Who Are the Recipients of Corporate Gifts? Expert Tips on Dealing with Gift Recipients
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Who Are the Recipients of Corporate Gifts? Expert Tips on Dealing with Gift Recipients

Learn about the 3 main groups of corporate gift recipients, and take away our expert tips on how you should deal with different groups of recipients in corporate gifting campaigns.

Victoria Pi

Victoria Pi

Feb 24th 20237 min read

The Importance of Knowing Corporate Gift Recipients

3 recipient groups of corporate gifts illustration

You don't want to impress the wrong people, do you? Just like people with different job functions have various needs, different gift recipients won't expect the same gifts from you. When you send a wrong gift, it might be considered as a "bad gift" and we all feel upset about it. It's just human psychology.

Before launching a corporate gifting campaign, it’s important to split your gift recipients into respective groups. The reason behind this categorizing process is simple: you have different goals to achieve with each group of gift recipients.

Within corporate gifting, the 3 main recipient groups are employees, customers and partners, and prospective clients.

In this article, we will talk about your general purposes for each group when doing corporate gifting. And of course, we'll share our expert tips on how you can run successful gifting campaigns.

Corporate Gift Recipient Group 1: Employees

group 1 and tips for employee gifting

You purpose of sending employees corporate gifts: show appreciation and recognize their work.

Employees are the backbone of your business and should be treated as such.

A study reports that 66% of employees are “likely to leave their job” citing reasons related to lack of appreciation and feeling undervalued in their workplace. The same study indicates that the figure increases to 76% for millennials who make up the majority of the workforce today.

High turnover negatively impacts businesses as it can lead to low workplace morale and high costs incurred for rehiring and training. The takeaway message from these numbers is that managers should always appreciate the work done by employees.

But how can you show your appreciation?

An effective and simple solution to show gratitude to employees is gifting, you should start employee gifting as soon as possible if you haven’t already. The technology has advaned so much that you can even automate the whole employee gifting process.

From recognizing someone’s contribution towards a project to achieving a major milestone, a thoughtful gift conveys your thanks beyond a temporary spoken “thank you.” Employee Appreciation Day takes places every year. It is one of the best timing business send corporate gifts. You can use this guide as a starting point for Employee Appreciation Day celebration.

Corporate employee gifting can also bridge the gap for you to connect with team members, and encourage stronger engagement with the business. With the recent trend of remote working, gifting can help fostering a sense of belonging within the community no matter the distance and promote feelings of pride in being seen by managers.

Below are our top 3 tips on employee gifting:

1. Give them the power of choice

Acknowledge the diverse preferences people have by giving them the choice in selecting what gift they prefer.

Consider investing in a corporate gifting service that offers recipients the ability to choose their own gifts from a curated selection of items tailored characteristics of each employee.

Increase the likelihood your employees will receive something they find useful and meaningful by letting them decide what they want. However, remember to maintain uniformity in gift value when offering options by reviewing prices beforehand.

2. Find an appropriate time

Add significance by choosing the right time to give a gift.

Make it a surprise to boost motivation during a challenging time or thank someone for their continued dedication to the team. Send it on an important date or to mark a milestone in their personal development journey.

Celebrate employees’ efforts in bettering the company to help them feel visible with their accomplishments.

3. Add a touch of personalization with a hand-written note

Small acts of personalization like adding a name and tailoring a note will be remembered and form an emotional connection with the company. Take the time to craft a message to your recipient.

Reflect upon their achievements and highlight memorable moments within the note to emphasize your sincerity in admiring their accomplishments. Mention a specific moment or worthwhile memory to reveal you care about interacting with every employee.


Corporate Gift Recipient Group 2: Loyal customers and partners

group 2 and tips for gifting to customers and partners

Your purpose of sending loyal customers and partners corporate gifts: thank them for their business.

Say thank you to your customers and partners for working with your business. This helps you develop brand loyalty and bolster organic word-of-mouth awareness.

Convey how much you value their patronage with a personalized gift to initiate an emotional connection highlighting the importance of their business with you. Through gifting, you can reiterate your appreciation for their continued support and recognize their contribution to staying loyal to your brand.

Here are 3 tips when it comes to gifting customers and partners:

1. Personalize the gift

Your gift shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. People have individual likes and dislikes that should be mirrored in the type of gift they are given. Signal to customers and partners that you took the time to think specifically about a gift that fits their interests.

Initiate rapport with them to understand who they are and their characteristics. Let them know you were paying attention. Give something they will want to keep and enjoy to leave a positive impression, so they are more likely to repeat business with you in the future.

2. Don’t throw your logo all over the gift

Being over promotional leaves a bad taste in your recipients’ mouth. Corporate gifting focuses on building relationships, not pushing to sell your business in an invasive manner.

Less is more when it comes to including logos on gifts. A subtle reminder is always more appealing than a logo placed front and center. Keep the trinkets given out at conferences away in this case as generic and cheap items used for marketing may be seen as insulting.

3. Quality over quantity

Always aim to send a high-quality gift. Quality speaks volumes about how much you value the recipient.

Cheap gifts get thrown away and become an afterthought while high-quality gifts are kept for use. Luxury gifts are especially popular when companies are gifting their VIPs. Low-quality items can come across as disrespectful as it may send a message that you don’t care enough about the recipient to give something long-lasting.

High-quality gifts don’t have to be extravagant as useful and relevant gifts can still assist in strengthening business relations.


Corporate Gift Recipient Group 3: Prospective clients

group 3 and tips on prospective clients gifting

Your purpose of sending prospective clients corporate gifts: build a long-lasting relationship.

Your approach for sales gifting for prospective clients will be different compared to other groups as you attempt to establish a relationship.

A well-timed, personalized gift can make a crucial difference in the client taking the desired action you want them to. For instance, gifts may be sent out to prospects to stand out from the crowd and encourage the booking of a meeting.

Promote a consistent dialogue between you and your prospect by reminding them about you with a considerate gift that keeps you top-of-mind.

Take a look at our 3 expert tips while you gift prospective clients:

1. Find a balance for the cost of the gift

When starting to establish a professional relationship, adjust the value of the gift to not come off as too cheap or borderline bribery. The gift should be an encouragement to continue business with you but not make them feel obliged to connect because of an expensive gift.

Make sure that the gift value is appropriate for your circumstances, especially when forming B2B relationships. A simple gift card to a coffee shop for a meeting venue can be effective, while it won't cost more than necessary.

2. Focus on the presentation

Although seemingly superfluous, packaging can make an impactful impression on recipients. An elegant, well-packaged gift indicates the amount of attention paid to the small details.

Packaging experience is also an undeniably important part of gifting as the art of unboxing has been popularized in recent years. Elevate your recipient’s unboxing experience for their special gift to be just like taking a new Apple iPhone out of the box.

Put thought into creating an experience around revealing the gift to heighten the enjoyment of receiving a gift.

3. Adhere to the client’s corporate gift policy

Every company has its own guidelines regarding what is acceptable or unacceptable gifts.

Some professions forbid the receiving of gifts as it conflicts with their job responsibilities. Although you may have good intentions, do your homework and understand the recipient’s company policy to prevent doing anything illegal. Understand the protocol to avoid a public blunder that may reflect poorly on your business.

If you're doing client gifting, there's a high chance you'll have to deal with tax. We wrote an article specifically on gifting tax in the EU. This should give you a solid understanding of how things work.


By now, you should have a general idea of how you will put your gift recipients into groups. Take the 9 tips as reminders when you go through the process of creating gifting campaigns. We promise they will only do good for your business.

Create a Successful Gifting Campaign
Victoria Pi

Victoria Pi

Feb 24th 20237 min read

About Giftpack

Giftpack's AI-powered solution simplifies the corporate gifting process and amplifies the impact of personalized gifts. We're crafting memorable touchpoints by sending personalized gifts selected out of a curated pool of 3 million options with just one click. Our AI technology efficiently analyzes each recipient's social media, cultural background, and digital footprint to customize gift options at scale. We take care of generating, ordering, and shipping gifts worldwide. We're transforming the way people build authentic business relationships by sending smarter gifts faster with gifting CRM.

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