In this episode of the Revenue Café Podcast, Breadcrumbs co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Gary Amaral and Director of Sales Joe Aicher are joined by Kanako Tone, Marketing Operations Manager of Alyce. Gary and Kanako discuss how personalization in gifting and tailoring your gifts can be beneficial in building relationships with your clients. 

Kanako Tone calls herself a MarTech enthusiast who is passionate about connecting the dots between marketing activities and revenue generation. Kanako uses Data Analytics and Marketing Operations to provide a seamless brand experience for her clients. This makes her an excellent fit for a company like Alyce that focuses on personalizing those experiences for other marketing companies who send gifts while connecting with their prospective clientele and customer base. Kanako has a background that includes an MBA, Marketo Certificate, and years of experience managing various marketing campaigns from all stages, from email to social media and trade shows. 

Alyce is a unique concept to help create personal bonds with your customers, partners, and prospects through one-to-one gifting. Alyce refers to their tailored approach as a personal experience platform. Alyce takes care of the selection and shipping process to save your sales and marketing departments time and money in this stage. 

Key Takeaways

1. Tailoring the gifting experience can leave a range of lasting impacts. Not everyone drinks coffee, and when receiving a thoughtful gift, it can bring attention to your company while the personalization can open up a better relationship with potential clients, as well as your existing customers and clientele. 
2. Use your collected data for its best purpose. There are many different tools for many scenarios and you want to find the best tools for what you need to accomplish your goal. Each client is going to have different needs and the right tool will solve your problems where the wrong tools will hinder your progress. 
3. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when building relationships with your clients, potential clients and customers. Each business and person is going to have different needs. Personalization helps your clients feel seen for their needs and building those relationships opens you to the information you need to help them build their own businesses. 

Some topics we discussed included

• Alyce’s philosophy is on personalized gifts for customers instead of the typical coffee gift card or gift basket. 
• Alyce uses a combination of AI and a research team to tailor the gift for the client; they offer an alternative selection in exchange for the undesired gift they may have been set to receive. 
• Kanako’s personal experience with receiving a company gift and how choice made an impact on her perspective. 
• Any company that has a sales department or a marketing department is available for Alyce. 
• Kanako tells us the company’s history from its foundation five years ago through the growth they’ve met today with new knowledge and experience. 
• Gary tells us about the brainstorming process with Breadcrumbs between sending a generic gift, actual breadcrumbs, and a variety of options. 
• Joe and Gary talk about their own recent experiences with promotional gifting with Breadcrumbs clients. 
• Kanako tells us how Alyce offers you to change or select the gift and the option to turn that gift into a donation if you prefer. 
• Kanako tells us about her experience working with campaign organizations and event organizations in marketing over to the RevOps based position at Alyce. 
• Gary and Kanako talk about the importance of proper data organization and the compromises you make to fulfill your customers’ needs. 
• Kanako weighs out and tells us what her most used tools are in her tech-stack arsenal and how she uses them. 
• Kanako tells us how the five years of data with the company allows them to confidently be in a place between building and optimization.