You’ve worked with an important new client and want to say thank you, or make your company memorable to them in some way. You’re welcoming a brand-new employee to the team, or helping a stellar partner celebrate a work anniversary or a birthday. Your star sales team just closed an important deal.
What do all these situations have in common? They’re all wonderful opportunities for corporate gifting, aka client and employee appreciation gifts.
As a quick review, corporate gifting is the practice of giving gifts to clients, employees, and business partners as a way to show appreciation, build relationships, and enhance brand awareness. These gifts can take various forms, from personalized items such as mugs and pens to more luxurious items like gift boxes or technology gadgets.
Client and employee appreciation gifts can be powerful tools in building and maintaining strong relationships in the business world, and there are many benefits associated with corporate gifting:
1) Corporate gifts can be used as a promotional tool to increase brand awareness. Even a token gift, such as a small reusable bag or cool-looking pens, can be useful if your company is launching a new product or service. Gifting branded merchandise is a fantastic way to increase your company's visibility and awareness. For example, if you gift a client a branded pen or coffee mug, particularly if it’s high quality, they may use it in front of others, which can lead to increased exposure and potential new customers.
2) Express gratitude for hard work and dedication with an employee appreciation gift or gift box. Even a small token of your appreciation or acknowledgement of a contribution by clients, employees, or partners can lead to increased loyalty, repeat business and even referrals.
3) A corporate gift can build and maintain relationships with clients, suppliers or other business partners, both new and familiar. After all, when people receive gifts, they often feel good about the giver. When these gifts are high-quality and useful, even more so.
4) Improve employee morale by celebrating special events like a company anniversary or other milestone event with special gifts. An onboarding gift box can also be given to new employees as a way of welcoming them to the team. Of course, corporate gifting is also an excellent way to recognize outstanding performance or to reward employees for their hard work and dedication.
5) Gifts are an easy way to connect with remote employees and teams. Whether it's reaching a sales target or celebrating a work anniversary, gifting can help motivate and incentivize employees while showing appreciation for their hard work, as well as help them feel like they’re not so far away.
How do you choose the right gift? The short answer is that client and employee appreciation gifts should always be appropriate, thoughtful, have a good presentation, and within budget.
Appropriate: The best way to avoid ill-suited or irrelevant gifts is by understanding the recipient. A good gifting company will offer a wide variety of gifts, making it easy to give items based on the person’s interests. However, if that’s not feasible, or if you plan to give the same gift to all parties, make sure it’s something you think the majority of them will find helpful and thoughtful.
Thoughtful: Similar to appropriate, a thoughtful gift requires some basic knowledge of the recipient. Take into consideration what they might want, need, or what they didn't know they couldn't live without until it arrived at their doorstep. Again, if this is not feasible, make sure to find a basic all-around winner that will work for most people.
Presentation: Something that might sound unimportant at first glance is the presentation of the gift. However, this might just be the most important consideration of all! Even the most well-meaning gift may not be well received if it arrives jammed into a plain cardboard box, or — worse, broken because it wasn’t packed properly. Make sure to see examples of gift boxes from your gifting company before you commit.
Budget: Understanding a per-recipient as well as an overall budget is helpful to know at the beginning of the process. An often overlooked consideration is factoring in taxes and shipping into your total budget. Shipping gifts to each recipient's location will add to the thoughtfulness of the gift, but that will cost more than shipping all of the gifts to one location. However, when working with a tenured corporate gifting company, they will be able to negotiate the best possible shipping rates with their carriers and then pass on that savings to you regardless of the location or locations of the gifts.
Hand in hand with choosing the right gift is taking advantage of the best gifting opportunities. These can range from new hire onboarding to work anniversaries to employee milestones, accomplishments, events and more. Don’t forget holidays, which are an excellent gifting occasion for team members, clients and suppliers alike. Company rebrands or acquisitions are a wonderful opportunity to showcase your brand with a gift. Above all, don’t be afraid to get creative when it comes to gifting. Due to all the reasons mentioned above, feel free to make up your own gift-giving occasion because we guarantee your gift recipients will feel seen and heard by you.
Corporate gifting is an important tool for building relationships, enhancing brand awareness, creating goodwill and celebrating achievements. Overall, client and employee appreciation gifting can be a valuable investment for businesses looking to strengthen relationships and build a positive reputation in their industry.
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