Monthly Archives: September 2010

Bullet-proof Your Gift Selections – Step 10- Gifts should Support Bank’s Branding Efforts

For most financial institutions, great gifts with broad appeal create the biggest bang for the buck.  Some banks and credit unions build their brand around specific demographics.  An example of this would be a  financial institution that caters to the Hispanic market. Others focus on professionals or small businesses. If your financial institution builds its […]

Bullet-proof Your Gift Selections – Step 9- Retail Trends Provide Real Insight

For most merchandise, there are two markets in which they sell: retail and special markets.  Special Markets includes incentive marketing. Keeping tabs on what’s happening in the retail market, however, can be a good indicator to the success of an item as an incentive.  How can understanding retail markets affect your incentive program? Consider this. […]

Bullet-proof Your Gift Selections – Step 8- Learn the Power of Market Research

Using real people to test new incentives is a valuable tool in helping to bullet-proof gift selections. River Rock Marketing uses a proprietary product screening process called ConsumerNSight™, and product testing is one feed into that model. Let’s review how ConsumerNSight™ is used to find the best gifts for your incentive programs. Use Data to […]

Bullet-proof Your Gift Selections – Step 7- Make Use of Past Gift Performance

One of the best ways to foster success is learning from the past. Past gifting experience can provide great demographic and incentive information that can be used to fine tune your future incentive strategy. At River Rock Marketing, we use historical gifting data to create a profile of your target market. This helps us better […]

Bullet-proof Your Gift Selections – Step 6- Make Logisitcs Work for You

When choosing gift selections for your bank, understanding how logistics can affect your price and delivery goes a long way to making a gifting program successful with minimal hassle. A seasoned gifting partner will consider these things for you as they are making your recommendations, but it’s still a good idea to know for yourself. […]

Bullet-proof Your Gift Selections – Step 5- Understanding Seasonality

You’ve probably heard gift vendors talk about seasonality. Usually, it’s associated with a predictable curve in account opening performance throughout the year. For bullet–proof gift recommendations, seasonality takes a slightly different meaning. How does Geography affect Seasonality? It’s a pretty standard practice to match seasonal gifts to the right period of time. An example would […]

Bullet-proof Your Gift Selections – Step 4- Confirm Availability

You probably think that product availability of a gift recommendation is a no-brainer, but you would be amazed. Many manufacturers promise the world, but can they really deliver? How does River Rock Marketing avoid availability being an issue with our recommendations? While there are multiple things that can affect availability, it usually happens in two […]

Bullet-proof Your Gift Selections – Step 3- Is the Manufacturer Reliable?

A great gift recommendation should not only be attractive to the target audience, but should be easy to execute on. There are two parts to any gift recommendation; the appeal of the gift and reliability of the manufacturer to deliver a quality product on time. The reliability of a manufacturer can make or break a […]