, but they chose to send me a message. The direct message is “we care about our customers”. The indirect (and consequent) is:
“We liked doing business with you and we’d prefer to keep it that way”.
Naturally, if I were to be disrespectful, surely there would be no gift — so they have that choice.
What’s the effect of that? For one, here I am writing about them. And if I wouldn’t be writing, it’s at least the go-to place I’d recommend people around me, should they need printing services.
And here’s the sweet part — in central London, printing can become a commodity. There is competition and probably it’d take you a 5-10 minute walk at most to find another place like that. Yet there they are with a perfect 5 star review average on Google Maps (130 reviews).
Who else gifts what?
Tesla has been doing this with their cars by upgrading OTA — over the air. Indeed, it’s a technological aspect and they had all the reasons to do so. Yes, they will definitely make it a standard and we’ll get used to it with all car companies doing this over the next decades.
However, I can’t help but remember the appreciation posts in the Tesla communities when OTA updates started. People were saying stuff like “Buy a Mercedes and it’s the same car in 4 years. Buy a Tesla and it gets better and better every 4 months.”
That’s a git to customers.
Asos apparently sends candy or stickers as well in their orders.
A smart gift
There’s this cryptocurrency project named, very relatable, crypto.com. In short, they’re making Visa cards that can be topped up with crypto coins so you can spend both these and fiat money (GBP, USD, AUD etc.) anywhere Visa is accepted.
For disclaimer purposes, I’ve invested in them. I won’t get into the technicalities of it as this is not the purpose but I’ll mention their gifting aspect.
For those that are staying with them and keeping their coins invested, they’re “airdropping” their second cryptocurrency as a gift. These gifted coins will be available for you in a year and only as long as you still keep the first coins locked.
The story goes deeper but the point is: they’ve found a way to gift out creatively. Most of their users found another reason to:
- stick with them
- love them
- share the project with their friends
It’s their way of giving out candy and it’s got the same effect as the bag of sweets I got from the printing shop.
What’s it going to be for you?
Whatever you do, surely there must be some candy you can give out. On the lower end, you can at least physically send candy while you’re selling a virtual product — probably you’ve got the customer’s address.
But maybe it won’t hit home. Maybe it’s not a good match to send candy if you’re selling to diabetics. You know your customers better than I do. You know what you solve for them.
And moreover, you can know whether it could be impactful. Hint: a free ebook won’t make it. Especially if you’re asking for their email.
The bottom line
If alien people would look at our planet and assuming they don’t have any idea what a sacrifice is, they’d be thinking our gifting culture is the stupidest thing ever.
However, it’s how our species managed to survive and propagate to this day — by sacrificing. Sacrificing the present moment for a better future. You’re running a business and do that every day.
Engaging in a “double thank you” with your customers can be as cheap as a bag of candy. I’ve mentioned “double thank you” before here:
About Ch Daniel
I run Chagency_, an experiences design agency that specialises on helping tech CEOs reduce user churn. We believe experiences are not only the reason why users choose not to leave but also what generates word of mouth. We’re building a credo around this belief.
If I’ve brought you any kind of value, follow me and get in touch here: LinkedIn | Twitter | Email | Quora | YouTube (same content but in video)
I’ve also created an infinitely-valuable app for sneaker/fashion enthusiasts called Legit Check that impacted hundreds of thousands over millions of times – check it out at chdaniel.com/app
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Illustration Credits: Lenny Wen, Teng Yu
