Tick tock, tick tock… that’s the sound of the holiday gifting clock running out. Sure, it’s only August, but the holiday season has a funny way of sneaking up on you. One minute you’re busy with work and meetings, and the next, boom! It’s time to hang up those decorations and decide who’s been naughty or nice.
Don’t be blindsided. Corporate holiday gifting is more than a formal tradition. It can improve employee loyalty, boost morale, and show people that they are genuinely appreciated. Early planning is crucial to nailing corporate holiday gifting. And, if you leave it later than September, you stand to miss out on reaping the rewards.
If you think there’s no real need to plan, that it’s easy to leave it until later (much, much later), or who needs to manage gifts for their employees? Then you may want to think again.
When it comes to gifting, there’s more than just a ‘gift.’
Five reasons why you should plan for corporate holiday gifting:
Corporate holiday gifting is self-explanatory. Most employees know they’ll get something from the companies they work hard for, partly due to the glamorous corporate culture and the trend of ‘corporate gifting’ before holidays.
This kind of gifting is usually bereft of any element of surprise, but it doesn’t have to be. This brings us to planning and its benefits:
1. You have far more options to choose from
The closer you get to the holidays, the faster your options narrow down. Aside from the mad scrambling, remember the rush when corporates scramble to buy the perfect gifts for their employees? Several start earlier to ensure the product they want is in stock and available. If you delay your gifting process and wait until the holidays roll out, most good choices are likely to have run out of stock or sold out.
Corporate holiday gifting is hard enough, with the possibility of production delays and unreliable shipping. Why make things worse by waiting too long and missing out on that great gift because it was out of stock?
Some vendors have scaled down their production to cope with ongoing Covid impacts, making it very easy to go out of stock. Start planning early to make sure you have the best products in the market available to you. The better your gift, the better the payoff in employee retention and relationships.
2. Planning can help avoid shipping delays
Getting packages delivered on time is hard enough to do for anniversaries and birthdays. But when you consider the sheer volume of packages to be shipped for corporate holiday bulk gifting, you get an idea of how easy it is for things to go pear-shaped. Then again, late deliveries are the least of your worries.
Packages might get lost, replaced, or never reach the recipient. Moreover, tracking your boxes can be challenging when dealing with many deliveries unless you have an automated gifting solution for logistics.
Remember that even the best shipping services struggle under the pressure of the staggering volumes of holiday gifts being exchanged. Services are also prone to price hikes in the holiday season to cope with the rising demand.
You can avoid all of this by simply sending out your gifts earlier. Early gifting will also help your recipients remember your gift from the swarm of holiday gifts they receive each year.
3. Planning can save money
Pre-ordering your gifts can get you special discounts. Several vendors offer pre-order holiday discounts. For instance, you can save up to 15% if you place your order early. However, prices fluctuate to reflect production delays and difficulties in sourcing raw materials. What if you wait till the holiday season rolls out only to find that you can’t afford to buy the product simply because it no longer fits your gifting budget?
You can easily avoid looking for alternates, paying for expedited shipping to get it on time, and still be unsatisfied with corporate holiday gifting by starting early. Instead, plan for the festive days ahead and avoid increased product prices or additional delivery costs for express shipping.
4. Planning can help avoid holiday shopping stress
Finding the perfect gift for a corporate holiday gifting takes time and resources. This is more so if you’re doing it without the help of a professional gifting service. There is so much to choose from for the right gift: religious factors, personal preferences, hobbies, relationships, and more characteristics come into play.
Multiply those (mentioned above) by the number of employees you have, and the pressure builds up. If you were to add a deadline, you would end up with unnecessary stress that could have been avoided by simply starting your planning earlier.
If you are buying from a new vendor, food gifts must be tasted; tech gifts must be checked out; branded gifts must be purchased, and so on — the stress builds up. Planning early will help immensely. Goodbye, 11th-hour pressures!
You could skip this step altogether by subscribing to an automated gifting solution and giving your employees the perfect gift every time, without choosing ONE gift yourself! Sound impossible? Legit, it’s possible.
Suurrprrizeee! (Automated)
Automated gifting cuts to the chase and lands you exactly where you’re looking, giving your employees a genuinely meaningful gift, not a generic one.
EvaBot’s AI gifting solutions help you nail the corporate holiday gifting game, one gift at a time. Every gift you send out via Eva is a testimony of advanced technology, artificial intelligence, thoughtfulness, and data; the result is a delight every single time.
Bye-bye arbitrary, monotonous gifting, shipping delays, worrisome decision-making, and quality issues. Hello, simple, effective, and intelligent gifting without any manual intervention.
With Eva, you don’t have to worry about what gift to pick and how to track your packages. Instead, Eva masterfully assists you through the corporate holiday gifting with an extensive collection of unique gifts as simple as a click away.
And indeed, it is! All you do is generate Eva links, send them to your colleagues or the receipts, and you’re done. Eva picks it up from there and will do the rest of the job — from chatting and figuring out the recipient’s likes and dislikes to dispatching the perfect gift.
So you know, Eva chats have a reputation of a 99% completion rate, and recipients usually love their Eva gifts. In the unlikely event a recipient dislikes their gift, Eva arranges for a free replacement. No questions asked.
Thanks to state-of-art data analytics, you can track your packages and measure the effectiveness of your gifting endeavors. You can also manage bulk orders by importing your employee database into Eva and giving them your branded gifts. The possibilities are endless.
Stand out from the crowd by gifting your employees an experience along with gifts. Of course, you can always test out the waters with a Free Trial of Eva, or you can read more on how EvaBot can help you with your corporate needs at the Eva Blog.
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