Corporate Christmas Gift Checklist

What’s the best way to show appreciation that feels genuine? Christmas is the perfect time to show love and gratitude – especially to your clients and employees. Gift them with something that’s personal and relevant to their day-to-day.

Everyone is going to be busy with their Christmas parties and flooded with gifts so you better get organised! Plus, you want to cut through the noise of your competitors – you want to stand out.

So here’s a checklist to make sure you have a smooth process of making sure the right person is gifted and not left forgotten.

Create a Segmented List.

Who’s receiving the gift? And why?

Have a clear idea of who is receiving what, and make sure the personalised message actually makes sense with the gift.

Don’t buy cheap promotional goods for the sake of it – you’ll be wasting your time and money. It will be left in the pile of other free stuff they already have or even worst, the bin.

Your list should be segmented in tiers.

• VVIP – usually the top clients
• VIP – mid tier clients and warm leads
• A small thank you – for cold leads or to ‘touch base’ with old contacts

Each segment should receive slightly different gifts if not completely personalised. Obviously for your VVIPs, you want to show lots of gratitude and give them a sense of, “wow you remembered! You noticed!”. This sends a powerful message that you care and you see the person as an individual, and not just a client or company.

The list should have the correct contact details, their segment and what their gift is.

Be Proactive.

We mentioned your competitors – get in before them.

Starting early can be highly beneficial especially if you are in a saturated market. If you gift too late, either the person is away on holidays or will be lost in all the other gifts.

Also note that promotional merchandise companies will be at their busiest. You don’t want any hiccups or pay a large bill!

What’s your budget?

You don’t want to be left getting quotes and rejecting all of it. Have a realistic budget. At the end of the day, corporate gifting is a strategic way of keeping relationships strong and leads warm – you don’t have to gift EVERYONE.

It doesn’t cost an arm and leg to show appreciation to your clients and employees – as long as the gift feel genuine, personal and warm.

How to keep it genuine & person.

Everyone has a list (in a spreadsheet or in their head!) of their top clients (employees included!). If you’ve had multiple meetings with them whether in person, skype or over the phone, you may have noticed something about their personality or something they mentioned.

It’s a warm feeling to know that someone has noticed or remembered something about you. This is what you want to tap into when corporate gifting.

It could be something like this: You noticed Bob from finance mention he’s trying to be more eco-friendly and ditch plastic as much as he can. He also loves a large flat-white before work.

So you gifted him a completely plastic-free reusable coffee cup in size LARGE. Added is a card hand-written by you, saying you sourced this cup from an ethical company, and you love Bob’s journey towards a more sustainable future.