Build Authentic Relationships With Corporate Holiday Gifts for Clients and Employees

How do we forge a personal connection with clients and employees in an increasingly hybrid world? How do we find an engagement strategy that feels genuine and authentic? As we approach the end of the year holidays, these are the questions most business leaders are wrestling with.

For most businesses, creating meaningful relationships with employees, customers, and prospects is harder than ever. Without tools to build and maintain these crucial relationships, company growth tends to stagnate, and employee retention becomes challenging.

According to a recent survey from Packed with Purpose, 68% of respondents said receiving a “memorable” business gift strengthened their relationship with the company that gifted it.

In the past, data and science within the corporate gift world has been limited. But this fall, SmartGift launched Hero — the ultimate corporate gifting platform for employee and client appreciation. Our team worked hard to perfect a gifting experience that motivates employees, strengthens business relationships, and unlocks new opportunities at virtual events.

Our mission is simple: we aim to grow your business relationships by amplifying company culture through human connection. Above all, we aim to provide all Hero users measurable ROI and end-to-end visibility through the gifting process so they have access to the data, science, and insights behind a strategy that works for them.

While gifting might sound simple and straightforward on a basic level, corporate gifting raises a whole new set of specifics: how personalized should a gift be? What products feel appropriate for the occasion? Which gifts serve the most purpose and communicate your company culture successfully?

At Hero, we have answers that take the effort and guesswork out of corporate gifting. Whether your business model is in-personal, virtual, or hybrid, there are ample opportunities to leverage branded corporate gifts to make personal connections within your professional network.

Let’s take a look at four ways we can make the holiday season more successful with corporate gift ideas for authentic relationship building.

Book Holiday Meetings with a Gift

Let’s face it: every interaction with prospects, leads, and clients is valuable to a company or business. According to Forbes, the average person receives about a hundred emails a day. How can you stand out, and part the noise with cold emails? Gifts help you emphasize the value of your business proposition.

According to a study conducted by the University of Zurich’s Department of Economics, sales representatives generate twice as much revenue when they include a gift during their negotiation processes.

Hero lets you transform all your outreach with corporate gifts for clients. Using our Campaign or Gift Tray features, you can maintain authentic connections over the holiday season through events and outreach programs. Our customizable, recipient-choice approach makes every digital gifting experience delightful, personal, and effortless.

Include recipients in the gift selection simply by curating a Collection from our assortment of products from the 1-800-Flowers Family of Brands, or selecting one of our already tailored collections — and let our proprietary machine-learning algorithms through Gift Genome™ make data-backed smart recommendations for you. Then, send a campaign via email for one-to-many gifting or share a gift tray link with a select group of recipients — no delivery address needed!

Your recipient can choose their preferred item — what’s most useful to them — ensuring your gift won’t end up in a landfill. They can even re-gift your send to a loved one. And, with our same-day nationwide delivery capabilities, large catalog of sustainable planet-friendly gifts, and access to Personalization Mall’s vast assortment of fully personalizable items, you won’t just be sending a gift; you’ll be sending an experience.

Hero additionally offers integrations with your favorite scheduling programs like Calendly and Chili Piper. All you have to do is plug in a link to your calendar, and we’ll append the gift to your link. When your recipient redeems their gift, they’ll be prompted to book a meeting first.

Scheduling a holiday meeting with a gift not only helps build trust with your company, but also fills the void of an interpersonal physical interaction — making your communication more thoughtful and personal.

Retain Clients and Build Employee Loyalty With Holiday Gifts

It’s no surprise that corporate gifts for employees and clients are especially vital around the holidays. Appreciation has a high ROI, and by sending the right gift to your professional contacts, you’re showing them you recognize their contributions and their work — which yields high loyalty and greater business success.

A study from leading data and consulting company Kantar shows that “tangible materials leave a deeper footprint in the brain” as they engage “more emotional processing, which is important for memory and brand associations.”

The best corporate gifts are representative of a healthy work morale and fulfilling company culture. At Hero, we use innovative technology to create ease and simplicity around sending gifts of recognition, so you can give employees and clients the best experience that is actually personalized and meaningful without spending hours putting together gift boxes.

The process is simple: use one of our curated holiday product Collections (or build your own to include items like custom swag), add a personal touch by including a holiday message, custom gift wrapper, or your company branding! You can then review analytics to see how your recipients are engaging with your recognition and incentive strategy in real-time.

Automate Holiday Gifting to Save Time

Not everybody celebrates Christmas. The end of each year commemorates a range of multinational festivals and holidays like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day, Pancha Ganpati, and Koliada, which is why a one-size-fits-all, red-ribboned approach might not be appreciated by everyone in your workplace.

With Hero, you’ll never have to worry about missing another milestone again. Our features include Automations — which not only save time, but also take the effort out of large-scale recognition programs.

To get started, simply connect Hero to your CRM or HR platform, or upload a CSV file. Then, you can select names of your contacts and create rules such as “Send a gift to our employees on Kwanzaa” or “Send a gift to our clients on Hanukkah.”

Our corporate gift service lets you sit back and relax as we take care of your scheduling needs and add more value to each point of communication. From holiday greetings to birthday and corporate anniversary gifts, we make sure that every tangible gift is representative of the value your company provides.

Liven Virtual or Hybrid Holiday Parties With an Interdimensional Experience

As we continue transitioning into a post-lockdown workplace, companies and businesses are alternating between virtual holiday parties, invite-only gatherings, and small parties with fully-vaccinated attendees. The question then remains: how can one provide a cohesive experience throughout these workplace disruptions?

Unlike most corporate gifting companies, Hero provides a high-quality, uniform corporate gifting experience that delights recipients visually by recreating an in-person interaction. Our Gift Tray feature lets you share business gifts with any number of people all at once, bringing hospitality to virtual holiday events, holiday meetings, Slack channels, Microsoft Teams, Google Meets, or even Zoom calls. Simply specify the number of recipients for your event; add products, swag, and customizations, then share the link however you’d like!

Once the recipient receives their corporate party gift, they can read your seasonal greetings, and virtually unwrap the gift on their device whenever is convenient for them. With Gift Trays, it’s that easy to preserve the magic of gift giving and add a personal touch to your next office holiday party or holiday event.

Corporate holiday gifting can be difficult to navigate. But if done well, gifting has a direct and positive impact on employee and client retention, company culture, and brand recognition. Client gifts can strengthen relationships, nurture contacts, and value to every interaction.

This holiday season, let’s take business to the next level together.

Start gifting with the Hero platform today, or request a demo with our team here.

SmartGift’s Corporate Gifting Series focuses on providing workplaces fun, inventive, and appropriate ways to celebrate all end-of-year holidays. Over the forthcoming weeks, we’ll be discussing hybrid holiday parties, gifting etiquette, DE&I initiatives, gifting trends, and more.