In this blog, we discuss the aspects of international corporate gifting, expand on the elements of cross-border business, highlight who businesses can target with corporate gifts, and how they can start gifting on a global scale by using a worldwide gifting platform.
With the digital advancements in how we communicate, market and sell, the importance of nurturing relationships continues to gain prominence. More individuals and organizations recognize solid relationships as the driving force behind lucrative deals, large buy-ins, investment opportunities, and cross-cultural and international business exchanges. Businesses no longer solely depend on patronage from patrons within their physical radiuses, but can now extend their offers to buyers across the globe. With this new possibility comes the need for businesses to nurture relationships using an array of methods – one such being worldwide corporate gifting.
>> What Is An International Gifting Platform?
>> The Relationship Aspect Of International Business
>> How International Gifting Platforms Are Changing The Business Landscape
>> Why The Manual International Gifting Process Is Difficult
>> Logistical Issues That Can Arise When Sending Corporate Gifts Manually
>> How To Launch Global Gifting Campaigns Using Giftsenda
>> Worldwide Corporate Gifting Campaign Ideas
>> How to Start Gifting Globally
What Is A Worldwide Gifting Platform?
An international gifting platform is an online gifting system that enables the selection, sending, management, and tracking of corporate gifts and branded items from a central dashboard.
Much like continuously emerging e-commerce platforms that facilitate buying and selling without the need for any manual work, corporate gifting platforms enable senders to seamlessly launch worldwide corporate gifting campaigns without the need for accurate address books and manual gift sourcing. All that is required of a campaign admin is the selection of pre-curated collections that house preferred gift items, access to a basic CRM, recipient email addresses or mobile numbers, and last but not least, budget.
When using the Giftsenda worldwide gifting platform, the admin-heavy element of gifting is completely eliminated, enabling you to gift your recipients occasionally or on a regular basis for purposes such as work anniversaries, deal closures, and birthdays. Looking to launch ROI-based corporate gifting campaigns? Using the built-in tracking and reporting features, you can track acceptance rates, deliveries, and responses from your recipients to measure against your targets.
The Relationship Aspect Of International Business
International business encompasses all the commercial activities that promote the movement of goods, services, resources, people, ideas, and technologies across international jurisdictions. To conduct business on an international scale, establishments are required to tick international operational boxes in order to play in the global business field.
Free trade and technological aspects play an unarguably essential role in mitigating structural, cultural, linguistic, economic, foreign exchange, and political nuances that may affect businesses’ abilities to trade effectively in territories other than their own. Also known as multinational enterprises, businesses that operate on a global scale include, but are not limited to, fast food chains, vehicle manufacturers, clothing and household chain stores, tech and electronic goods suppliers, energy and fossil fuel suppliers, and marketing and service agencies amongst a whole list of others.
Regardless of the functional jurisdiction, industry vertical, or level of industrialization, all businesses are concerned with forging, rekindling, and maintaining lucrative relationships – and this isn’t only concerned with paying customers/partners, but the talent that helps advance the business operational agenda. By adopting tactics such as tailored incentives, specialized and exclusive offers, bundle deals, and corporate gifting – businesses can delight, and surprise stakeholders, clients, and custodians to promote brand loyalty, increase retention and create long-term preference. Having turned in about $242 billion in 2021, the corporate gifting industry is expected to grow at an accelerated 8.1% CAGR through 2024.
How Worldwide Gifting Platforms Are Changing The Business Landscape
A worldwide gifting platform bridges the gap between businesses and their intended recipients and enables seamless and admin-free gifting on a truly global scale. Instead of having to deal with constantly fluctuating customs fees, product duties, and delivery delays induced by strict and not-very-time-sensitive border controls, international corporate gifting platforms such as Giftsenda facilitate:
- Address-free global corporate gifting: Senders need not have recipients’ addresses to initiate campaigns, as gift invites can be sent in link form using branded emails, or through text messaging platforms.
- CRM integrations: Instead of the use of multiple workflows that often limit team member access and entail bulky admin, international corporate gifting platforms like Giftsenda facilitate integration with CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot, making client contact data exporting simpler – allowing you to send gifts within the CRM without leaving the interface.
- Swap and donate options: Upon receiving gift invites, recipients can swap the sender’s item choice for other items within the same cost bracket, and choose gift items without affecting pricing. Moreover, in the event that recipients aren’t able to accept gifts, they can choose to donate the value of their gift to any of the listed charitable organizations.
- Gift items sourced locally to recipients: In the effort to reduce admin, delivery costs and cut down on delivery times, Giftsenda sources all gift items in the recipients’ regions. This mitigates issues such as differences in cultural nuances and norms – as items are selected to be regionally and culturally appropriate. It is also an eco-friendly way of gifting, as the number of fuel emissions resulting from international shipping transportation methods is reduced. We offer gifts in up to 200 countries worldwide. Giftsenda offers 1000s of gift options, including tech gifts, eGifts, gift baskets, SWAG and so much more.
Why The Manual International Gifting Process Is Difficult
To understand just how time-consuming and error-prone manual gifting on a global level can be, we’ve listed each step below:
- Source recipient details and/or addresses.
- Contact different vendors to source gift items – some of these might be local and only cater to local residents. i.e. have websites in the local language and prohibit accounts from international users.
- Contact packaging and gift wrapping service providers, and possibly source a different service provider for branded and personalized merchandise.
- Manually add messaging to each gift package or source someone who can do this for you.
- Contact shipping service providers and handle fees and item dispatch manually.
- When shipping internationally, you will also have to deal with customs and border control.
- Contact recipients to confirm those gift item deliveries. What’s more – your recipients might even be required to pay customs fees if the gift is being shipped from another country, which may taint the gift experience.
- Manually recon deliveries and compared against KPIs.
Not only does the above process require multiple people from your organization to handle, but time and financial resources are ineffectively used up, leaving little room for strategizing and reporting.
Logistical Issues That Can Arise When Sending Corporate Gifts Manually
Besides the need to manually input data, contact vendors, and oversee shipping processes, there are quite a few issues that may arise when opting for manual international gifting, especially if done frequently and at a large scale, these include:
- Unavailability/ poor quality of items: When vendors are contacted manually, senders run the risk of not being able to acquire certain items due to low stock and warehousing issues. Quality control is also quite difficult if you have not built partnerships with your vendors and have not had time to vet the items on offer.
- Packaging issues: Some gift item vendors service both commercial and private gifters, and given the thin formality line, in some instances, the gift items may not adhere to corporate standards in terms of packaging and messaging. This may require additional monitoring and support. What’s more, in cases where you are using a vendor that does not provide gift wrapping as the packaging, you might need to outsource this – or end up sending a plain parcel to your recipients (what a nightmare!).
- Shipping addresses: Because of a lack of integration with a CRM or mailing list software, you run the risk of sending items to incorrect addresses when sending them via direct mail, or they might arrive when recipients aren’t available to receive items. This may result in multiple shipping costs or failed delivery altogether.
- Customs and duties for international gift shipping: Rules and regulations governing the import and export of items may negatively affect delivery times (in some cases recipients could be waiting months for their gifts to arrive). High import costs will negatively affect the budget and incur further losses. Resulting in decreased returns on investment.
- Budget issues: Due to unpredictable hindrances to the manual corporate gifting process, it’s challenging to have set-in-stone budget allocations to support corporate gifting as a regular marketing, retention, and sales-driving tactic. When using a corporate gifting platform, you are able to set aside specific budgets for your campaigns and rest assured that you will not spend more that required.
How To Launch Worldwide Gifting Campaigns Using Giftsenda
Launching successful international corporate gifting campaigns depends largely on your industry, target prospects, and objectives. Before stipulating global gifting budgets, campaign managers need to define and address the ‘who, why, when, and how’. Using the below step-by-step process, better campaign planning can be achieved:
Decide who you want to send gifts to: Categorize potential recipients (staff, current clients, cold leads, prospects, or even customers who have logged support tickets), and state the gifting reasons (reward, appreciate, rekindle, entice, celebrate or even remedy issues). Fortunately, when using our corporate gifting platform to launch your campaigns, there is no need to have your recipients’ addresses on hand as the platform enables you to import contacts from your CRM, via a CSV file, or you can use gift invite links to collect delivery addresses.
Decide on your gifting budget: Now that the recipients have been ‘tiered’ and the objectives defined, it’s time to decide how much you want to spend on your gift campaigns. The value of the gift should correlate with its use case. For example, if you are sending gifts to loyal executive clients, this allocated budget per gift should be more than for a prospecting campaign to reignite cold leads. You will find gifts ranging from low-cost to expensive on our gifting platform.
Decide how you want to send your gifts: With Giftsenda you can send gifts directly to your recipients’ delivery addresses – these are great if you have accurate details and want the gift to be a surprise. For address-collection features and to provide recipients with a choice of their gift you can use automated gifting tools such as Email Gift Invites or Gift Link Invites. After the gifts are delivered, campaign managers can monitor and track campaign performances on the dashboard.
Worldwide Corporate Gifting Campaign Ideas
“What digital media hasn’t changed is people. We are still physical creatures that thrive on human contact and stimulation. Giving, receiving, and handling tangible objects remain deep and intuitive parts of the human experience. In the never-ending stream of two-way virtual communication, sending a direct sensory experience of your brand can mark a pivotal moment in the customer journey.”
Contrary to previous narratives, the buyer, employee, and attendee wear the chief’s hat and decide from the pool of many, from whom to buy, for whom to work, and what to attend. Therefore, brands and employers have the responsibility to showcase value by nurturing these relationships and offering rewards. Corporate gifting campaigns can be used in the below instances:
- Sales and prospecting campaigns
- Marketing and brand awareness campaigns
- Customer experience processes
- Event invites
- Email marketing campaigns
- Client and employee loyalty campaigns
- Staff rewards, onboarding, and incentives
- Holiday-based gifting
- Customer reviews, rewards, and referrals
How to Start Gifting Globally
Get started with our platform: Ready to add corporate gifting to your business strategy on a global scale? Book a 30-minute demo with one of our highly-skilled Gift Campaign Managers to see how our international gifting platform can benefit your business.
One-time gift projects: Do you need help creating an international corporate gift campaign for a one-time project? Sending gifts to various countries can be challenging if you do not have the right tools and partners. Whether you are creating a Christmas campaign to celebrate your staff and clients or just need help with gifts for your webinar, we can assist you.
