The Best Client Gift May Be the One They Already Expect

Every fall, companies begin asking the same question: What should we send clients this year?

For financial advisors, I think there may be a better question:

What could we send this year that clients would actually miss if we stopped sending it five years from now?

There is a meaningful difference between giving a client a holiday gift and creating a client tradition.

I see that difference from an unusual vantage point. My family owns a Maine company that has been making and shipping fresh Christmas wreaths since 1986. A significant part of our business is corporate gifting, including financial advisors and wealth-management teams that send gifts directly to clients across the country.

Over the years, I have watched some companies approach gifting as an annual purchasing decision. They shop around every fall, compare products, choose something, send it and start over the following year.

Others do something very different.

They choose something their clients respond to and then keep doing it.

Those are often the programs that become much more interesting.

When a gift becomes part of the season

InvestmentNews captured this perfectly in a 2023 article about advisor holiday gifting. Financial advisor Daniel Lash told the publication that he had been sending clients real wreaths for a decade. Clients send him pictures of the wreaths on their doors, and, in his words, the gift has become a tradition. Another advisor interviewed for the article said clients specifically told his firm not to change its annual popcorn gift because they looked forward to it every year.

Advisorpedia has made a similar observation. In a roundup of holiday gift ideas for advisors, it suggested fresh evergreen wreaths specifically because, when sent year after year, clients begin to know they do not have to buy one themselves. It becomes part of their holiday routine.

That is a very different kind of relationship than simply receiving another branded object in December.

At Harbor Farm, we see versions of this with our own corporate customers. Some firms return year after year with substantially the same client list and the same gift. We hear about recipients sending photos, thanking their advisor or commenting on the arrival of their annual wreath.

At that point, the gift is no longer just merchandise.

It has become a small ritual connecting the advisor to the client's holiday season.

Consistency can sometimes be more personal than novelty

There is a strong argument for highly individualized gifting.

InvestmentNews has also highlighted advisors who select gifts based on individual client interests, milestones and conversations. That kind of attentiveness can be extremely meaningful.

But personalization does not necessarily require choosing a different object for every person.

Consistency itself can become personal.

Think about family traditions. We generally do not improve them by inventing entirely new ones every December. Their value often comes from repetition.

The same meal.

The same ornament.

The same place everyone gathers.

The same box that appears on the doorstep.

For an advisory practice, an annual client tradition can create a similar sense of continuity. A client may eventually associate the arrival of that gift with the beginning of the holidays and, by extension, with the person or firm that sent it.

That is hard to accomplish with a promotional item chosen simply because it was this year's catalog special.

The "tradition test"

Not every client gift is suited to becoming an annual tradition.

Based on what we have seen, the best candidates tend to share several characteristics.

It should feel like a gift, not advertising. A logo can have its place, but the recipient should not feel as though someone sent them marketing collateral disguised as a present.

It should have a natural connection to the season or the recipient's life. Food, seasonal décor, charitable traditions and experiences can all work because there is a reason for them to arrive when they do.

It should be repeatable. If you would be embarrassed to send essentially the same thing next year, it probably cannot become a tradition.

It should generate some kind of experience. Eating it with family, hanging it on a door, attending an event, sharing it or displaying it gives the gift a life after the shipping box is opened.

And perhaps most importantly:

That may be the clearest sign that a gifting program has moved from transaction to tradition.

The unglamorous part matters enormously

There is another side to large-scale client gifting that rarely gets discussed: operations.

Sending something thoughtful to five clients is easy.

Sending it to 50, 200 or 500 households is a data-management project.

We routinely work with large corporate recipient lists, and the physical product is only one part of the job. There are spreadsheets, duplicate names, apartment numbers, outdated addresses, couples who should receive one gift rather than two, last-minute additions, custom cards, requested arrival windows and recipients scattered across different shipping zones.

Someone also has to decide what happens when a package cannot be delivered, a client has moved or an advisor discovers three days before shipment that an important household was omitted.

The larger the program becomes, the more valuable simplicity becomes.

That is one reason direct-to-recipient shipping matters. A practice should not have to receive hundreds of gifts, turn its conference room into a fulfillment center and ask employees to spend several days attaching cards and relabeling boxes.

Ideally, the advisor should be able to supply a clean recipient list, approve the gift and message, and let the vendor handle individual fulfillment.

The experience should feel personal to the client without becoming an operational burden to the advisory team.

Start earlier than you think

Another lesson from the fulfillment side is that a good holiday gifting program should not really begin during the holidays.

Practices with established annual programs have an advantage because much of the decision is already made.

They know approximately what they are sending.

They know roughly how many recipients they will have.

They can budget for it.

Their staff can spend October confirming the recipient list rather than researching 47 possible gift ideas.

That matters during one of the busiest periods of the year for many advisory practices.

If your team is scrambling every November to answer "What are we sending this year?", creating a repeatable program may eliminate an unnecessary annual decision.

Don't judge the program only by immediate ROI

Client gifts are difficult to measure with a traditional marketing formula.

An advisor probably should not expect to send a holiday gift and receive three referrals the following week.

That is not really the point.

The better measurement may be whether clients mention it.

Do they email when it arrives?

Do they send pictures?

Do they talk about it at their next meeting?

Do they ask whether you are sending it again?

Do employees hear, "We look forward to this every year"?

Those small reactions are evidence that the gesture registered.

InvestmentNews' reporting is particularly interesting here because the advisors it interviewed were not describing elaborate luxury gifts. What stood out was repetition and anticipation. Clients remembered popcorn. They remembered wreaths. They built expectations around them.

That should be encouraging for advisory firms.

Memorable does not have to mean expensive.

The goal is not to find the perfect gift

There is no universally perfect client gift.

Different client bases, firm cultures, budgets and compliance requirements will lead to different answers, and advisors should of course work within their firms' applicable gifting policies.

But there is a useful distinction between asking:

"What should we buy our clients for Christmas?"

and asking:

"What tradition could we create for our clients?"

The first question produces a purchase.

The second can produce something clients associate with your firm for years.

And once clients start telling you, "We were waiting for this," you probably do not need another holiday gift brainstorm.

You have found your tradition.

About the author: Mandi Leman is the owner of Harbor Farm Wreaths, a Maine family business founded in 1986. Harbor Farm produces and ships holiday gifts directly to recipients nationwide and works with corporate gifting programs ranging from small client lists to hundreds of individual recipients.