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When a customer has waited patiently for their new home to be completed, move-in day is a BIG deal. It marks the delivery of a gorgeous and thoughtfully designed product, and it's the final milestone in the new home buyer journey. The transformation of a house into a home begins on move-in day when new home owners begin to make the house their own. It's also the point at which New Home Builders can begin the post-sale relationship that is so important to retaining brand loyal home buyers as their home and lifestyle needs evolve. The welcome home experience is designed to delight and create joy about this important life milestone and to continue to cultivate a bond with the customer. We're excited about our sharing our new collection of Welcome Home Gifting solutions. Every year we create a new collection of Welcome gifts that our clients customize to help create that all important joyful moment when the keys are delivered and a new homeowner moves into the house of their dreams. Welcome to our new collection:  Fall 2019-2020 30+ New Welcome Home gifting solutions Welcome to our total Welcome Home Collection: Current AND New 80+ gifting solutions "Welcome" is about how you make people feel. It's why New Home Builder Marketers (and all Marketers) are talking about customer experiences. Maya Angelou says it well here in the quote below, and this is why the "Welcome" on move-in day can be so very powerful in shaping your future relationship with a customer. How do your customers feel on move-in day? What kinds of experiences are you curating for them?    Thanks for stopping by!  Cheers! Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger   This blog is sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc., a complete solution of products that support the entire new home buyer journey. We help power excellent customer experiences. We are tweeting, posting, writing and Linking In. Here’s where you can find and follow us. Twitter: @HomebuilderMktg Instagram: @builderpromotions Facebook: Facebook.com/builderpromotions LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/builderpromotions/

It's Fall already and our Gift Set Solutions are a big hit, so we are sharing the Look Books to inspire anyone with Marketing Events in the 4th quarter.   "Presentation ready" is a term that is resonating with everyone. It's the idea that you can eliminate the busy work of packaging brand gift bags during the time-pressed days leading up to customer events. The Gift sets in the style guides below, feature fresh prepackaged brand marketing tools that deliver one stylish customized package, an assortment of themed gifts and a "presentation ready" solution for your Events.   Price points range from $10 - 20 and include professional, lifestyle and consumer trend brand collateral. Our goal is always to combine the creative with the practical so your target audience is using your brand collateral in their daily lives at work, at home or on the go as a small but significant piece of their experience with your brand. Enjoy the content guides below, and look for more "presentation-ready" solutions as in the coming weeks as we launch our 2019-2020 Welcome Home Collection. Thanks for stopping by. Cheers!   Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger P.S. If you love these gift set solutions, there are more Look Book themes. Just ask me. Happy to help.  leslie@builderpromotions.com

Picnic Gift Sets Fall Event Gifts made easy. Learn More Thank You Gift Sets Practice Realtor gratitude. Learn More

Fitness Gift Sets Home is where we thrive. Fitness gives us freedom to enjoy life. Learn More Wellness Gift Sets Home is about well-being. Pair wellness themed gifts with Openings and Tours. Learn More

 

Today is Thursday,  and as I drink my coffee and check email I allow myself the joy of anticipating the weekend ahead. Full disclosure, my favorite two days of the week are Saturday and Sunday. I love the weekend! I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. I also love my job and I appreciate the fact that I am in a business where I support amazing marketing professionals who are devoted to helping consumers create memories in a new home. What makes me happy about supporting our clients is that in addition to a more than full-time job, most of them are managing a more than full family life at home. They are professional and personal rock stars to us. I genuinely like working for our clients which makes me content with Monday-Friday. But let’s talk about weekends and how the joy of the weekend can infuse our work week and reduce stress. First we have to talk about the latest trend in "sparking joy". I promise this is NOT a blog post about tidying or organizing your home. Stay with me. Everyone knows about “sparking joy” an idea introduced by home tidying and organizing celebrity, Marie Kondo. Marie Kondo has introduced the idea that you can clear physical clutter for a better and more harmonic life at home. Her system includes going through all your “stuff” and asking yourself, “does this spark joy?” and then recycling anything that does not. A friend of mine tried this and told me 100% of her shoes sparked joy and thus she could not part with them. In spite of that, evidently the thrift stores in the U.S. are under siege from a tidal wave of people testing this theory and using her system to clear out their clutter at home. I have noticed that “Spark Joy" is now a brand and probably being trademarked. But I believe that no one can or should claim "joy" for their own or for their company. It’s one of the most abundant renewable resources we have. And sharing it usually multiplies its impact.   So that got me thinking about “moments that spark joy”……..small things that give me a little boost in the work week, especially. Yesterday, I was thinking about the “Thursday lift” and the little spark of joy I feel when I allow myself to think of Thursday as a soft entry into the weekend. Most weekends I have plans to be outside hiking with my friends. The combination of the great outdoors and connections with people who are important to me, is a source of joy. The act of thinking about my weekend actually “sparks joy” for me and can carry me through even the most intense work day. When I share that with someone it doubles down on the joy I feel anticipating it. It's a happy moment that seems to infuse my work week and sustain me. If you feel that Thursday lift, we'd love to know? What weekend moments spark joy for you? Whether it’s the anticipation of pancakes with little ones, a long bike ride with friends, Yoga, a delicious long sleep, time for a home improvement project, space to immerse yourself in a good book, time to do nothing, cheering for your kids' team or that 30 minutes you claim for yourself at a local coffee shop, we all have those things that bring joy and the anticipation can have a positive effect in the workplace.  We are trying an experiment and  devoting our brand Facebook page to “Moments that Spark Joy” as a way to accumulate moments of joy, and add a “lift” to your work week. We hope you will take a moment to share your weekend moments of joy on our Facebook page as part of the Builder Promotions Community. You can write a short post or share an image with a few words. There’s something about Joy that’s completely infectious when you share it.  Thanks for stopping by! We'd love to hear from you at www.facebook.com/builderpromotions  Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger CXO, Builder Promotions, Inc.    

This blog post is devoted to the Marketers who are dreamers and visionaries who wish they had more time to be creative in service of their prospects and customers.  I don't know about you, but sometimes I wish I had more people to give wings to all my creative ideas.  It's often hard to find the time to fully develop and implement a vision. I usually need help. Fortunately for my work-related ideas, our supply chain is a universe of worldwide resources that collectively have the ability to help turn creative visions into tangible brand product solutions. The sky is the limit and people genuinely want to give their time to help.  I love this image (below) because it is what so many Marketers face daily. A lot of us in Marketing derive joy and inspiration from using our creativity and imagination to innovate and find new ways to connect our brands with new customers. But the reality of Marketing is that there is a long daily list of "to do's" that are necessary to the job, and they are not all super creative. This is why it pays to have partners who can give wings to your creative ideas or vision.   In today's blog post we are sharing a few examples of how we give wings to client creative ideas. It's always fun to see how a good collaboration can turn a Marketer's vision into a reality. Can creative vision and budgets align? A couple months ago, a client called to describe a product she wanted and a price point she needed for budget purposes. This high end gift did not exist in that price point because of how the supply chain works. We needed to reorganize our supply chain to produce her gifting solution. She wanted to standardize all the Welcome gifts used for one region and she had a gifting solution she loved already but no way to buy it within her budget. I emailed my Sourcing team in charge of Asia manufacturing and within a week we had a way to make the exact product within the budget she required. I love our partners. I constantly send pictures of something we want to Source and while I sleep, our wonderful AsiaDirect™ team produces creative solutions that can be made and delivered with all of the necessary certifications for the North American market. Just this week I sent a picture of a cool smart phone mini-printer to our team. It costs $150 on the retail market.....but a very different story through our AsiaDirect™ team. Incubating a new Welcome Experience. Another client had been incubating an idea about how to upgrade the welcome experience for her customers. As part of the solution, we designed packaging for high end drink ware with lifestyle messaging to create a beautifully presented set for entertaining.The outcome was a stylish contemporary take on a retail gift package that delivered a creative, upscale brand welcome to new customers. Our inventive packaging team loved the challenge of creating a gifting presentation that no one else was using. It was fun to let them take that idea and run with it. I think our client loved that she could have a creative idea and that we would make it happen for her. She's one of those busy Marketers with a lot of vision and a big long list of not so creative tasks that involve leading one of the largest and most competitive market regions for her company.   Contemporary uniforming speaks volumes to Customers, but how does one create a Brand Fashion line? Uniforming today is really about Brand Fashion. Is your company culture Corporate, Casual or Cool? How do you design comfortable stylish apparel that lets team members reflect their personal styles within a brand fashion line that is reflective of your corporate culture? In an increasingly noisy marketplace, brand fashion gives companies a way to visually deliver a distinctive brand look and feel wherever team members engage customers or guests. But who has the time to design and manufacture a new line of brand fashion apparel? I love that we can ask our brand fashion team to create a story board with creative visuals to begin to transform a client's creative vision into a tangible reality. And it's always rewarding to hear the delight voiced by our clients when they see the brand apparel collection neatly displayed in their own e-Store portal, ready for delivery. It's a truly a tidy and elegantly simple solution that just needed wings.    If you can dream it, we can make it. So next time you are dreaming about a way to use a tangible brand product to connect with customers, remember there is a universe of resources ready to give your ideas wings. Thanks for stopping by. Cheers, Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger This blog is sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc., a complete solution of products that support the entire new home buyer journey. We are a Marketing partner with endless resources to transform your creative vision into a tangible gifting solution.   

Welcome to our Blog! We're glad you stopped by.  The other day at work, I went from feeling really stressed and overly-busy to happy and relaxed in the course of an hour. This may sound like the start of a blog post about workplace stress reducers. Please stay with me. The stress reducing activity was unexpected. Surprisingly, the activity that prompted my feeling so good was a seemingly tedious task to call 17 business unit clients about the shipping status of their orders (unplanned on a very busy day and on top of our regular system for updating clients). It was a high exposure project with a deadline and we needed to go the extra mile. What happened in that hour was surprising. I shifted from stressed and uptight to feeling inexplicably great, happy and relaxed. I reflected on the 17 calls. How had they made me "feel"? I had been the recipient of a well-crafted, thoughtful customer experience and it made me feel good, relaxed and happy after 17 consistent phone calls. People (humans) answered the phone and they were warm, friendly and polite in a way that made me feel they wanted to be talking to me. What literally stopped me in my tracks was that as I was introducing myself quickly (so as not to waste anyone’s time), the person answering said, “Hi, how are you, Leslie?” I was stunned and slowed down to say, “I’m well thank you. How are you?”  Then I asked to speak to our client contact and when she said she’d connect me, I thanked her to which she said, “your are welcome”. All of this in about 45 seconds. When I spoke to the client contact, it happened again --the warm welcome, and appreciation for the information I was sharing. Another thank you followed at the end of that call. I continued this for close to an hour. I noticed that the Headquarters office answered for the Business unit office when they were not able to catch their phone and another warm, upbeat welcoming human was equally as hospitable. At this point you may wonder why I'm writing about this as if it's magic. It's not magic of course, but it's incredibly rare. This brand understands that people who call them are guests in there experience. When I did reach a few voice mails, the automated system announced that I could “at any time” say the name of the person I wanted to reach. What? No pressing the phone pad to spell out a name? I could interrupt the long message - awesome. I began to understand what was happening. This brand had figured out that when consumers DO decide to reach out by phone, that means they really need/want to talk to a human, and preferably someone who is genuinely happy to hear from them. Auto-attendants for the most part make us "feel" that the company would really rather we engage online and use self-serve options. This brand made me feel that they wanted to hear from me, and I think that consumers who find it most convenient to call them will reward them handsomely for being thoughtful about their need to communicate with a human via phone. Here are the small but very significant details about the happy and warm humans, that made me go from stressed and uptight about my unscheduled hour of shipping update calls to genuinely relaxed and happy for the rest of the day. 

• Humans answer the phone and sound like they like their job and they like you and are happy to hear from you. Someone has hired naturally hospitable people or trained people to act hospitably. Likely it’s both. 
• This brand understands that people in the age of technology who make a phone call really want a human and they have gone to the trouble to deploy Headquarters team members to answer the phone when a Business unit office can’t cover their own.
• The simple step of investing in voice-activated “speak the name” rather than spell out the name on your key pad, is a recognition of the fact that people who make a call really want to speak to someone. If you use voice mail, you need let them know you are happy for the contact by reducing the pain and torture of automated attendants.

How are you hard-wiring customer experience design in your company? What are the small but significant details that underpin your unique brand experiences? How does your brand make people feel? In our company, we have created a written inventory of brand touch points to which we then apply 3 experience filters. We want to embed company behaviors and processes that make people feel that, in every single brand touch, they are Welcomed, that we Value them and that they Matter to us. There is always room for improvement, and the commitment to thinking about how people feel, means that if we fall short, we know about it fast and we can quickly address it to improve the experience going forward.  Thanks for stopping by. Please come again! Cheers!  Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger Our blog is sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc., is a complete solution of builder-centric branded products and print collateral that support the entire new home buyer journey. Our products help deliver customer experiences.  We are tweeting, pinning, posting, writing and Linking In. Here’s where you can find and follow us. Twitter: @HomebuilderMktg Instagram: @builderpromotions Pinterest Board: Fun, Creative, Useful Gift Ideas Facebook: Facebook.com/builderpromotions LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/builderpromotions/    

It's summer time and our clients are all asking about outdoor themed gifts to create memorable experiences at New Home Community marketing events. Whether it's a farmer's market, live music, BBQ, Yoga in the park, or an outdoor themed Open House, our clients are looking for lifestyle gift items that extend the brand experience long after an event finishes. The team at Builder Promotions has been searching for pre-packaged Gift Sets because time is scarce for our busy clients and we know that the closer we can get a brand gift to "presentation ready", the easier it is for clients to create a great brand experience that is fun, memorable and a reminder of the homes consumers' love in communities they've visited.  We're excited to offer 4 new BP Brand Style Guides with over 20+  fresh new Gift Sets we think everyone will love. Add your logo or messaging and we package all the items into one pre-designed printed gift box "presentation ready" for your new home buying customers and prospects.                          Here are the titles of our Gift Set Style Guides which each have an abundance of creative ideas that are easy on the budget and present beautifully to new home buying prospects and customers, Realtors and employees. There are multiple color/design options for pre-designed packaging to pair with your branding. This is seriously fun shopping and it's work-related, so go ahead - indulge in a 10 minute creative break! Click the links below to peruse each guide and have fun pairing the color options with your own brand.                                               BP Style Guide  - Picnic Gift Sets                                               BP Style Guide - Thank you Gift Sets                                               BP Style Guide - Fitness Gift Sets                                               BP Style Guide - Wellness Gift Sets What kind of brand experiences are you designing? Is the experience economy changing the way you Market to new home buyers? Sometimes a small brand touch goes a long way to enhance that experience. Thanks for stopping by! Cheers, Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger Our blog sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc., is a complete solution of builder-centric branded products and print collateral that support the entire new home buyer journey. We are tweeting, pinning, posting, writing and Linking In. Here’s where you can find and follow us. Twitter: @HomebuilderMktg Instagram: @builderpromotions Pinterest Board: Fun, Creative, Useful Gift Ideas Facebook: Facebook.com/builderpromotions LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/builderpromotions/  

We've just sent out our Spring Selling Season post delivering Marketing inspiration to help you make connections with new home buying prospects. We know you are thinking about how to optimize the busy spring home shopping season because we are receiving daily requests for Event ideas, Flag and Welcome mat refresh supplies, Welcome Home gift updates and creative ideas for engaging large Realtors in your markets. In our email you can view the following four Marketing Guides which have been designed to help you turn your brand touches into memorable brand experiences.

• Home Builder Event Marketing Ideas Guide
• Realtor Engagement Ideas Guide
• Welcome Home Experience Ideas Guide
• Home Builder site Apparel and Uniform Guide

You read the email here and view the guides directly:  BP Marketing Inspiration Thanks for stopping by! Cheers, Leslie Bridges, Chief Experience Officer We are tweeting, pinning, posting, writing and Linking In. Here’s where you can find and follow us. Twitter: @HomebuilderMktg Instagram: @builderpromotions Pinterest Board: Fun, Creative, Useful Gift Ideas Facebook: Facebook.com/builderpromotions LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/builderpromotions/ Our blog sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc., is a complete solution of builder-centric branded products and print collateral that support the entire new home buyer journey.

Builders are updating their brands, launching new mortgage services, innovating smart home platforms and finding creative ways to deliver customer experiences in their markets at a brisk pace. Here are some of our favorites: Taylor Morrison - Dorothy Mortgage Technology D.R. Horton - Home is Connected - Smart Home Platform TRI Pointe Homes - Smart Home Innovation HomeSmart^R Minto Homes Post-Sale Experience Mastercare^sm Ashton Woods Inspiration Collection - Realtor Program Our large builder clients are almost always in "launch mode" for a new service or experience, Community or Corporate brand update. All of these require a consistent brand message when they are brought to market. In brand marketing, there is only one version of the truth and centralized resources are an easy way to ensure that your brand touches are sending the exact same message wherever a consumer engages with your new home builder brand. Centralization is one of those things that sometimes feels counter-intuitive in an industry that operates in an intentionally decentralized business model that is designed to serve regional home buying preferences. However, our Builder clients are finding ways to centralize their brand marketing so that they can design consistent experiences that differentiate their brand at important milestones in the new home buying process. Signing Day and Welcome Home Experiences are two areas that are being centralized more and more as Builders discover the benefits of creating a customer experience that can differentiate them in all their local markets. Builder Procurement professionals are seeing the benefits of centralization economically too. Companies like Brand Central Solutions provide centralized eco-systems for digital marketing and digital asset management in addition to brand launch portals for marketing collateral and print. Builder Promotions recently helped a top Home Builder centralize their Welcome Experience for their largest market. The outcome was a synchronized effort that supported their three brands in four key regional sub-markets. This helped them differentiate their own brands from each other and all the brands from the regional competition. It was a way to create simplicity for the marketing teams and speak the same brand message to all their new home buying consumers. Brand Central Solutions, a Builder Promotions company, is addressing this shift to centralized resources that are designed specifically to serve an expanding and decentralized organization. You can read about how Brand Central Solutions is approaching all industries with the successful model we've used to help New Home Builders for over 20 years. Are you communicating one version of the Brand truth? Are your systems set up to ensure that this is conveyed in every business unit or Division? We'd love to hear about what you are doing. If you'd like to know more about our Digital Asset Management solutions or our Digital Marketing Command Center, please connect with us. Our software partner, Aprimo is the leader in this space and we are excited about bringing their capabilities to New Home Builders who are investing in customer experience design and digital marketing efficiencies. Thanks for stopping by! We look forward to seeing you again. Cheers! Leslie Bridges Chief Experience Officer Builder Promotions is a branding and procurement solution designed to serve the needs of new home builder marketers. Our platform enables new home builders to centralize 100% of their brand marketing collateral to help drive more consistent brand engagements at the Division level. Our new partnership with Aprimo is designed to help New Home Builders make the most of leading digital marketing technology to streamline the relationship between Corporate Marketing and Division teams in service of the new home buyer consumer.

When the Lot a home buyer has purchased is transformed into the inspiring new home they will live in for years to come, it's time to celebrate!Saying "Welcome Home" on move-in day happens in many small ways that weave together to create an unforgettable experience for new home builder customers. The "Welcome Gift" that sits on the counter in the kitchen, on the dining room table with flowers, or delivered by the Sales team, is a piece of the welcome experience design. We're excited about the 30+ new welcome home gift ideas we've just added to our Welcome Home e-Store. They are designed to help new home builders create a joyful move-in day experience for their customers.   Our New Home Builder clients are discovering the power of using custom packaging and presentation to add an extra "wow-factor" to the home owner welcome experience. These tumbler gift sets were imagined by a creative Builder marketer who asked us to package our stainless tumblers in a custom-designed gift box as Welcome Gifts. Her Agency used our template to design them and we produced the finished welcome gift. For people without easy access to an Agency, we have a Designer who can make you a priority and provide great creative. This kind of custom packaging is available on a project by project basis to help you create memorable customer experiences. You can employ custom designed gift packaging to Wow clients, employees and Realtors alike. Here are 8 ways custom gift presentations can increase the impact of your brand touch.

• Package a luxurious throw for a Welcome Gift. Package all your welcome gifts!
• Give a piece of team apparel in a gift box to recognize employees' contribution to your success.
• Infuse holiday gifts and greetings with clever gift packaging that delivers your holiday message.
• Present home keys on move-in day and deliver them in a gift box that matches your Welcome Gift.
• Organize remotes and garage door openers for new home owners in a custom gift box.
• Reach out to Realtors with a creatively packaged presentation that is easy to deliver to their offices.
• Put an umbrella in a gift package to help qualified buyers conveniently tour your models during the rainy season.
• Package our design center journals to mark the beginning of the design phase of their new home buying journey.

Thanks for stopping by. We look forward to connecting with you again.  We hope you’ll return to check out our blog, Marketing Blueprints to see what resources we’re sharing to support Builder Marketers. We are tweeting, pinning, posting, writing and Linking In. Here’s where you can find and follow us. Twitter: @HomebuilderMktg Instagram: @builderpromotions Pinterest Board: Fun, Creative, Useful Gift Ideas Facebook: Facebook.com/builderpromotions LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/builderpromotions/ Our blog sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc., is a complete solution of builder-centric branded products and print collateral that support the entire new home buyer journey.      

It's almost October and our amazing builder marketing clients are already thinking about how to recognize employees and thank customers and trade partners during the upcoming holiday season. Ultimately everyone has the same goal. We want to convey gratitude to the people who have mattered to our companies this year. The challenge for most Marketers is this: How do you send a holiday brand touch that is all at once professional, creative and warm? How do you authentically demonstrate your gratitude as a brand? Words matter, and without them, a gift can seem impersonal. A handwritten or printed card helps give any gift context. Using a meaningful quote or telling someone why you are thanking them can help you connect your message to an actual gift which is designed to share your gratitude and appreciation.  We've just published our five seasonal Holiday Guides so that our busy clients can easily deliver their message of thanks. The ideal gift helps you convey your company's sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, so thinking about what you want to say is the first step to selecting the perfect gift for your particular audience. Here's a quick look at what each of our Holiday Guides offer this year.  Holiday Idea Guide Gifts of every kind categorized for easy shopping, plus some fun Gourmet Food Towers. Creative and cost-effective custom packaging options for most products. Our designer can apply your graphics to a custom gift box. Holiday Look Book Technology, Recreation, Wine n' Cutlery, Tools,  Crystal,  Drinkware, Office & Executive Holiday Gourmet Gifts Delicious gourmet food gifts for every taste and budget, packaged beautifully and creatively for easy delivery to employees, customers, trade partners and Realtors. Use our fulfillment service to send food gifts directly to offices or residences for each recipient. Apparel Gifting Guide Apparel collections are neatly categorized for you into 4 types of gift recipients. The Nine-t0-Fiver, Weekend Warrior, Comfort Seeker, The Athlete. It's short and easy to view for quick ideas if you think apparel is the ideal gift for your audience. Holiday Card Pop-up Shop Back by popular demand! 800+ holiday cards for your Corporate business needs. People open cards more than they open emails. And this is where you can use words to help tie your gift together with a message of gratitude. Why give gifts? We think that a little appreciation goes a long way.We like contributing to the joy and delight that comes from a creative gift well delivered. We believe in gratitude. We aim for customer joy.  Why do you give gifts?  Thank you for spending time with us here. We look forward to connecting again soon! We hope you’ll return to check out our blog, Marketing Blueprints to see what resources we’re sharing to support Builder Marketers. We are tweeting, pinning, posting, writing and Linking In. Here’s where you can find and follow us. Twitter: @HomebuilderMktg Instagram: @builderpromotions Pinterest Board: Fun, Creative, Useful Gift Ideas Facebook: Facebook.com/builderpromotions LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/builderpromotions/ Our blog sponsored by Builder Promotions, Inc., is a complete solution of builder-centric branded products and print collateral that support the entire new home buyer journey.