Why invest in a corporate gifting platform?
In business, as in life, it’s been of timeless importance to maintain human relationships and ensure that all professional relations are pleasant. For decades, many brands have opted to use gift-giving as a way to achieve that: maintaining relationships where people feel valued, whether they be clients, customers, partners, or employees. That's where corporate gifting comes in.
While a lot in the world of business has changed, the importance of gifting certainly hasn’t disappeared. In fact, with the increase of remote workers, the globalization of business, and the transition to online commerce, many companies have embraced gifting traditions even more. As the market has evolved, corporate gifting statistics indicate the gifting industry has kept pace and changed as well.
Now expected to reach $312 billion by the end of 2025 (Coresight Research), brands that are investing in corporate gifting platforms are seeing big wins across their go-to-market team.
In this article we’ll cover:
- What is a corporate gifting platform?
- When should you start when evaluating corporate gifting solutions?
- What’s an employee gifting platform vs. a corporate gifting platform?
- What are the top corporate gifting companies?
- The importance of luxury corporate gifting companies
- Why you should consider customized corporate gifts
What is a corporate gifting platform?
A corporate gifting platform is a software or app that lets go-to-market teams streamline their gifting process by letting users select, store, pack, and ship corporate gifts, custom swag, and direct mail to prospects, customers, and clients, all in one place.
Now, businesses can rely on these solutions for a more hands-off and scalable approach to gifting. For instance, manually storing swag in your office or home is an outdated tactic that these platforms solve for.
This is a huge step in a more efficient direction—consider how long it would take for a business owner to design, manufacture and then ship out gifts to all their employees without the help of an external provider. In fact, even if you want to have a few basic items made and branded, it may take at least one or two manufacturers, a shipping company, and a graphic designer to create each product. That equates to a ton of work and money spent on each resource and a slow and complicated process, especially if you want to do it more than once per year.
Postal pro tip: Use Postal’s Paper Plane Team to source, create, and curate the custom branded projects of your dreams, and then store inventory in the cloud with Postal Warehousing.
With these new corporate gifting and Offline Engagement platforms like Postal, companies can select from an array of gifts that are tailored to their individual needs. This makes it easier than ever before to select the perfect gift and ensure that it is well-received by your recipients. Once an individual has selected its gift, they simply need to provide the details such as recipient information and shipping address. The corporate gifting platform will take care of the rest as far as logistics go.
Postal pro tip: Use MagicLink to bridge the challenge of sourcing a gift and then manually sending it to each prospect. It's as easy as create, copy, and paste into your existing outbound sequences or customer engagement strategy.
You can also use corporate gifting platforms to order presents for your corporate business partners and loyal employees. Those are often more luxurious and expensive gifts, which can come in the form of expensive alcohol and food, leather items, or nowadays even high-tech gear such as wireless chargers, keyboards and headsets, 3D printers, GoPros, or other items that you think your recipient will find useful.
The best thing about using these types of services is the way all these platforms offer ways to scale by automating much of the gifting process. It replaces manual management of gifting with online accessible platforms where businesses can easily manage their gifting strategy with a comprehensive overview. This allows them to ensure that corporate gifts for clients are personal, custom, and high-quality, without the need for minute oversight.
Gifting platforms are a high-value asset for B2B companies in particular and for companies who aim to maintain an effective gifting strategy at a large scale. B2B corporate gifting is often used as an effective way not only to drive positive relationships but to retain a much-needed human touch in an increasingly online world of business.
Using corporate gifting platforms for employee engagement
Gifting platforms are also used as a way for employers to easily manage and maintain employee gifting programs which help employers underscore their appreciation for employees which can lead to significantly reduced turnover, as well as drive productivity and keep employees feeling motivated and appreciated. Automated gift-giving services can fill a wide range of roles, but what they always offer is a way to ensure that gifting, while effective, doesn’t become a time sink for teams trying to maintain positive relationships.
The most common use of gifting platforms is as a way to manage employee rewards programs. These programs typically reward employees for reaching certain milestones or completing tasks and are often used in combination with other performance-based incentives like bonuses or sales commissions. Oftentimes, these types of rewards programs can take the form of gift cards which can be redeemed at retailers for items that employees need or want. Later in this article we’ll dig more into using gifting platforms as a way to recognize exceptional work.
When should you start when evaluating corporate gifting solutions?
As effective as corporate gifting can be, not only for driving retention and improving customer experience, but also keeping goodwill in business and keeping employees reminded that they’re valued, it can also quickly become hugely time-consuming.
If your team is spending more than 10 hours a week managing the sending of corporate gifts or branded items, you could gain time back by investing in a corporate gifting platform.
Ensuring that gifts are personalized and high quality while keeping track of various recipients can be a huge uphill task. From coming up with ideas to tracking vendors and ensuring that gifts are appropriate and interesting to respective recipients, the process can be overwhelming and take up a lot of human power.
That’s where corporate gifting solutions come in. They offer not only the ability to pursue the best corporate gifting companies, but they also offer everything from corporate gifting ideas that can easily be adapted for specific uses, to easy to scale automation that can ensure that even businesses with long lists of recipients can easily stay on top of their gifting efforts. Some corporate gifting companies can help create custom corporate gifts and highly personal experiences that can easily be utilized for a wide range of applications.
Whether companies are looking to ramp up marketing and send out gifts to prospective customers, maintain client or customer relationships with thoughtful gifts, or even underscore appreciation through corporate gifts for employees, corporate gifting companies have ways to make it easier, like highly automated gifting platforms.
The best part is that everything is online so companies can access it from anywhere. There are three ways that corporate gifting companies can help your company.
First, there's no need for companies to invest in their own infrastructure when it comes to gift-giving. Thanks to the corporate gifting industry, everything from the tools required for sending gifts, including automation and tracking, to the actual gifts themselves is available online. Whether companies want to send out a few or thousands of gifts annually or just a few gifts to remote employees, online services are a must for their corporate gifting strategy.
Second, one of the best things about ordering corporate promotional gifts fully online is that they save your employees a lot of time and you a lot of money. You don’t have to hire someone or sacrifice a vital resource to deal with the entire process of coming up with the idea for the gifts, then ordering them and having to send them to their recipients.
Finally, it saves you money in the end. Corporate promotion gifts can be very expensive, especially if you lack the proper process and you’re ordering from many different places. With the help of a corporate gifting service, you can pay less and get more items with higher quality.
What’s an employee gifting platform vs. a corporate gifting platform?
Keeping your employees happy and appreciated is not an easy task. Especially nowadays with the hybrid workplace model and everyone doing their job from all corners of the country and even of the world. We all know how important human interactions are and how vital they can be for forming the relationship not only between a boss and an employee but also between the company and its employees.
And so, over the last few years, corporations have been looking for ways to create loyalty in their employees and to make them feel as though they belong in the company, even if they live somewhere far away and have never visited the actual office.
This is where employee gifting platforms come into play. One particularly effective use for gifting is employee gifting. Employee gifting is an ongoing effort, and these types of gifts are used at a variety of times, from employee start anniversaries to end-of-year gifts and special occasions. Employee gifting platforms offer employers easier ways to deploy, manage and track their employee gifting efforts by consolidating the process into one place for easy management without needless minute oversight.
Employers can easily pick from a range of unique executive gifts or get help finding gifting ideas that are sure to delight employees and remind them that they’re a valued part of the team. For remote employees, gifting is a great way to keep team members feeling close, even when they’re geographically far apart. Employee gifting can be effective for a number of reasons, and an important one is that it can remind employees that employers appreciate them enough to make the extra effort.
Whether employers opt for simple, low-cost gifts or even yearly expensive employee appreciation gifts, the message is the same—employees are valued and appreciated for their contributions and continued presence. Similarly, client gifting services can remind clients that their continued support and presence are appreciated and that companies are looking forward to a lengthy relationship.
Additionally, you can use an employee gifting platform as a way to reward achievements, great results, or other goals your employees meet. It’s a terrific way to remind them that they’re important to the company and even the small efforts they make don’t go unnoticed. One good way to do that is to have an online gift store that’s full of various items and allow employees to use points they get awarded to purchase things. That way, they can earn points in different ways and then use them to get a corporate gift.
Postal pro tip: Postal’s Offline Engagement platform serves as both a corporate gifting but also an employee gifting platform, enabling multiple teams to manage their offline strategies.
What are the top corporate gifting companies?
As with any other industry, in the gifting industry, there are some companies that are leading the way in market innovation and offer customers solutions that are ahead of the rest. Top corporate gifting companies don’t just offer gifting services—they offer ways to make gifting easier, more effective, and truly memorable for recipients. They also offer solutions for companies to see the impact their gifting strategy has on operations overall so that businesses can rest assured that gifting has become a wise investment.
Top corporate gifting companies offer features like automation for scaling gifting, as well as robust reporting tools and ways to easily integrate gifting services with their existing tools for marketing, people management, and outreach. Gifting companies in the USA have evolved in step with the business world as it’s gone increasingly online and automated and still offers ways for businesses to keep a crucial human element in their strategies.
The top gifting companies in the world have found ways to make gifting easier than it’s ever been before while also being more personal, customizable, and memorable than it’s ever been. Using automation tools, online resources, and thoughtful integration, gifting companies have evolved the practice of corporate gifting to be more viable than ever before.
The corporate gifting companies that are leading the way are the ones that are able to provide you with unique designs for corporate gift boxes, luxury gifts, and personalized packages for each employee, client, or partner. They’re the ones willing to put the extra effort into not only making a high-quality product but also personalizing it and making sure that even its delivery feels unique and special.
Of course, top-quality gifting companies are not easy to find, but at the end of the day, they give you a way to leave a long-lasting impression on the people you’re sending gifts to, and they help showcase that you truly care.
The importance of luxury corporate gifting companies
Another effective use of gifting is showing continued appreciation for the business of VIP clients and executives. These relationships can be highly important to businesses, and one of the ways many companies show this consideration is through the use of high-end luxury gifts. Luxury corporate gifting companies offer solutions for these types of relationships by offering and specializing in VIP and luxury gifting solutions.
Unlike the standard company merch that we are used to seeing in the form of mugs, tote bags, hats, and sweatshirts, luxury presents shouldn’t be things that you can easily find in any shop, anywhere on earth. They shouldn’t lack quality or be impersonal because the people you’re giving them to likely won’t appreciate yet another branded notebook, calendar, or coffee cup. They’ve received plenty of presents just like those, and they don’t make a positive impression. The fact that they don’t leave a good impression also means that they won’t see your gifts as a token of your relationship and your appreciation of it.
Executive corporate gifts can take a range of forms and might include anything from premium artisan foods to high-end corporate swag and personal electronic devices. They can be highly customized, specially curated, and feature high-end branding. VIP corporate gifts are an effective means to underscoring appreciation and sparking memorable connections with VIP recipients who companies really want to wow. Though luxury corporate gifts take a variety of shapes, they have one thing in common, which is that they tend to be highly memorable and feature premium offerings that can stand out among the rest.
Luxury corporate gifting companies specialize in these types of premium offerings, and they offer specialized tools like luxury corporate gifting platforms for this specific purpose, making it easier for businesses to engage with these high-value recipients and offer luxury corporate gifts in a way that’s not only effective but efficient as well.
It’s important to remember that finding luxurious, high-quality, and impressive items is not easy and sometimes searching for them is the longest part of the process, which is why luxury corporate gifts services can be so useful. This is especially true for bigger businesses that have to provide such gifts to numerous partners and don’t want to waste their resources.
Why you should consider customized corporate gifts
As previously mentioned, the practice of giving your best business partners, most loyal employees, and customers gifts has had a long tradition in American business and it’s not looking to change anytime soon. Even though the business environment has so rapidly shifted to remote and hybrid models and employees tend to live in all corners of the globe, the tradition lives on.
To this day, it’s considered to be good practice to provide all new employees in the company with a starter pack of corporate-branded items such as pens, a notebook, a tote bag, and a mug or tumbler, at the very least. The idea is to make them feel welcome and for them to recognize themselves as a part of something bigger.
Additionally, if you’re just starting a business relationship with another company or you’ve had a successful partnership for years, then it’s a common practice to celebrate important occasions with a gift. Typically that means sending your partner a gift for their birthday, when you sign a new contract with them, and on holidays. This is why it also comes in handy to know your business partners well enough to know what they celebrate.
With that said, such gifts are usually difficult to find, and the process of choosing, ordering, and shipping them for hundreds of people is long and exhausting. If you want to make the experience truly personalized and memorable, then you’re in for weeks of hard work.
That’s where company gifting platforms come into play and help you not only deal with creating, ordering, and branding items but also with customizing them if need be.
When it comes to creating truly memorable experiences for recipients that are not only impactful but hard to forget, customizing gifts effectively goes a long way. That’s why gifting companies have increasingly moved to create easier and more effective ways for companies to truly customize their gifts and create meaningful experiences for recipients.
Customized corporate gifting companies offer platforms that enable senders to easily source and send unique corporate gifts that are highly customizable and personalized. Going with a personalized gifts company, senders can easily find a huge range of gifting options that are sure to delight and can be sourced from locations local to recipients.
Customized gifts can range from offerings sourced from local artisans to unique corporate logo gifts that are high-end and branded. The great thing is that nowadays, almost any product can be branded and so you shouldn’t worry about whether you can choose a certain item as a gift.
Along with that, it’s vital to remember that these kinds of highly customized swag kits aren’t just effective at sparking delight, but they can also be made with company logos and send a powerful reminder of appreciation to recipients. And, with robust automation and tracking tools, these kinds of gifts can easily be sent at scale without consuming the time of team members sending them.
Invest in an Offline Engagement Platform to save time and avoid sending one-off from corporate gifting companies
Corporate gifting companies have quickly evolved to meet the needs of companies wishing to maintain and scale their gifting strategy for all kinds of purposes, from underscoring commitment to driving productivity, increasing sales conversions, and maintaining fruitful customer relationships. Corporate gifting companies specialize in gifting solutions to meet all of these needs and more.
Some of the emerging needs of companies when it comes to gifting solutions include meeting increasing scale as companies grow and as large companies embark on new gifting initiatives, finding ways to streamline the process of curating gift boxes to maximize their impact and effectiveness, and making the process of gifting easier for teams who can’t afford to spend hours of time managing gifting for each recipient. Corporate gifting email templates help teams save time when it comes to using clever messaging and positioning when offering an item in exchange for an ask.
Corporate gifting companies have moved to meet these needs by offering gifting platforms that make it much easier to scale gifting strategies and teams devoted to gift box curation that can ensure that each gift box is sure to delight and awe with handpicked contents. Curated gift box companies put a lot of focus on making sure that each gift box is designed for the recipient with their interests and affinities in mind so that senders can easily ensure that the boxes will spark happiness without the need for extreme minute oversight.
Most corporate gifting platforms understand that businesses don’t want to deal with the intricacies of the process of manufacturing and shipping gifts. Not only because it’s time-consuming, but also because it can be difficult to find the right people to do the job if you don’t usually operate in the gifting business.
Additionally, if you want to have multiple different items made and branded, you will likely have to look for at least a variety of manufacturers, as it's unlikely that one company makes everything from luxury cardholders to the everyday branded tote bag.
What makes corporate gifting platforms so useful is that they take away the burden of providing corporate gifts and leave only the pleasant part up to the company—if wanted—such as deciding on themes and picking designs. And so, as a business owner, you only have to communicate what kind of gifts you want to be made, how you want them to look, how much money you’re willing to spend on each item, and how fast you want to have them made. From then on, a good corporate gifting platform will take care of the rest.
If you’ve been looking for a premium gifting solution to meet the increased scale and maintain quality and personal touch simultaneously, be sure to reach out for a demo of Postal’s Offline Engagement platform, where you’ll have access to a vast curated marketplace of gift options.
