SmartGift Announces Breakout Year for Instant Mobile Gifting

SmartGift, the fastest growing gift-based e-Commerce and data platform, announced a record breaking holiday season as year on year transaction volume increased by 672%. The brand selection for consumers to choose gifts from increased to over 35 across apparel both luxury and aspirational, electronics, performance gear, jewelry, homeware, gourmet food and watches, and includes top brands including Under Armour, B&H, Theory, Helmut Lang, Kendra Scott, Movado, vineyard vines, TUMI, Express, Waterford, Harry and David, and many more. Shoppers can choose from over 3 million brand products and recipients have over 2 billion customization options.

Send with SmartGift lets gift shoppers select an item to send, surprise and delight the giftee of their choice by giving them the chance to virtually unwrap their gift via text, email, or any other digital platform. Then the giftee can decide if it’s indeed the perfect gift. If not, he or she can swap for a same-priced item or alter the gift’s size, color or style. Once the giftee is happy with their choice, the shopper confidently completes the purchase and not until that point is the gifter charged.

Shoppers can access the service directly on the brands’ sites through a Send with SmartGift button on the product detail page. An expanded assortment of brands and products is available on SmartGift’s gift discovery and digital delivery site, which it launched on Cyber Monday. SmartGift greets shoppers with data-curated product recommendations. The real-time gifting data has shown which gifts are best received based on all the constraints that are part of the gifting equation from relationships and price points to individual recipient preferences. Whether shoppers are buying gifts for mom, gifts for dad, or gifts for friends, the data will direct the shopper to a collection of suggested gifts.

“First and foremost, on behalf of our growing team, I would like to thank our brand partners for their continued support, partnership and vision throughout 2019. And to each and every gift shopper—we know the struggles when finding the perfect gift for colleagues, friends and loved ones not just during the holidays, but on all the joyous and celebratory occasions in our lives—births, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and retirement. We delight in improving your lives and deliver happiness to you and your close relationships through the application of thoughtful technology,” says Monika Kochhar, Co-Founder and CEO at SmartGift.

Other 2019 highlights include:

• Transaction volume on Send with SmartGift grew, on average, 310% month by month throughout 2019.
• Average order value increased 7% year over year for single item purchases, and 28% for brand partners who adopted Send with SmartGift multiproduct gifting.
• Up to 85% of apparel gift recipients must select their size or color preference when accepting their gift not only saving retailers on costly returns, but making a positive sustainability impact on the environment.
• Brand partners have seen up to 83% new customers with Send with SmartGift.
• Up to 18% of Send with SmartGift recipients turned into shoppers of the brand over a 12 month period.
• New visitor conversion lift of up to 12% with Send with SmartGift.
• Shopper conversion on peak occasions such as Valentine’s and Mother’s Day, and Christmas increased by up to 18%.
• Bounce rates on product detail pages were lowered by up to 11% with Send with SmartGift.
• 57% of all gifts were sent across state borders highlighting the dispersed makeup of US families.
• Top 2019 holiday gifts included jewelry (partners, friends), apparel (daughters, mothers), athletics gear (partners, sons), flowers (grandparents, colleagues), accessories including luggage (business relationships, colleagues), and gift baskets (colleagues, business relationships).

Strong Growth in Luxury Apparel and Accessories

Send with SmartGift has attracted the attention of luxury apparel and accessories brands with Theory, Helmut Lang and Movado amongst the first to join the platform. Luxury and high-end luxury brands by many accounts represent the top league in retail tech and set the bar very high. High-touch shopping experiences, large purchases and fraud risk control are just some of the areas Send with SmartGift solves with ease and elegance. “Our customers expect delight, convenience and immediacy in their shopping outcomes. Their experience has to be holistic and solve for all their shopping journeys and personas. Buying for others is hard and it’s great to see innovations in the space that are solving for this multivariate problem in elegant and compelling ways,” says Naveen Gunti, VP Global eCommerce Tech and Operations at Theory. “Send with SmartGift offers a straight-forward setup while being fully on brand for us.”

“2019 was a landmark year for Send with SmartGift. Throughout the year, we introduced new features to make the digital shopping and receiving journey even more seamless and natural. The results are visible as shoppers adopted our service with ease and confidence on a much wider scale than last year. In time for the holidays, we launched our gift discovery and shopping site that leverages a deep gift knowledge graph across brands, relationships and occasions. It’s a unique offering that fills a real need for seamless gift discovery and high quality brand shopping for everyone on their list. We are thrilled by the opportunities that lie ahead in 2020 and beyond,” says Bernd Strenitz, Chief Product Officer at SmartGift.

Read the full press release or discover more coverage on these exciting insights at MarTech Series.