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Will a Corporate Gifting Platform be good for your business?
If your department or organization finds it challenging to create and implement incentive programs, you may be looking for ideas to make the process easier and drive better results.
Often the problem doesn’t originate with the intention of a program but with the delivery methods and the gift options sent to a prospect, client, or employee. Many companies give up on programs too easily, finding it difficult to gain traction and cumbersome to deliver to their gift recipient.
The truth is, that direct mail campaigns are expensive and less effective than other methods. These programs often take time from human resources or administrative staff already stretched thin with projects and competing priorities.
Fortunately, there is a better alternative for delivering an outstanding experience with a customized gift. (And you’ll never have to ship a gift box full of corporate swag through direct mail again.) All you need is an idea, a great gift idea, a little bit of information, and a digital corporate gifting service to help you get the job done.
Today we will discuss the value of using digital gift cards over swag or direct mail gift boxes, what a corporate gifting platform is, provide a gift option for every program your company needs, and outline the benefits of using digital gift cards to reach your gift recipients.
What is a corporate gifting platform?
A corporate gifting platform is a cloud-based software tool that allows organizations to implement gifting programs for digital gift cards at scale. Corporate gifting is important, but it’s a challenging and complex organizational initiative. Doing it well requires dynamic technology that allows users to quickly and efficiently deliver hundreds or even thousands of gift cards simultaneously.
Corporate gift giving is an essential component of your overall benefits packages. In a competitive employment landscape, incentivizing recruitment, retention, and employee engagement through tangible, monetary gifts can have a substantial, positive impact on the success of your organization. The new world of work requires employers to look beyond salary, health, and dental to find ways to connect with their current and prospective employees in new and genuine ways.
A corporate gift card platform is one such way to accomplish this goal.
What are some top examples of corporate gifts?
Let’s look at the types of programs you can administer through a corporate gift card platform.
New employee gift
Welcoming a new staff member with a gift on their first day is a great way to set the tone and create an excellent first impression. Gift cards make it easy to do this, even for remote first and distributed teams where new staff members may be logging in from home.
Milestone recognition
Did your employee attain an advanced degree or a professional certification? Mark the occasion with a gift to convey congratulations and best wishes. Sending a gift card for a celebratory dinner for a leisure activity can strike the right home. You can include some swag, a corporate gift box or business gifts in branded packaging along with a gift card to create a meaningful corporate connection.
Years of service gift
When an employee gives a significant amount of service to one company, recognizing the commitment with a personalized gift is a welcome gesture of appreciation. For higher tenure, such as a 10-year or 20-year service award, a travel voucher provides an excellent form of recognition.
End-of-year employee gifts
Whether given by individual departments or as a companywide program, recognizing the end of a successful year with a business gift can renew the connection employees feel toward the organization. These premium gifts can be personalized so that even at scale, each employee feels individually valued.
Spot bonuses
Sometimes the most effective recognition is spontaneous. Setting aside some budget allocation for spot bonuses or SPIFFs can allow managers and department heads to reward employees who go above and beyond on a specific project for company needs. Spot bonuses can celebrate wins like getting an important new client or beating a key performance threshold.
Promotion recognition
When advancing an employee along the career path, a congratulatory gift makes a great addition to other compensation and benefits increases they may receive. It conveys to the recipient that their achievement is a win for both the individual and the organization.
Retirement gifts
Celebrating the end of a dedicated employee’s career offers many benefits for the recipient and the company at large. Retirement gifts help everyone in the company celebrate the dedication to work and the transition into a new life stage. Great ideas for this include custom gift boxes, company swag (“to remember us by!”), or another unique gift that speaks to their time of service and personality.
Life event gifts
When you want to make a human connection with your individual contributors rather than seeming like you're using some kind of giftpack ai, it’s important to celebrate personal achievements as well as professional ones. Celebrating new family members, first homes, new pets, and even achievements of your employee's family (children’s graduations) can make a personal connection that fosters good rapport.
Referral thank you
Employees often have the best connection to the workplace and those from their networks that might be a good fit for your company. Therefore, encouraging employee referral through an incentive or gift program can ensure that employees are motivated to promote the brand to friends and family when job roles become available. In many cases, an American Express gift card is an easy way to ensure your referrer gets something they enjoy.
Performance recognition
Recognizing when an employee goes the extra mile is essential to encouraging high performance throughout the department or company. Be sure to recognize these moments of high performance with the right gift such as a monetary gift or a gift card.
Corporate gifting benefits
There are many benefits to using a corporate gift program to engage your clients and employees:
Higher employee satisfaction: Employees who feel recognized and appreciated report higher job satisfaction than those whose only recognition comes through standard salary and benefits. Recognition that comes with tangible and monetary gifts has the most impact on satisfaction readings.
Better engagement metrics: Satisfied employees ring more enthusiasm and engagement to their job roles. By recognizing achievements and dedication, you create a virtuous cycle of engagement and reward.
Lower turnover: It naturally follows that satisfied and engaged employees stay with their employers longer. Corporate gifting initiatives have the effect of extending employee tenure, which has many bottom-line benefits. Employees who invest in the satisfaction and happiness of their workforce spend less money training new employees when unsatisfied employees leave.
Better brand reputation: When an employer offers excellent benefits and experience, people tend to talk about it. Often employees will become brand ambassadors for organizations that recognize and reward hard work and innovation. Customers like to align themselves with companies that treat their employees right, so invest in gifting activity that boosts brand awareness.
Higher employee morale: Running a business is about more than revenue numbers. Investing in your employees through formal and informal recognition can create higher employee morale and help solidify teams even through tough periods.
How to choose the right corporate gifting platform for you
The explosion of cloud-based corporate gifting platform options has created a world of choice for organizations keen to take advantage of the benefits. However, with all available choices, it can be hard to sift through the options and find a platform that meets your needs, supports your development, and makes good budgetary sense.
The decision about a corporate gift card platform often comes down to key points about how you will use the platform and what stage your gifting initiatives are in. A flexible platform will have a gift option for any small business or enterprise corporation. It will offer ways to successfully implement corporate gift card programs across different scales and budgets.
No matter what option you choose, you should look for these standard best-in-class features when choosing a platform:
Flexible use cases: A robust corporate gifting program will have the features and flexibility to enable various programs and initiatives. With the right tools, every department can craft programs that help attain outcomes and drive value for multiple recipients.
Seamless integration: Integration is a crucial difference for best-in-class corporate gift platforms. Tools that allow integration with other reporting and marketing software make it easy to share data between departments, plan for aniline budgets, and improve programs by centralizing key data between different business functions.
Gift card discounts: Beyond the technical abilities of a platform, using a partner with robust retailer partnerships can have a financial upside for your programs. Look for platforms that allow you to buy gift cards at scale and realize discounts. With the right gift card program, businesses can see up to 25% lower costs on the face value of cards they send.
Global options: Today’s multinational and decentralized world of work requires corporate gifting companies to help you reach your employees wherever they live. Look for a platform with an extensive global gift selection that makes it easy to give the perfect gift to every recipient.
Easy to use UI: Even a fully-featured corporate gift card platform should remain easy to use with a clear and understandable gifting process. Be sure to evaluate the ease of use of software tools you consider. A good platform will allow users to design and deploy a gift card program without intensive training or needing to write code. Or higher a developer.
Balance recapture: One of the lesser-known benefits of a first-in-class platform is the ability to capture unused balances and incorporate them back into budgets. The reality that up to 30% of money spent in the gifting process will go unused means that your programs could be sitting on unrealized ROI. With balance recapture, every penny of your budget can be used.
Take the first step to a better gifting experience with Runa
Runa offers all of the above features and benefits package into a dynamic and easy-to-use corporate gift card platform. Runa has invested time and resources into creating a seamless experience for human resource, talent acquisition, finance, and revenue enablement teams at every size and stage.
For businesses just starting on their corporate gifting journey, building a new gift card program can be as easy as uploading a list and entering a credit card. Our basic-tier features allow you to launch simple programs at the touch of a button.
For larger organizations or those with evolving gifting needs, using one of the major gifting platforms like Runa can make corporate gifting seamless and easy to administer. Runa has all the features of a first-class platform, with extra value adds like extensive customer service and the largest selection of global gift cards in the industry.
Ready to get started with a coporate gifting platform? Let us show you how, with a free demo.
