When it comes to giving gifts to your clients or employees, do you have a strategic plan or program in place? Do you place your company logo on the gift? Does your gifting strategy mean you give gifts around the holiday season? Is there a well thought out gifting budget?
If you don’t have a strategic plan, you place your company logo on your “gifts”, you only give gifts around the holiday season and do all of this without a budget, you may want to rethink your strategy. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but this is the opposite of what you should do when it comes to giving gifts.
Corporate gifts are a great way to show appreciation (thanking customers for their business or employees for their service) and deepen client relationships. They also improve employee morale, keep employees motivated, incentivized and appreciated.
This is why it is a great best practice is to create a gifting strategy each year.
The main benefits of having a corporate gift strategy for your customers is you will surprise and delight your customers, to show them you really appreciate and value the relationship. Overall, your clients will be happier and you will be kept top of mind as a result of your strengthened relationship.
When it comes to gifting to employees you can increase employee morale, happiness and work ethic when you recognize employees with a gift or award. As a result, you have the ability to show appreciation for a job well done. You can also recognize top performing employees and encourage friendly competition with an incentive program.
Not sure where to start, here are 3 things you should take into consideration when it comes time to planning your next corporate or employee gift strategy.
Timing
The most popular time to give gifts are during end of year holiday season. If you give clients and employees a gift the same time every year it becomes expected. If you want to be different, surprise and delight and really make an impact, come up with other (random) times to give gifts. You can also choose to send a series of gifts over the year to show even more appreciation (make sure you’re not giving gifts too often, though!).
Decoration
When you are gifting a corporate gift or employee gift it is not a gift when you place an imprint with your logo, marketing message or call to action (CTA). In this case, you are not showing appreciation, you are advertising!
If you truly want to give a gift, make sure it is personalized not imprinted! There are many gifts that you can personalize with your client or employees name or clients logo. It is highly suggested that if you want your customer or employee to feel appreciated and like they actually received a gift, that you personalize instead of “print” on the gift.
Budget
When you are gifting to a client or employee, you should look for the higher ticketed items opposed to items you can purchase in large quantities to get a price “break” (ex: pens that cost $0.50, koozies and other branded items that cost less than $5 each). You want to make sure you create a budget so you will know the appropriate spend amount that works for your company, strategy and/or program.
Here is some inspiration for setting a budget in case you are not sure where to start. Set your budget according to:
- Years of service (employees) or continued business (clients),
- The nature of the program (take into consideration outcome and desired results you want to achieve and create your budget on a percentage of your results),
- Customer lifetime value (a percentage of how much your client is “worth” – more or less how much is the relationship worth to you?),
- Or, set a random budget based on what you can reasonably afford (remember: relationships are valuable – don’t overspend and also don’t under-spend)
Finally, like anything else, there are a few things you should be aware of that could put a damper on your gift giving strategy:
- Make sure you do your research to see whether gifting is allowed at the company you are giving gifts to (ex: industries like financial services, insurance and medicine are a few that have restrictions).
- Do your research on your client to find out what they like and don’t like (you do not want to give a wine gift to someone who doesn’t drink wine!).
- Give a gift to show gratitude. Do not give a gift before asking someone to do a big favor (this more than likely will look like a bribe)
While corporate gift strategies and incentive programs are not necessary, there are many benefits to incorporating them into your business. They can have a lot of impact on the way you show value to your clients and employees and the amount of appreciation they feel from your gratitude.
If you decide that gifting should be a part of your company’s strategy take time this year to make sure you have a strategic plan or program in place. You also want to make sure you don’t place your company logo on the gift, give randomly and make sure you have a well thought out gifting budget and you will be smooth sailing.
Creating Memorable Impressions For Your Brand 