Corporate Gift Giving: How to Engage Employees, Clients and Customers

Giving gifts is mostly for families and friends. It’s a great way to show you care during the holidays, on their birthdays, anniversaries, or even on regular days. But gift-giving also exists in the business world. The goal is simple: you want to strengthen business relationships. However, the practice is a little bit more complicated.

First, there’s gifting etiquette that you should follow carefully. Then, you need to select the right gift, which will mostly depend on the receiver. So, how do you go about corporate gift-giving? Before we delve into that, let’s first talk about what exactly it is.

Corporate Gifting – What It’s About

Corporate gift-giving involves creating a touchpoint with other people, most especially clients, employees, and prospects. As the name implies, you give gifts, which can be in the style of a physical item or a non-physical one. Most of the time, corporate gifts are in physical form and among the most popular choices are:

• Compendiums
• Notepads
• Envelopes
• Desk pads
• Tablet sleeve

For the most part, the most significant purpose of corporate gifting is to drive response, which is typical for gifting prospects. For a customer, you may consider giving a gift to reward their behaviour. For example, the customer made a purchase, met a specific spending amount, referred a friend, or completed a download, survey, or anything similar.

Benefits of Corporate Gift Giving

Corporate gift-giving is valuable. And because it is essential, you should not overlook and skip this step. It’s a crucial part of achieving your customer acquisition goals. If your objective is to reward your employees, this practice is known to improve employee retention.

So, if you’re still in doubt about corporate gifting, simply take a look at the following benefits:

• Potential customers have a higher tendency to respond to your prospecting techniques.
• Employees will feel more appreciated and therefore become more engaged with the company.
• Your present customers will become more loyal to your products and your brand.

Trends suggest that giving gifts to your prospects, employees, and clients or customers should be continued for the years to come. This practice will only keep growing in the next decade, especially with more and more people becoming interested in personalised gifts.

Corporate gifting is vital for the people working with you and those who make (or break) your business. And of course, it’s also crucial for improving your business overall. The activity has a unique power, particularly in creating a more meaningful connection between you and the recipients. The gifts you give to your potential and current customers are excellent motivators so that they become paying customers and loyal ones, respectively.

The same motivators provide the same benefit as you connect with your employees. The gifts are a means to celebrate their success, encourage them to continue working with you, and recognise their roles and achievements that help the company.

Corporate Gifting Best Practices

Giving gifts to your staff, customers, or prospects is not as straightforward as you may want it to be. Just like with gifting your loved ones, you have to pick the best gift that you can afford while considering the recipient’s interests and role in your business. But the biggest reason why corporate gift-giving is not that simple is because there are rules (albeit unspoken) that you should follow. Some of the most important gift-giving guidelines in the corporate world include:

1. Make sure that you check policy compliance. While you’re free to send gifts to your staff or other people outside the company, it’s a wise practice to check your local and state policies. Don’t forget to learn about the corporate policies of the other party (recipient). Suppose you’re sending a gift to a government institution, for instance. In that case, you have to be careful since there are strict regulations to adhere to.
2. Certain gifts are generally acceptable, such as perishable goods, meals where you are present with the receiver, and gifts with nominal value, including those that bear your company logo. Some examples are customised calendars and executive notepads.
3. The cost of the gift you will give matters. While you don’t want it to be too cheap, you surely don’t wish to spend a fortune either. The price should match the quality of the item you’re giving, ensuring that it positively represents your brand.
4. It always helps to track the success of your corporate gift giving practices. Monitor email responses, engagement, the popularity of the item, and gift success.

Corporate Gift Giving Ideas

What makes an excellent corporate gift? The answer is twofold. First, it should always be appropriate for the occasion or your relationship with the recipient. You don’t want to give a cheap pen to your employee who has been with your company for the last 10 years. The same thing applies to a loyal client who has referred numerous other clients to your business. It’s always a good practice to pick a gift that corresponds to the value of the relationship.

Second, you should choose a gift that’s easy for the recipient to remember you, the gift sender. This one is important, especially if you’re considering giving gifts on special and busy occasions, like Christmas. The receivers will typically get other presents from their friends and loved ones. You want the recipient to immediately think of you whenever they see your gift. A few tips to achieve this objective are adding a personalised card with your message and having your logo in the gift itself.

Customised gifts will always be in. We recommend selecting a gift that you believe will be useful for the recipient, such as notebooks, diaries, calendars, and tablet sleeves.