Digital Gifting
Offline channels have become increasingly crucial to the success of go-to-market teams as much of our economy, shopping, and buying habits have shifted online in recent years. GTM teams face challenges such as standing out amid a flood of digital marketing efforts, and consumers who’ve grown wary of online marketing. It’s important to find ways to stand out among the rest and it can be an uphill battle capturing addresses, finding leads, and converting qualified leads.
Digital marketing has grown complex, and many approaches attempt to address the numerous challenges associated with online marketing, including creating compelling lead magnets and multi-channel online campaigns that utilize every avenue available from email to social media. One approach that can be particularly effective is finding creative ways to incentivize engagement. For businesses aiming to incentivize engagement with tangible reciprocal value, digital gifting can be particularly effective if done properly.
Corporate gifting is nothing new in business. However, digital gifting has emerged as a relatively new approach that offers tangible value which incentivizes engagement. Digital gift offerings can help GTM teams bolster their online efforts, making engagement with prospects, leads, and customers easier and more compelling for external parties.
Gifting platforms such as Postal, which offer tools designed specifically to enhance online as well as offline strategies—tools such as Postal MagicLink enabling teams to attach gift links directly to their outreach channels—enable GTM teams to create successful online campaigns that spark engagement and drive revenue.
Digital gifting is also an effective way to foster positive work cultures within organizations; online and remote teams can present challenges to HR and people ops teams, such as feelings of isolation and team members who feel disconnected from their organization due to their remote roles. Digital gifts for birthdays, employee appreciation, and special events can help bring remote teams together and foster crucial feelings of inclusion and appreciation that drive long-term loyalty within organizations.
Best Digital Gifts
Digital gifts fit into a corporate gifting strategy much the same way physical gifts do, with some notable differences. While with physical gifting, much of the emphasis may be on creating memorable experiences through physical items, digital gifts can range from premium streaming subscriptions to online concert tickets, gift cards, and more. In both cases, the aim is to offer recipients memorable positive experiences which foster feelings of goodwill, and in some way, appreciation.
Similar to offline gifting, the best digital gifts are unique and memorable—and perceived as thoughtful by recipients. A unique corporate gift that’s harder to forget can be more effective in both instances. Digital gifts, though, can be sent instantly, and often do not require a physical mailing address. Logistical concerns with digital gifts, instead, lay in areas such as the likelihood of online engagement. Much like virtual gifts for online friends, virtual gifts for prospects, leads, and clients must be sent through channels that are attended regularly.
Through digital channels such as email and social media, free digital gifts can incentivize further engagement, driving key prospects towards or further into funnels, and when properly implemented, automation tools enable GTM teams to design and implement online campaigns that function effectively with minimal day-to-day oversight. As such, digital gifting can be a huge asset to GTM teams.
Digital Gift Online
One key benefit of digital gifting is the ease of access and ease of sending that it offers. Digital gifts can be sent and redeemed, online, nearly instantly. A digital gift, online, can be a huge benefit to online outreach, whether for marketing purposes or internal employee gifting efforts. There are many routes to take with digital gifting.
The best virtual gifts might be different for each recipient, but in almost any case, creative virtual gifts hold the potential to be more memorable, and therefore more impactful. Common virtual gifts include open loop gift cards, or subscriptions to popular streaming services, but there are other approaches to take, including virtual classes, such as cooking classes, or passes to masterclasses. Luxury corporate gifting companies might offer premium digital offerings which can be sent and redeemed online.
Digital gifting can also be integrated with other online outreach efforts, such as emails, social media posts, and landing pages. Corporate gifting platforms sometimes offer tools specifically designed to make it easy to combine digital gifting with your other online outreach. Postal, for instance, offers Postal MagicLink, which allows senders to send any Postal item through a gift link, which can easily be attached to, for instance, an email.
Digital Gift Card
One particularly popular way to engage with digital gifting is through sending digital gift cards. Digital gift cards afford both senders and recipients a lot of freedom. They can be sent quickly, and redeemed just as quickly. They can also often be spent online, enabling recipients to purchase goods and services of their choosing.
They might be for streaming services, large retailers, and anything in between. Open loop gift cards, such as digital gift cards like Mastercard, can be an effective way to drive engagement. Amazon gift cards are particularly popular since they can be spent on a huge variety of goods, and many online users already use Amazon for shopping.
Like Amazon gift cards, other retailers can be an effective approach. Target e-gift cards, for instance, can be used all over the United States, as there are Target stores in 50 states, and offer recipients a lot of choices. Visa gift cards are another popular way to offer recipients nearly any good or service they choose. As digital gift cards go, Visa and Amazon digital gift cards are an open-ended approach, offering recipients a lot of freedom to choose what they’d like.
Digital Gifts For Employees
While digital gifts can be an effective way to enhance online marketing efforts, they’re also an excellent way to engage with employees, especially in certain circumstances. Last-minute online gifts for valuable digital services can have a greater positive impact than last minute gifts purchased at a pharmacy, and can be tailored to individual interests and sent on the same day. Digital gifts for employees are also an excellent way to incentivize engagement with company-wide programs and initiatives.
A digital employee appreciation gift require similar considerations to non-digital employee appreciation gifts. The more individualized and personal they are, the better. Particularly thoughtful digital gifts, such as passes to a virtual cooking class sent to an employee who frequently discusses their love of cooking, or streaming subscriptions for an employee who frequently discusses their love of movies and television can be taken as extremely thoughtful and have the potential to perform well.
Digital gifting also streamlines the process of sending physical gifts. With tools like Postal MagicLink, employers can send a link in an email to employees that enable them to opt to receive employee gift boxes and other physical gifts.
Virtual Gift Ideas For Birthdays
Birthdays are an important life event for many people, and for employers, they represent a large opportunity. While some employee appreciation gifts hinge on professional achievements, widely celebrated holidays, and professional milestones, a birthday is purely a celebration of an individual. This makes employee birthday gifts a powerful opportunity for employers to show that they value individuals.
Employee birthday gifts can be sent as digital gifts through emails. The advantage of birthday gifts you can send by email is that they streamline the process of sending a gift, and they can cut out the requirement of employers to either bring a gift to the office or double check addresses before sending them.
With a digital link, employees can verify their own preferred shipping address and receive employee gift baskets directly at their home instead of having to carry it around the office all day. Similarly, remote workers can receive gifts directly.
For the same reason that birthdays are a huge opportunity for employers, they’re also a big opportunity for sales and customer success teams, who can show prospects and customers that they’re valued on an individual level, and that their personal milestones, like birthdays, are important. Virtual gift ideas for birthdays include sending a link enabling a recipient to opt to receive gift baskets, premium subscriptions to online services, and even virtual gifts like passes to virtual classes.
Virtual Gift Link
Being able to send virtual gift links can significantly streamline the process of gifting, offering more control to both senders and recipients. With virtual gift links, senders can easily offer recipients a way to opt to receive gifts, through links which can be sent through email, social media, and landing pages. Corporate gifting benefits are numerous, and for digital channels, they can enhance the way that online users engage with initiatives and programs, improving outcomes for go-to-market teams, employers, HR teams, and people ops teams.
Whether for sending employee appreciation gifts, incentivizing engagement on promotions or programs, or offering incentives to employees for engaging with internal initiatives, virtual gift links can foster improved outcomes and increased engagement. Being able to send an email with a link to receive employee gift boxes, or gift cards for submitting feedback on a services can be an enormous asset to organizations looking to improve the way they reach out online, whether internally or externally.
However you go about your gifting strategy, virtual gift links can make gifting easier. Whether you’re aiming to improve employee engagement, improve outcomes of GTM teams efforts, or scale your online and offline gifting strategies, be sure to reach out to get started with a demo of Postal's Offline Engagement Platform, where you’ll have access to a vast marketplace of gifts and vendors, robust automation tools, including Postal MagicLink, and the ability to automate your gifting for a hands-off approach.
