December is a month filled with joy and…deadlines, especially if you’re a marketer. We know the struggle all too well: each year you strive to deliver a Christmas themed campaign that will wow everyone to give your customers a little bit of Christmas cheer.

However, inspiration doesn’t always follow Santa’s predictable schedule. If you’re strapped for festive Inbound tactics that will delight your customers and leads here are some suggestions that will make them feel like Christmas has come early.

Reveal Your Lighter Side

Most of your customers only know your professional side. But this is the festive season after all, and people tend to let their hair down. Why not take it as an opportunity to reveal your more personal side? Take funny photos or shoot crazy videos with your team (how about an “ugly Christmas-sweater challenge”?) to use as the basis for a Christmas or eCard.

We’re not suggesting you make a fool of yourself, just to show a bit of your human side. These days, it’s most likely your customers don’t even know what you look like. By sharing a warm photo or video, you can help them get into the spirit of Christmas

Offer Personalised Gifts

Inbound is all about personalisation and making your (potential) customers feel understood and well taken care of. So this Christmas forget about offering the same 5% discount to everyone in your database. Instead, take a look at their preferences and their real problems and try to come up with gifts that truly help them or make them happy. Vouchers, relevant content, targeted discounts, extra features for free – anything goes just as long as it’s tailored to the right persona.

Create a Game

If you’re feeling especially generous at Christmas time, get your clients engaged by creating a fun story or a prolonged event like “The 10 days of Christmas”, with mini competitions and prizes for clients and leads who respond and interact each day. Ask the customers to get involved and reveal a new gift every day. For the last day, you could have a raffle and offer a really impressive prize (think something your business offers that would be highly valued amongst your customers). In order to keep people engaged, increase the value of the prize at every step.

Offer A Family Recipe

Christmas is all about over-indulging on home-cooked food. Speak with any person and they’ll tell you about a long-kept family recipe for a mouth-watering meatloaf or a perfect pavlova. Why not share your family’s precious recipe with your clients and leads?

Home-cooked food may be worlds apart from your actual business offer, but taking the time to share a family recipe at Christmas is a thoughtful way to connect with leads and customers who all have their own families front of mind at this time of year. As well as revealing your lighter side (see above), it’s also a message to your leads that you truly want them to have a great Christmas – and that you consider them more than just a ‘qualified lead’, but rather a person likely to be busy making plans for Christmas and who might be interested in trying a new dish with their families.

Send a “Thank You” Letter or an End-of-Year Recap

This is the perfect opportunity to brag about your accomplishments and make your clients feel warm and fuzzy for being part of your amazing journey, too. Remember to let them know they played a big part in all your accomplishments and that you will work on making their lives even easier in the year to come.