COMMON CORPORATE GIFTING MISTAKES AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

We’ve all received less than stellar - to put it nicely - corporate gifts over the years. That fruitcake that sits for weeks in the office kitchen. That gift basket full of cheaply produced “gifts” that felt more like a marketing piece. We’ve all been there.

We remember the bad ones. But we also remember the great gifts. So what makes a good corporate gift versus a bad one? How do you pull together a corporate gift that stands out for the right reasons? Here are our top tips for acing your corporate gifting this year. 

Tip #1: Corporate gifts should be practical, but never boring. Here at Marie Mae, we believe client gifts should be practical and useful, but never boring. This is why we always recommend a mixture of elevated office essentials, such as our signature “write with purpose” notebooks, to be combined with a few pieces that tell a story, such as our handcrafted pens from Rwanda.

Tip #2: Corporate gifts should reflect your company’s values and the value you place on your clients. The gifts that you send your customers and vendors says something about you as a company - good or bad. Something we recommend asking yourself is does this gift represent our company and our company values well? Again, this is why we place such a big emphasis on ethically sourced items here at Marie Mae. High quality products that have a quality you (and the recipient) can feel, and feel good about.

Tip #3: Corporate gifts shouldn’t look like a marketing piece. These are gifts! This is one of the biggest mistakes we often see corporate clients making. Our philosophy is that a great corporate gift compliments your brand well, but doesn’t make the recipient feel like they work for the company that gave them the gift. To put this simply, we don’t recommend putting your logo front and center across every item in the gift box. When you do that, it makes the recipient feel less valued and like you are only sending a gift as a marketing item. Your brand should be thoughtfully and subtly represented throughout the gift. For example, we recommend adding your logo to the packaging, but maybe only adding your logo subtly to the inside of the leather padfolio - rather than on the front. This way, the recipient will still be reminded that it was from you, but won’t feel weird walking into a meeting with it when they do not work for your company. This brings me to our last point.

Tip #4: Corporate gifts should be personalized to the recipient. We believe you have the highest ROI when your corporate gifts are personalized to the recipient. We recommend adding the recipient’s initials to all of our paper products as a nice way to show the person you value them - and that this is truly a gift. Personalized notebooks, stationery and artisan made items make for fantastic corporate gifts in our opinion - something that people often won’t buy for themselves, but love to have on hand. We also always recommend including a personalized and handwritten note with every gift (which we at Marie Mae will handle for you!).

Those are our top 4 tips of how to up-level your corporate gifting this season and the common mistakes to avoid. Remember, your corporate gift should compliment your brand, as well as show your customer how much you value them.

Get ahead of the game this year, and let us help take corporate gifting off your hands!

Marie Mae is changing the world of corporate gifting and everyone is winning: in business results, talent acquisition, customer loyalty, and happy employees. Marie Mae can help strengthen your brand image while increasing the ROI of your corporate gifting program. Corporate gifting is a $125 billion market. Imagine if we put that money to good use, AND gave recipients the memorable gifts they wanted to receive.

To learn more about how Marie Mae can take corporate gifting off your hands this holiday season, visit www.mariemae.com/corporate.