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Key Takeaways
- Personalize gifts by understanding recipients’ preferences, ensuring relevance and appreciation.
- Plan corporate gifting strategies around key milestones or achievements to foster loyalty.
- Balance quality and cost, creating different tiers of gifts for clients, employees, and partners.
- Avoid excessive branding to maintain the personal appeal of gifts.
It’s impossible to forget the excitement of opening that present. You think you know what’s inside; you’ve made no secret that you wanted it over the last few months. But still, whatever it is remains patiently hidden behind the neatly folded paper.
Whether you like unwrapping your presents in a frenzy of tearing paper or you open gifts with surgical precision, there is nothing else in the world like receiving a gift from someone you care for – or giving one.
Why Strategic Corporate Gifting Matters
While corporate gifting may not seem as personal as a big birthday or something under the tree at Christmas, it creates a very personal touchpoint with an employee, customer, prospect, or client. It can boost your brand’s reputation and inspire greater productivity, fostering better relationships that last longer.
When a company considers strategic corporate gifting by creating a deliberate plan for the budget, selection, and timing, the returns can be significant. A good strategy reduces turnover, increases loyalty, and ultimately improves revenue.
This is important to get right, however. A bad corporate gifting strategy can lead to losses.
So whether you’re looking at corporate gifting for employees or clients, whether you’re a corporate gift strategist or maybe the owner of an online store, we have put together some great tips to help you be strategic about corporate gifting.
So, why does corporate gifting matter?
- Strengthening Client Relationships: Thoughtful customer gifts demonstrate that you value your clients beyond the purely transactional. By taking the time to understand their interests, preferences, or even their company culture, you can select unique corporate gifts that resonate on a personal level.
- Boosting Employee Morale and Recognition: Your employees are the backbone of your organization, and recognizing their contributions is crucial for maintaining high morale and productivity. Strategic corporate gifting can be a powerful way to acknowledge achievements, celebrate milestones, or simply show appreciation for their hard work.
- Enhancing Brand Loyalty and Awareness: Corporate gifts offer a unique opportunity to subtly reinforce your brand messaging and create positive associations with your company. When a recipient uses or enjoys a high-quality, relevant gift bearing your company’s logo or a subtle brand element, it serves as a positive reminder of your business.
- Creating Opportunities for Engagement: Strategic gifting can be integrated into broader marketing and sales strategies to create meaningful touchpoints with clients and prospects. For example, a well-timed gift can be used to follow up after a successful meeting, to celebrate a new partnership, or even as a creative way to re-engage with dormant clients.
What is Corporate Gifting?
Corporate Gifting is giving personalized items, branded merchandise, technology, or health and wellness products to clients, employees, prospects, or partners.
Gifting increases brand loyalty, improves retention and repeat purchasing, and ensures consistent revenue and growth.
You can boost morale and improve retention by recognizing employees and their efforts through gifts. This will enhance your culture and also your efficiency.
Strategic gifting reflects a great working culture, one that promotes appreciation. This is important because companies with a better reputation will attract top talent, new clients, and investors.
The most important aspect of corporate gifting is its capacity to foster great relationships. A business is only ever as good as the professional bonds between management, employees, and clients.
Ensuring these bonds are nurtured means you can expect long-term partnerships and more referrals, directly driving revenue.
How do you create an effective corporate gifting strategy?
If you’re a corporate gift strategist, there are some things you can do to ensure that you stand out. A great gift can be a powerful message of appreciation. Below are some tips and tricks to ensure your strategy is effective:
Know your audience: It’s crucial to ensure that your gifts are tailored and personal. It’s more than clairvoyance. Running surveys, getting feedback, and paying attention to lifestyles and tastes will all give you invaluable data to ensure that your gifts are appropriate and appreciated.
Gift wisely: Budgets are important, so triaging your gifts is a wise choice. Ensure that the most appreciated people know that they are appreciated. It’s important to balance cost and quality. It may be worth considering tiers for clients, employees, and partners. However, in every case, quality is better than quantity.
Time it well: overgifting is an easy trap to fall into. Luckily it can be avoided by gifting according to specific milestones. These can be related to important dates for your business, year-end or after each quarter, for example, or more personal, to celebrate anniversaries or holidays.
Make it personal: Subtle is key, as overbranding can diminish the gift’s personal touch. Messages should be personalized, and branding should be kept tasteful. The idea is to influence without overwhelming.
Following these tips will ensure your gifts have the maximum impact, improving your reputation and ultimately positively impacting your bottom line.
Top Strategic Corporate Gifting Ideas
We work with clients across industries who have some pretty great products. We’d like to showcase some of our favorite products that can meet your corporate gifting needs this year. These gifts are unique, quirky, and delicious.
Strategic corporate gifting involves more than just handing out promotional items. To truly make an impact, it’s essential to consider the diverse range of gift options available and select those that best resonate with your recipients and align with your objectives.
Here’s a closer look at various categories of corporate gifts, including ideas perfect for holiday gifts:
Practical & Functional Gifts: These gifts offer utility and can become a part of the recipient’s daily routine, ensuring repeated positive exposure to your brand or the sentiment behind the gift.
- High-Quality Tech Gadgets: In our increasingly digital world, thoughtful tech gifts are often highly appreciated. Consider items like portable chargers, sleek wireless earbuds, smart home assistants, or even high-quality webcams for the home office. Including features like wireless charging can add significant appeal.
- Desk Accessories with Flair: Elevate the workspace with sophisticated desk accessories. Personalized notebooks and journals, elegant pens, ergonomic mousepads, or even small desk organizers can add a touch of professionalism and make the workday more enjoyable. Opting for quality materials like stainless steel and subtle branding can leave a lasting positive impression.
- Travel Essentials for the On-the-Go Professional: For clients or employees who travel frequently, practical travel gifts can be incredibly useful. Think durable and stylish luggage tags, compact portable coffee mugs, universal travel adapters, or even comfortable neck pillows. These show consideration for their lifestyle and can become trusted companions on their journeys.
Experiential Gifts: Creating Lasting Memories: In a world saturated with material possessions, experiences can offer a unique and memorable way to connect with recipients.
- Tickets to Engaging Events: Offering tickets to concerts, sporting events, theater performances, or industry conferences aligns with individual interests or provides opportunities for entertainment and networking. Tailoring the event to the recipient’s known preferences demonstrates a high level of thoughtfulness.
- Gift Certificates for Enriching Activities: Consider gift certificates for activities like cooking classes, spa treatments, wine tasting sessions, or even adventure experiences like hot air balloon rides. These gifts allow recipients to indulge in personal passions or try something new, creating positive memories associated with your generosity.
- Curated Subscription Boxes: Subscription services catering to various interests, such as gourmet coffee, books, artisanal cheeses, or wellness products, provide ongoing enjoyment and a recurring reminder of your thoughtfulness. The key is to select a box that aligns with the recipient’s hobbies or lifestyle.
Personalized & Branded Gifts: Adding a Unique Touch: Personalization elevates a gift from a mere item to a meaningful gesture, while subtle branding can reinforce your company’s identity in a positive way. A custom corporate gift truly stands out.
- Engraved Keepsakes: Items like pens, keychains, picture frames, or even small trophies engraved with the recipient’s name or a significant date add a personal touch and transform the gift into a cherished memento.
- Custom-Designed Apparel and Accessories: High-quality apparel or accessories featuring tasteful company branding or a personalized design can be a stylish and practical way to increase brand visibility while making the recipient feel special. Think premium jackets, scarves, or even customized water bottles.
- Thoughtfully Curated Gift Baskets or Gift Sets: Instead of generic pre-made baskets, consider creating custom gift sets tailored to the recipient’s preferences. Include a selection of high-quality items, perhaps incorporating local products or items related to their hobbies, along with subtle branding.
Gourmet Food & Beverage Gifts: A Treat for the Senses: Food and beverage gifts are often universally appreciated, especially around holidays or as a gesture of celebration.
- Artisanal Gift Baskets or Gift Sets: Elevate the traditional fruit basket with curated selections of gourmet cheeses, fine chocolates, premium crackers, and perhaps a bottle of exquisite wine. Focus on high-quality, unique items that offer a delightful culinary experience.
- Specialty Coffee and Tea Sets: For the coffee or tea aficionado, a selection of premium blends, unique brewing accessories, or a subscription to a specialty roaster can be a thoughtful and appreciated gift.
- Gift Certificates to Fine Dining Establishments: Offering a gift certificate to a renowned local restaurant provides an opportunity for a memorable dining experience and shows appreciation for the recipient’s taste.
How do you enter the corporate gifting market?
Knowing what makes a good corporate gifting strategy is essential to run a successful online store. The big question is how to get corporate gifting orders.
The good news is that Fahrenheit Marketing works with many corporate gifting stores.
Below, we’ve distilled some tried and tested tips that have proven to be effective:
- Do your research: the type of gifts you stock should track trends in the industries you’re focussed on. People in tech may want different things than those working in health and beauty. You can stand out from the crowd by conducting research and analyzing what’s popular.
- Cater to a broad audience: some gifts are more useful and appreciated than others. While personalization is key, stocking universally useful gifts such as health and wellness products, wireless chargers, noise-canceling headphones, or even a gift card can greatly improve your order conversion.
- Adapt your existing products: Most corporate gifting strategies rely on personalization. This means that offering additional services like engraving, custom logos, and personal messages will attract more customers (while providing you with additional revenue streams).
- Be credible: Your marketing should demonstrate how you’ve helped other customers. Case studies, testimonials, and referrals are excellent for attracting new business. Alongside traditional routes such as trade shows and industry events, targeted ads can ensure you get in front of the right person at the right time.
In a saturated market, the most important thing you can do is stand out. Offering superior goods and services goes a long way to ensuring long-term, repeat business.
Most corporate gifting strategies have a clear timeline, meaning that a good relationship can pay dividends for many years, so providing an exceptional, easy, error-free service is key.
How to ensure the best service for corporate gifting strategists?
Getting things right is so important that it’s difficult to overstate. From the moment a client places an order through personalization, packing, and delivery, providing seamless service is the best way to stand out.
One of the most common problems online stores face is right at the beginning of the process, when people input orders manually. This opens the door to all manner of errors.
One of our clients once received an order for 10 branded pens, but due to an error processing, they sent out 100. Naturally, the customer didn’t want to pay, and the stock had to be written off as a loss. We worked with them to ensure this never happened again.
Here at Fahrenheit, we work with online stores to streamline these processes and ensure errors and losses like this can be avoided. One of our most popular tools is the Offline Order Importer.
What is the Offline Order Importer?
This is a simple, easy-to-use tool for importing orders from offline sources directly into BigCommerce.
It enables a seamless data flow with real-time order processing and inventory management updates. It dramatically improves the quality of life for your staff with intelligent error detection, easy search features, and best-in-class security.
The Offline Order Importer has tangible benefits from day one:
- Improve revenue by reducing the costs associated with labor and mistakes. The tool also frees up your staff to work on other revenue-generating activities.
- Enables your business to scale by removing limits on how many orders you can process in a given timeframe. It also removes the additional headcount and cost required to scale the business manually.
- Grows your client base by ensuring seamless and accurate fulfillment of orders, leading to a great customer experience and more referrals.
We know generating a successful gifting strategy may seem laborious, but the benefits can really outweigh the costs. Reach out to our full-service digital agency for insights on other unique marketing channels. From web development to UX design, we’ve got you covered. Happy Gifting!