Guru’s Guide to Family Gatherings
How to use Guru for family, in-laws, and fad dietary lifestyles.
The Holidays are a magical time for friends and family. They can often be a stressful time for that same reason. With the right set of tools and a solid game plan, they don’t have to be. Think outside the box and consider how digital marketing can help manage your family headaches.
Here are a few ways to use Guru Systems to handle your family issues this holiday season:
Herd the Cats
You already know that keeping everyone on the same page for the holidays is going to be an achievement. Maybe you’re on the other end and simply need to get your beautiful self to the main event. Either way text messaging will keep everyone in sync with one another.
Are you one step ahead on this one but fearing that dreaded family group chat? Take the control back from your aunt and use Guru to manage the text broadcasts to your family. With Guru you get to be the only one sending texts and you can even disallow incoming replies if you don’t want to hear it.
Already know what to expect? Schedule your texts ahead of time and make your life easier. That way you don’t have to remember to text your in laws the address, or remind your cousin that yes it is in fact going on today. Alternatively consider convincing your bossy sibling to take over and don’t worry about remembering things, you’re off the hook! (My personal preference)
Pro Tip: You can text your family a picture of your sibling’s new boyfriend to make sure no one misses out on awkward questions!
Show Favorites
The experts say its bad to let your kids know which one you love most, but what do they know? Showing favorites goes with family gatherings like turkey and stuffing. Reward the smartest niece and set an example for the others with Guru’s loyalty rewards.
Whether you’re hooking them up with the newest selection of Paw Patrol toys, GameStop gift cards, or auctioning off your love with your own “vouchers”, your affection is best expressed with an online prize menu.
Don’t have a POS system for managing family and distributing loyalty points? Don’t sweat it, although we pride ourselves on integrating with other systems, you don’t need it. You can make your own loyalty rules and keep it as simple as uploading that spreadsheet you’ve been keeping of who’s most deserving of your love. Psh, what elf on a shelf?
Pro Tip: Make sure to let everyone know their standing with your love. Set up a text message broadcast channel specific to updates on everyone’s placement in your heart.
Fake the Thoughtfulness
Stop accepting the reputation as the one who forgets or doesn’t pay attention. Wow the in-laws with all of the family details and names you remembered. Best of all, you can do it without any brain games or needing to actually pay attention!
Guru allows you to personalize your text messages. For example, you can add [fname] to the body of your message and automatically insert each recipient’s first name. Get creative and re-use this feature for things like people’s hobbies or interests. Imagine how warm people will feel towards you if you text them “Hey man, can’t wait to see you this year and hear all about your [insert_hobby_here]!” ...talk about a boss move.
For advanced users, you also have the ability to personalize messages with each recipient’s current level of loyalty points. Include this field within your message as well to incorporate the rules to your affection and really drive the point home. For example: “Hey man, can’t wait to see you this year and hear all about your [insert_hobby_here]. After all, that’s the reason you have [loyaltypoints_quantity] points worth of my affection!”
Pro Tip: have your spouse or more responsible relative help you create a list of everyone’s hobbies and/or profession.
Cut the Gift List
Guru’s text messaging platform comes equipped with all the compliance tools you need to sleep soundly. Recipients can easily opt out from future messages and this makes it easy for you to ensure everyone hearing from you is doing so happily.
Take some pride and only invest time in communicating with those who want to hear from you. It’s so easy that if anyone simply replies “STOP” to your text broadcast, they’ll be automatically unsubscribed. You’ll be able to see a list of all those who have unsubscribed and who you’ll no longer need to worry about buying a gift for this year.
Once they realize they’re off your list they may want to join again. They can do so by replying “START” to your last broadcast, but this doesn’t mean you need to let them back in. They can also reply “HELP” if they’re really sorry about it in order to get instructions. Take back control over your holiday gift budget and make it easy on yourself to buy less gifts this year.
Pro Tip: Help weed out any members of your broadcast who are simply taking up bandwidth and won’t be returning the love by including ‘txtSTOP2end’ at the end of your message.
Master the Menu
Trying to keep up with everyone’s dietary fads? Last year your cousin was vegan, this year your uncle’s doing keto, next year your sibling will be kosher.
Make it easy on yourself and set up a menu of options ahead of time. Set up some choices you’re ready to handle and have them pick their menu ahead of time.
Letting your family members view the menu and work on their platter ahead of time will spread the joy by building anticipation. This may seem like a little much, but heck, give being a proactive a shot and see what it’ll do for you. Organize your menu by category so you make sure you’re not missing any food groups, and then provide a few options for each group. Make sure to rope in your family members on this, don’t provide all the menu items yourself. (Those free-loaders!)
The point isn’t to make platters a la carte, its to know what dishes need to be prepared and approximately what size. Think of it as a voting system. You can even incorporate automatic receipt printing if you want to have a voucher system. That way you can make sure only people who voted serve themselves first and don’t get the food taken up by “non-voters”. This is also a great system to implement if you’re observing festivus.
Pro Tip: You can create various independent versions of your menu with different backgrounds and customization. This comes in clutch if you’ve got five thanksgivings and a couple of friendsgivings in the pipe-line.
All in all, the Holidays are a magical time, but they can be stressful. Family gatherings are difficult, so Guru Systems works to make them easy.
Check out some of our other articles to learn more or sign up for a demo here.