Corporate Gift Giving Occasions

Jale January 16, 2020

The act of gift giving is a special part of the human experience. Giving gifts strengthens bonds, builds relationships, and lets the people in your life know that you appreciate them. It is something personal, that breaches the gap between your business relationship, and a new and stronger personal one. Ultimately your customers and staff are people too, and will truly appreciate the extra time and attention you have taken to offer a gift.

Does corporate gifting giving really work?

It does! Remember the 3 R’s for Corporate Gifting:

1. Reputation
2. Repeat Business
3. Referrals

In our own surveys of our Corporate Customers, 100% of respondents reported that sending gifts had made a positive impact on their business, and that they will continue to gift for at least 2 years or more.

In addition, a British study showed that customers reported that they were 79% more likely to do business with the same company after receiving a gift.

When to give corporate gifts

1. Seasonal Gifts – clients and employees

Seasonal holidays such as Christmas is an appropriate time to give gifts for both clients and employees. These gifts help to spread the holiday cheer as well as reward loyalty or good work for the past year and to celebrate the business relationship moving forward into the upcoming year.

• Christmas: Christmas corporate gifting is a great way to give thanks to both clients and employees. The gesture will be greatly appreciated and will definitely earn you brownie points! Giving a gift at Christmas will also help you to keep in touch with clients and can also be used as a subtle form of promoting your business or services. As an example, salespeople who give promotional gifts to their customers received 22% more referrals than those who don’t. For employees, it’s a great way to acknowledge their hard work and to strengthen loyalty.

• Chinese New Year: This is a prime opportunity for companies to stand out from the crowd with their clients, regardless of whether the client is of a nationality that celebrates the Chinese New Year. And for those clients that do celebrate it, they will have a greater level of appreciation and engagement with your business when they do receive a chinese new year gift hampers.

• Easter: Holidays such as Easter is a perfect opportunity to give gifts. Since most gift giving is done during Christmas, clients and employees will be pleasantly surprised by a gift given during the Easter holiday. With the heavy emphasis on chocolate, Easter provides an easy opportunity for gift-giving. Something as simple as a chocolate Easter bunny can have your employees working harder or your clients feeling more valued.

• End of Financial Year: Many companies reassess their ongoing’

2. Important Milestones – clients

Gifting clients & customers during milestone occasions is a good way to show gratitude and to drum up recurring business. Around 80% of people receiving a branded gift feel appreciated, and if you take time to show appreciation to clients when they least expect it, you’ll stand out. These types of gifts are typically more expensive or have a higher perceived value.

• Anniversary: Whether it’s a loyal client or vendor, celebrating milestones such as an anniversary by giving a corporate anniversary gift will be a welcome and appreciated surprise. Acknowledge a long-term partnership or give a gift as a gesture of thanks for signing up to a plan or promotion.

• Birthday: Sending a personalised gift to acknowledge a client’s birthday tend to be more meaningful. By recognizing occasions like these, you reinforce the relationship between the recipient and the company.

• Welcome/appreciation: On-the-spot gifts can be kept on hand to show appreciation, introduce yourself and your services, or to welcome new company clients. These gifts are generally small, but the sentiment is a great way to cement existing relationships and make a customer feel welcomed and appreciated. Taking time to appreciate clients year-round with small gifts can make you stand out and result in extended client contracts.

• Business-related special event: Acknowledging a new partnership or a successful venture by giving a gift is a great way to celebrate a new joint milestone and business-related success. Welcome new vendors or suppliers to further build relationships and encourage repeat service.
• Thank you – new referral: When a client of yours refers you new business, show your appreciation with a gift! This will continue to strengthen the relationship with the referring client, and may lead to more referrals down the line.

3. Special Events and Achievements – employees

• Promotion: Celebrate or announce an employee’s promotion by giving a special gift. 77% of workers say that business gifts make them feel more appreciated, while 40% reported an increase in loyalty and desire to work with the company for longer. There’s no doubt the simple act of celebrating something important such as a promotion will reinforce an employee’s belief that they are doing a job well done and will give them more incentive to continue striving in their field.
• Achieving a work-related milestone: Acknowledge whenever an employee hits a KPI or achieves a specific target by giving something special. By doing so, employees will work harder and be more willing to strengthen team bonds since they know they’re being recognized no matter the size of the milestone.

• Special event: Making a point of celebrating employee birthdays, anniversaries, or special milestones such as a wedding or birth of a baby can build loyalty and respect between manager and worker. Making a gift memorable by including a personalised handwritten message is reported to make employees feel more connected to the giver with 28% of employees more likely to want to work longer with the gift giver.
• Company conference: Take the time to make your company conference that much more positive by gifting your hardworking employees with a little something to acknowledge the work they’ve done to date, and also to keep them motivated to action the important points from your company conference.
• Staff to staff rewards: Recognising people when they demonstrate the behaviour you want to encourage, be it your Company Values, or something that helps you achieve a special goal (eg: Customer Satisfaction scores).
  Staff can then nominate other staff to be rewarded, which is a highly visible and motivational tool for building strong behaviours and increasing staff engagement
• Sympathy: If there is an event in an employee’s life that has impacted them personally in a negative way, such as the loss of a loved one, a great way to improve company loyalty and and re-engage the staff member’s professional attention is to send a sympathetic gift.

Important things to keep in mind

What makes an effective gift?

For maximum impact a gift should be unexpected, meaningful to the recipient, and personalised. Its quality will represent the nature and value of your relationship you have with that person, so think carefully about sending something that could be found anywhere, or implies little time or effort was taken choosing and sending the gift.

An effective gift will achieve 4 things for you:

1. It will build or extend trust in your business relationship
2. It will create or strengthen loyalty
3. It will form part of your shared history, part of your story together
4. It will increase repeat business, or referrals, or similar goodwill to your company.

The importance of personalisation

Personalising gifts may take a bit more forethought, but it’s worth it. In order to make a gift memorable and genuine, you should tailor your gifts to your chosen recipient.

Negative feelings about a gift can lead to many individuals feeling negative about their job as a whole, simply because of how a gift was perceived.

There is a right way and wrong way of personalising gifts. These include:

• Choose a gift based on your recipient’s interests: Tailoring your gifts by establishing your audience’s demographics can make all the difference between a great gift and an okay gift. While it generally goes unsaid that most people will appreciate a gift of any kind, it becomes more special when they are surprised with something memorable. The more you truly understand your target recipient, the better your gifts will be.

• Include a personal message with the gift: Including a handwritten note expressing gratitude or celebrating a milestone adds a personal touch. These touches are a great way to create a lasting impression and are a genuine way of expressing thanks. In fact, 21.8% of people report that the inclusion of a personal message positively influences their opinion of corporate gifts.
• Include the recipient’s name in the message: There can be quite a difference in sentiment when receiving a note addressed with your name in handwriting compared to being typed. Believe it or not, this small detail can make all the difference in the receiver feeling appreciated. By addressing the recipient by their name, you are making them feel important and like they stand out from the rest. It also makes them feel like more thought went into the gift.

The importance of quality

Giving quality gifts is one way to ensure that you are giving something that your recipient will love and appreciate. Clients and employees regularly complain about cheap corporate gifts.

Remember, as a business or manager, the gift you give is often indicative of the services or brand you represent – at least in the eyes of the recipient. Corporate gift givers should be aware of brand names and quality of gifts, and work on choosing to give gifts that are unique and attractive. Cheap gifts may make recipients feel underappreciated or feel as though they aren’t worthy of a nicer gift.

Businesses routinely try to find gifts that will cost as little as possible. This can be understandable with budget or time restrictions, however cheap doesn’t have to be cheap. You don’t have to blow your budget when it comes to giving a memorable, high-quality gift. You can record a personalised video and send it in an email, you may want to take a photo of a high-performing employee and put it on the whiteboard or wall. There are plenty of websites and corporate gift companies who can cater to all types of budgets while ensuring high-quality gift items.

The importance of memorability

Giving a gift that is both valuable and memorable comes down to finding a gift that has special significance and is personal. Naturally, you want recipients to be satisfied with their gift. Memorability, on the other hand, is what drives the connectedness and loyalty that drives return on investment (ROI).

Fewer than half of all corporate gift recipients say that their last gift was “Very Memorable”, according to the Knack 2019 Business Gift Satisfaction Report. Gift recipients who describe their corporate gifts as “very memorable” are twice as likely to report also being “very satisfied” with their gift. A memorable gift will keep you at the top of clients’ minds and will let them know that you appreciate them in a thoughtful and genuine way. Gifting employees will make them feel like their work and contribution is being appreciated and can play a role in better workplace satisfaction.

The best-selling book on gift-giving strategy, “Giftology”, explains that gift-giving is an art and can have a profound positive impact on the running of and success of a business including the loyalty of its customers and employees.

What to give

Corporate gift hampers are the perfect way to acknowledge clients & employees as well as to celebrate their milestones. The best part about gift hampers is that they take the guesswork out of choosing an appropriate gift. Gift hampers can be personalised to suit your recipient and budget, so you know you are giving something that’s personalized, of high quality, and something that is memorable.

With Gourmet Basket, you can order corporate gift baskets with personalised cards and messages, and for every type of occasion. Clients and employees are sure to appreciate the thoughtfulness of receiving a gift hamper, and it’s an easy way to make the right impression.

How much should I spend?

The value of a corporate gift does not need to be high, but it must reflect the degree to which this person is valued by your business. As a rough guide, a gift for a staff member could be in the range $75 to $200, a gift for a customer could be $100+, or an executive gift could be $200+. Shippings cost may be additional.

Gift-giving checklist