The holidays are coming soon. This year there are four weeks and five days between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. It is common for businesses to hand out gifts to their best customers. You may also be thinking of giving a corporate gift to a charity. Here is a new twist to your year-end gifts to customers and charities: why not combine the two into one!

A hot new trend on social media is to ask for friends to give to a charitable cause in lieu of personal gifts. You may have seen this used on a medium such as Facebook that prompts you when it is a friend’s birthday. The same can be true of corporations who give gifts to their customers. Instead of sending the annual fruit basket, why not ask your customer what charity they would like you to support. Then make a donation in their name. This does a couple of things that will help you in your marketing efforts with your customer. First, it helps you partner with them on the causes they are most passionate about. That sort of association is a proactive personal touch–they did not have to ask you to take part in their annual charitable fundraiser, you have taken the first step. Do you think that has an impact? Most definitely, yes! In retaining customers, good marketing takes the human touch into account. One of the main reasons customers leave vendors is the lack of any kind of relationship with the company. When you reach out to your customers in this way, you have extended a warm, relational hand. It also sends the message that you are about much more than turning a profit. One of the results of the new media has been to make corporations much more transparent. The light shines brightly on companies that have a plan to give back to charitable causes. This is where you can market the giving heart of your corporation.

The other thing to factor here is this is a creative way of giving control of your charitable decisions over to your customers. It does not offend them if they get to do the choosing. One of the pitfalls of charitable corporate giving is the polarity of viewpoints around many worthy causes. Social media bullying has turned many a corporate philanthropic endeavors into public relations nightmares. Someone might not like the cause your corporation has chosen for one reason or another. By giving your customers the power to choose where your corporate gifts go, you take most of the risk out of these kind of decisions. It should make everyone happy – it should! However, the internet attracts the voice of lunacy!

What if the customer chooses some whacko group to support? I would suggest you put some parameters around your gifts. For instance, you may want to limit your giving to humanitarian causes (ie. helping the poor, disease research, children’s causes, etc.) I have seen corporations give a suggested list to customers. That may be appropriate if you know your customers do not have a charity they regularly support. Do a little research and find out before you make the offer.

The marketing twist in all of this is you are engaging the customer in your decision. Any time you can involve the customer in a positive way, you have a marketing opportunity. Consider giving a new face to your gift giving this season.