We humans have been social animals since the beginning of time. Since then we’ve evolved into the civilized beings we are today and we’ve never been more social. Technology has enabled us to have friends all over the world and one of the ways to show how we care and love them is by sending some gifts over.
But who wants to receive a basic black t-shirt as a gift? What’s so special about that?
This is where customized gifts enter the picture. Be it personal gifting or corporate gifting, customization is what all individuals and companies are looking for. Design-on-demand is what’s in demand. You can let your customers create their own designs from your website or mobile app and they’ll be happy as a clam to wear, hold, or give a part of memory, personality, and whatnot.
Besides being high in demand and having better profit margins, here are some other ways customized gifts can boost your business.
- No need to stock up
Since each design is unique there is no need to stock up on items. A quicker turnaround of items is better for the supply chain. So, while you might have to maintain a small stock of base products, you don’t have to worry about certain designs going to waste.
Each customer can make the product their own. This way when someone comes looking for a Batman t-shirt with a particular version of BatMobile on it, they will not be disappointed. Since it is a niche product, hardly anyone would have it in stock. If they can design it themselves, they get that much more value out of it than if they had simply bought a common off-the-shelf Batman t-shirt.
- Attracts millennials
Millennials want something unique all the time. They are not okay with getting the same exact thing that their peers have. With a number of things that are available in a similar design, like gadgets, they want to be able to put their own spin on how they carry those gadgets.
Apart from being a protective object, cases and covers are now elements that are used to show one’s own personality. If your store offers a custom design tool with a wide range of objects, millennials are your customers.
Most importantly, the majority of the buyers are millennials and you definitely don’t want to leave them out of your target. If they like your product they’ll be your advocates and you’ll not only get return business from them, but you can expect them to bring in their whole clan to buy your products as well.
- Your USP/Customer Loyalty & Delight
Gifting items are quite common generally. The idea is to be able to find a common thing that the gift receiver likes. Now, however, that idea has evolved into finding a common thing that the receiver liked and then personalizing it. A passport cover may be common, a blue passport cover is also common, but put the receiver’s name on it, add a couple of charms like a plane and a globe and suddenly it signifies more. The receiver gets a passport cover that actually speaks to them rather than it being a general utilitarian object.
This levels your brand up and rather than being just satisfied with your products, they’ll be delighted. A stage where each brand wants to reach.
- Match their expectations
Study your customer base and provide items proactively. If you have a certain number of customers designing based on a particular theme, like perhaps a new movie that came out, pick up on that and then include that in your regular catalog. This way, if someone doesn’t want to take the designing route, they can still get a niche product.
Within the designer tool, give a few common options like name customization, popular fandom symbols, famous quotes, etc. If customers get what they need, they are more likely to come back and to tell you about your business.
When you match their expectations, you’re working your way up the ladder to become an industry leader because your customers can see that you care about them and are listening what they are not even saying.
- Competitive edge
Providing your customers with a space to create their own designs on your products is obviously going to give your brand a unique standpoint in the sea of competitors. They will be selling black t-shirts with limited design options that could easily lead to an increased bounce rate as well as cart abandonment. Because they are going to be looking for options while browsing your website and if they find a competitor that’s giving them exactly what they want i.e. a blank canvas to write just the quote they want or add that funny tweet they read on Twitter. You can never give millennials what they want because what they want changes every single day.
You could be the competitor that’s providing them with the option to create their own designs and it’s not even that capital intensive or technically challenging. Browse for an online product designer tool, integrate it with your estore, enable it for the products on which you want to provide customization, and voila! You’ll be all set to take your competitors out.
- Better marketing opportunities
Every estore has a limited number of products that they sell, well unless you are Amazon. And sometimes it can get hard for your marketing team to market a product that they’ve been marketing for over a year now. They want to spice things up on your social media accounts but sadly they can’t because you are still selling those 50 products.
But imagine if you were to sell 50 products that could be customized in a million ways. We’d say heaven for your marketing team and they’ll agree with us! It will be a blank canvas for them as well – to play around with new ideas, strategies, and maybe cover a wider range of audience.
Conclusively, customization opens up a million marketing opportunities for your business.
- Repeat Sales
I customized a t-shirt on your estore that read ‘Writers are God’s favorites.’ And next month, I went through a writer’s block and wanted to wear a t-shirt that read ‘Writers are not God’s favorites. Otherwise, there’d be no Writer’s block.’ Where would I go? Of course, on your estore, because I liked the quality, your product designer tool let me design the t-shirt in the way I wanted and I got it on my doorsteps 2 days before the date I was promised. In short, overall a good experience. Your brand would be the top of my mind choice which is where all marketers strive to be. You’ll be the Heinz of your industry.
In short, repeat customers are guaranteed when you are providing customization and of course, also making sure the rest of the elements that add to their experience are well-delivered.
- Lower return rates
This is the most logical of the points. Of course, there’ll be lower return rates well, unless your product is damaged or of lower quality, than you had promised in the store. They’ve customized it to their liking and have added their favorite piece of a quote or the exotic word with which they fall in love with or their favorite cartoon character. So, it is next to impossible that they’ll not like it or return it once it arrives.
This is one of the major drawbacks of running an estore which sucks almost all the estore owners dry since they have to pay for the return pickups as well as the second time delivery. With customization, you are bringing the chances of getting returns drastically down which means you won’t have to pay hefty amounts for second-time deliveries of the same products.
- Chance to become the industry leader
All the above 8 points mentioned put together increases your chances of becoming the industry leader by at least 10 folds. You’ll have happier customers, better profit margins, a marketing team that’s on a creative high, lower returns rates than before, and the brand positioning which your competitors can only think of.
You are bound to become the industry leader if all things are executed well.
So, what are you waiting for?
Gift your estore the gift of customization
The idea of selling customized gifts has been around for quite some time but the key is in doing it differently and uniquely. The thing that’ll separate you from your competitors is your focus on your customers. Hang out on the platforms where your audience is. See what they like, which quotes do they love, what kind of pages are they following, and what are they ordering from your competitors. These things will help you update your product catalog in alignment with what your customers are looking for.
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Author Bio: Mr. Pratik Shah is Creative Head of Brush Your Ideas, a Web-to-Print technology solution offering custom product design software and Web-to-Print Storefront Solutions. He has been giving his valuable tips and suggestions about Online Gift Design Tool.
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