Corporate Gifting Strategy: Plan, Measure ROI and Gifts

In the last 8+ years, we have helped 400+ brands plan their corporate gifting strategy.

This helped our clients to:

• Increase corporate gifting ROI
• Improve employee engagement level
• Attract new talents 
• Increase brand visibility on social media
• And more.

So, we know the ins and outs of planning a corporate gifting strategy for your brand from scratch.

Based on our experience, we created this ultimate guide on corporate gifting strategy.

What is a corporate gifting strategy?

A corporate gifting strategy is a thoughtful plan for selecting the right gifts for clients, employees, suppliers, and prospects with a positive intent. For example, you can gift your employees on their birthdays and festivals or as a token of appreciation for their hard work.

When you are in business, you must always think of ways to attract new talent. These people can be anyone from a new hire, talented employee, and new supplier to a high-budget client. Corporate gifts are the best way to attract people. They don’t have to be grand but must show your genuine efforts. 

Here’s an example of an employee at Wipro sharing her welcome corporate gift kit on LinkedIn. 

According to reports, 89% of the people felt appreciated after receiving corporate gifts. A thoughtful gift can go a long way in building strong bonds with employees, customers, shareholders, and suppliers.

Now, a corporate gift strategy must have an intent behind it. 

For example, you might gift a customer only to build bonds and ensure they return to your business. Similarly, if you are trying to impress a foreign client, you might send them a personalised gift and crack the deal. You must find your intent first and then select a gift so that this gesture adds value to your business.

Let’s take an example of a personalized gift:

This can be an interesting festive hamper for your employees. It encourages them to work better and stay connected with your company. What else do you get? Branding.  When these employees share photos on their social media showing how the company values their people, you get a chance to attract the best talents. 

How to plan your corporate gifting strategy?

Step 1. Define your intent for corporate gifts 

Firstly, you must understand that corporate gifts aren’t casually given; they have a hidden objective. Though it sounds suspicious, they usually have positive objectives aimed at business growth. 

What are some of the objectives for corporate gifting? We have listed a few of them.

Showing appreciation for hard work: Award “employee of the month” to boost team spirit and performance. Tokens of appreciation can motivate employees.

Celebrate festivals with employees, clients, and suppliers: Send personalized apparel, branded products, gift hampers, and gourmet food to show you value them.

Welcoming new team members: Gift new employees office kits to make them feel welcomed and valued. Everyone loves receiving gifts.

Impress B2B clients: Understand your clients’ interests and prepare corporate gifts accordingly. This increases your chances of securing contracts.

Retain high-value customers: For retaining high-value clients, choose useful corporate gifts that keep them connected to your business.

Build stronger bonds with suppliers: Please suppliers with appropriate corporate gifts, in addition to timely payments, to maintain strong relationships and prevent competitors from luring them away.

Step 2. Identify whom to gift 

Once you have the objective for corporate gifting, you must understand whom to gift. Will every customer who walks through your doors receive a gift, or will you only receive the top clients or promising prospects? 

You need to segment gift recipients like clients, employees, business partners, vendors, shareholders, etc., and prioritise the important ones. 

For example, you can’t send out gifts to your top employees, high-value or long-term clients, and key business partners. 

How do you prioritise people for corporate gifting? We would suggest you be selective with your gifts and present them to anyone who contributes to your business growth. But still, here are a few things you can consider.

1/ You first need to segment your audience. 

For example, clients and customers can be prioritised as high-value, long term or potential clients; employees can be prioritised as top performers, long-tenured employees, or team milestones; and consider your key business partners and top suppliers.

For example, when your team completes a milestone, you can award them with metal or glass trophies. This will motivate and raise a sense of competition among other teams.

👉 Here are some examples of employee awards and recognition:

2/ Then, access the relationship value.

This means you can evaluate their revenue contribution, the strategic importance of their relationship for your long-term business goals, and engagement level or commitment to your company.

3/ Evaluate the corporate gifting impact potential.

The most common motto of corporate gifting is branding. You must evaluate or identify who can advocate your brand and influence others. For example, you can gift an employee who can boost your company values to their social networks, which may attract top talents. You can also consider other factors like whether your corporate gift has the potential to improve your business in future and it will strengthen your important relationships. 

Step 3. Set up a budget

How to set up a budget for corporate gifting is a big question for business owners, leaders, and sales professionals. What do statistics say? 

Almost 65% of the corporate gift budgets are allocated to client and customer gifts. This means businesses are focusing on retaining long-term or high-valued clients and potential customers for faster growth. 

But, you cannot ignore your employees as they are the most valued asset of your business. 

Therefore, I suggest you set up a budget for gifting valued employees and customers as your business can accommodate. 

How to set up a budget for corporate gifting?

1/ Start with calculating the total amount your business can allocate for corporate gifting.

For example, you make ₹1.2 m in business annually, and you can allocate ₹10,000 only to corporate gifting. Look out for gifting options within that budget.

Otherwise, here’s my way of setting a realistic budget

Determine how many gifts you need annually (100 employees × 5 times a year = 500 gifts)

 Set a budget per gift, for example, ₹200

Now, calculate the total annual budget allocated to corporate gifting (500 gifts × ₹200 = ₹10,000)

2/ Identify your audience and prioritise groups based on their importance to your business and potential return on investment (ROI) from corporate gifting.

For example, if you gift high-value employees an opportunity, they can understand their value in your company and try their best in your business growth. However, don’t ignore the contributions of your other employees and clients.

3/ Adapt a tiered approach to corporate gifting.

It refers to creating different tiers of people based on their importance in the company and allocating separate budgets for each tier. 

For example, you can allocate a larger portion of your budget to those who are at the top of your priority list, like high-value clients, top-performing employees, and key business partners. In the end, keep a minimum budget for general appreciation gifts for all your employees, clients, and partners.

4/ Consider the frequency of gifting.

Finally, you must consider how many times of the year you plan to gift to your employees, clients, and business partners. According to the frequency of gifting, you can adjust your budget.

For example, you can gift your employees four times a year on New Year, birthday, company’s foundation day, and Diwali. In that case, if your budget per employee is Rs. 1600, you can divide that amount into Rs. 400 for each occasion.

Step 4. Choose the right corporate gift

Choosing the appropriate corporate gift is an essential task for business. You cannot gift a male employee female accessories, or your female client branded men’s grooming set. It is not necessary that the right gift will 100% fulfil your objective behind gifting, but it enhances your chance of getting work done.

If you are gifting a B2B client, it is good to send them branded presents but make sure it is something of their interest. Suppose your client loves wearing Hoodies and Jackets from top brands. You can send them one from Adidas, Cantabil, or Jack&Jones. For high-value clients, you can also send trolley bags, sound systems, and headphones for top brands. 

Step 5. Plan the timing and occasion on when to gift

Another essential consideration for corporate gifting is planning the time and occasion on when to gift. These can be when a team completes their milestones, festivals like Diwali, Christmas, and New Year, and special events like the company’s foundation day and employees’ birthdays and anniversaries.

Step 6. Add a sense of personalisation 

To make your gifts more thoughtful, you need to add a personal touch. This can be sending a gift according to the recipient’s choice. You can also send unique messages, quotations, or a special appreciation within the gift pack.

For example, if you are gifting top employees of the year, and she is a girl who finds interest in keeping a classy look, here are some recommendations from us:

Step 7. Ensure compliance with legal and ethical regulations

There are a few regulations you need to maintain for corporate gifting to save your company’s reputation, avoid legal issues, and promote fair business practices. Many countries have strict laws against bribery and corruption. If you are dealing with international clients, you need to understand these laws in India and the countries you are dealing with. Even certain industries like healthcare and finance have specific regulations about the gifts they can receive and give to businesses, clients, and partners. 

I will suggest a few more things to consider for businesses:

• Avoid impartiality in gifting
• Ensure gifts maintain trust and integrity in business relationships
• Adhering to ethical standards reflects good corporate governance
• Have knowledge of tax compliance for corporate gifts
• Respect cultural norms and sensitivities while gifting

Step 8. Focus on the logistics

Companies that reward or gift only their in-house employees don’t need to worry about logistic services. But, when you plan on gifting your remote employees, B2B clients, customers, and shareholders, you need someone to deliver your gifts. This requires you to collaborate with reliable vendors and service providers who can help you deliver gifts. 

If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of procuring, packaging, and shipping gifts, connect with companies like Tapwell. 

We have successfully delivered 621,542+ products in the last nine years. You only need to choose your gifts; Tapwell takes responsibility for Direct delivery to recipients. 

Step 9. Incorporate branding

You must focus on subtle branding of your gifts by incorporating logo or branding elements on the gift or on the packaging. However, you must avoid overbranding so that your gift doesn’t feel like an advertisement. Using proper branding elements in corporate gifts effectively combines appreciation with promotion, strengthens your relationships, increases brand visibility, and conveys your company’s values and identity.

Here’s how you can incorporate branding

• Place your company logo in a visible location, such that it looks prominent and is noticed but doesn’t overwhelm the gift.

Check the below example of corporate gift with customzied logo and name printed:

• Use your brand colour for the item or its packaging that creates a visual connection to your company.
• Add the recipient’s name or initials on the gifts to make it more personal and special.
• Include a personalised message or thank you note with each package to reflect your appreciation and the reason for the gift.
• Use packaging that features your brand’s logo, colours and design
• Make sure your gifts reflect your brand image

As an example, I have taken Amazon’s welcome kit from a LinkedIn share, which is extremely elegant and has proper branding.

I can recommend some of our branding styles; check them out:

Step 10. Evaluate the effectiveness of the gifting strategy 

Finally, you need to evaluate the effectiveness of your corporate gifting strategy to see if your efforts are achieving the desired objectives. 

How do we evaluate its effectiveness? Here’s what you can do

• Determine if the money you spend on corporate gifts is providing tangible business benefits like increased sales, client retention, or employee satisfaction
• Assess whether your corporate gifts are strengthening bonds with employees, clients, customers, business partners, vendors, and shareholders
• Check if your gifting strategy aligns with the business’s overall objectives and values
• Establish metrics to measure the achievement of your gifting strategy like customer feedback scores, repeat purchase rates, or employee engagement levels
• Send surveys and questionnaires to gift recipients and gather feedback on your gift’s impact and relevance
• Monitor brand engagement on social media and analyse changes in website traffic

How to measure the ROI of corporate gifting campaigns?

Corporate gifting has the power to influence company growth, but you need to measure its ROI often to understand if your strategy works properly. 

By properly, we mean your objectives behind introducing corporate gifting are met, and you have a good return on investment. 

👉 Save time by downloading our corporate gifting ROI calculator sheet.

We can use a formula to calculate the ROI, that is,

ROI = (Revenue increase + cost savings) / Gift cost

• Revenue increase: It is the additional revenue generated from the gifting campaign, like new sales
• Cost savings: It is anything that is achieved through the gifting program, such as improved retention or reduced churn
• Gift cost: It is the actual cost of the gift, including any packaging, shipping, etc.

There are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that can measure the impact of your corporate gifting strategy, such as

• Evaluating customer retention 
• Referral rates
• Gift redemption rates
• Satisfaction of gift recipients like customers and employees
• Increase in brand sentiment and perception 
• Increase in the business revenue 

Tapwell offers corporate gifting solutions from different product categories

The trouble with corporate gifting is finding the right gift for different tastes in one place within your budget and handling logistics. You need to collaborate with a vendor for the packaging and shipping of gifts, look for people for branding elements, organise all addresses, etc. 

Tapwell has been making this process easy since 2015, with 1,834+ projects completed successfully and 621,542+ products delivered. This online digital platform offers a wide range of corporate gifting categories with 4000+ products available for different budgets. Let see 

1. Apparels

Companies often gift their employees corporate apparel like branded t-shirts, hoodies, or jackets. This is one stylish way to promote your brand. 

At Tapwell, you will find multiple categories of apparel, like,

1. Accessories
2. Caps
3. Jackets & Sweatshirts
4. Shirts
5. T-shirts

👉 Find the right corporate apparel gift items

2. Awards & Rewards

You often need to reward your employees to motivate them and boost their morale. Awards and rewards recognise and celebrate achievements. With us, you can get customised crystal and metal trophies, to which you can add branding elements for personalisation and brand visibility, making the recognition more meaningful. 

1. Crystal trophies
2. Metal trophies

👉 Explore the list of corporate employee awards and trophies

3. Bags

You can also gift your employees, clients, and business partners branded bags, including backpacks, duffle bags, laptop bags, totes, and trolley bags. These are practical corporate gifts that recipients can use in their daily lives. They provide ample space for your brand logo, which means whenever your gift receiver uses them in public, your brand travels with them.

With Tapwell, you get different varieties of bags, as categorised below:

1. Backpack
2. Duffle Bags
3. Jute & Canvas Bags
4. Laptop Bags
5. Laptop Sleeves
6. Pouches
7. Totes
8. Trolley Bags

👉  Find corporate bags with Tapwell within your budget 

4. Branded products 

Not all companies can bear branded products, but MNCs usually present their top employees, high-valued B2B clients, and business partners with items from top brands like Adidas, Agaro, Bajaj, etc. If these brand logos don’t give you enough space for branding, we can use brand tags on your packaging. Listed below are the few brands you get on our website:

5. Diwali Gifts

We have specially curated gifts for Diwali, including special hampers of sweets, snacks, coffee, and traditional treats to celebrate the festive spirit. You can gift such assorted boxes to your clients or employees and show your brand’s cultural sensitivity.

👉 Check our corporate Diwali gifts for employees

6. Drinkware

Customised drinkware like water bottles, coffee mugs, and travel tumblers are useful to gift recipients and a good brand promotional element. Your employees or clients carry these portable bottles while they travel, increasing your brand visibility and creating a positive impression of your company’s value to outsiders. With us, you can find several drinkware gifting options, like

1. Anti fall drinkware
2. Barware
3. Bottles
4. Coasters
5. Copperware
6. Mugs

👉 Find top personalized drinkware gift items here.

7. Eco-friendly products 

More people are considering sustainability in their business, so if you are one of them, you must be a little choosy with your gifts. We have a huge range of eco-friendly gifts, like reusable bags, bamboo-made accessories, and other nature-friendly products that reflect your company’s commitment to sustainability. These items appeal to environmentally conscious people and promote green values.

👉 Find sustainable and eco-friendly gifting options

8. Electronics 

Tech gifts are loved by all. These can include USB drives, headphones, power banks, smartwatches, wireless chargers, and Bluetooth speakers. These are practical and modern corporate gifts that millennials and Gen Z people would love to receive and use in public. Thus, these ensure prolonged brand exposure and motivate your team to work better. With Tapwell, you get the following gifting options:

1. Accessories 
2. Bluetooth speaker 
3. Desk lamp 
4. Earbuds or earphones 
5. Headphones or neckbands 
6. Powerbank diaries 
7. Powerbanks
8. Smartwatches and fitness bands
9. Wireless chargers

👉 Explore our budget friendly corporate tech gadgets for employees and clients

9. Gourmet

Who doesn’t love receiving delicious treats, especially when free? Of course, you are gifting gourmet foods to your employees to appreciate their hard work and keep up the motivation to work better; these gifts fill them with heart and stomach. 

These include snacks, chocolates, and custom-branded treats that can be tailored to suit the recipients’ taste buds and dietary preferences while adding a personal touch to your corporate gifting. 

👉 Treat your team with Gourmet corporate gifts

10. Grooming

 Men’s and Women’s grooming accessories are different, but gifting them the right one shows your company’s contribution to employee wellness and self-care. These are thoughtful gifts, and you can find them at different budgets with us at Tapwell.

👉 Select grooming corporate gifts for employees and clients

11. Hampers

Hampers are boxes of surprises. Gift hampers usually combine a variety of items into one luxurious package. They can include anything from gourmet foods, chocolates, and skincare products to wines, beverages, candles, and office essentials, making the gift look versatile and appealing.

👉 Create your special corporate gift hampers

12. Home and Kitchen 

Your corporate gifting strategy may include home and kitchen gifts like branded utensils, kitchen gadgets, and home decor elements that recipients can often use. It brings your brand to their homes and becomes more visible to company outsiders. We provide the following gifting choices:

1. Candles
2. Home Decor 
3. House utility 
4. Kitchen Appliances 
5. Kitchenware 
6. Lunch boxes 

👉  Find useful home and kitchen gift items 

13. New joinee kits 

New joiners need to feel welcomed and motivated to work harder. Nothing can be better than preparing a highly useful kit for them, which usually comprises water bottles, files, pens, keychains, etc. You can also find a few kits that contain special treats to welcome them.

👉 Explore our special employee welcome kit

14. Office Essentials 

Office Essentials are something that anyone running or working in a company needs. For example, you can have hundreds of visiting cards daily; will you get them scattered over your table? No! You need a cardholder to keep them organised and find contacts whenever required. This can be a great corporate gifting option for you. Here’s what you will find with Tapwell:

1. Desk organisers
2. Desktop items 
3. Visiting cardholders 

👉 Find home office essentials for your employees and clients

15. Packaging options

Companies need to focus on selecting the right corporate gifts and their packaging. We provide different attractive and high-quality packaging options that can enhance the overall gifting experience. You can curate these packaging with your brand logo and company colours to add a professional and personal touch, making your gifts more memorable.

👉 Choose your gift packaging option for corporate gifting 

16. Stationery 

Stationery gifting items mainly include pens, notebooks, dairies, and calendars that recipients can use in their everyday lives. They usually find space in pockets, bags, or office desks, ensuring your brand is visible to them for longer hours. Here are a few options we provide for stationary corporate gifts:

1. Diaries 
2. Gift sets
3. Keychain 
4. Metal pens
5. Organisers 
6. Plastic pens

👉 Get corporate stationery gift items within your budget

17. Travel

If your employees or clients are travel-crazy people, you can gift them travel essentials. These include adaptors, car accessories, passport covers, etc. Recipients can carry your gifts wherever they go and spread your brand name overseas. Don’t forget to add your company logo so that when people see it, they know your brand.

1. Adapters
2. Car Accessories 
3. Neck pillows 
4. Organisers
5. Passport covers
6. Umbrella 

👉 Check out our corporate travel accessories

18. Wellness

In a world where people are more focused on work-life balance, companies must focus on their employees’ wellness. Not only employees but anyone related to your business can receive wellness gifts that promote your brand’s contribution to a better lifestyle. 

👉 Find interesting wellness corporate gifting choices

Final words

You can create meaningful connections and leave lasting impressions by carefully considering your objectives, budget, recipients, and gift choices. Remember to measure ROI and adjust your approach as needed for maximum effectiveness in your corporate gifting efforts.

👉 Contact our gifting strategies and get free help planning your corporate gifting