Corporate Gifts: A Practical Guide to a Profitable Investment
Corporate gifts, also known as promotional items, business gifts, or promotional gifts, are personalized objects bearing a company’s colors used to establish connections with your clients, prospects, and even internally with your teams.
Whether you’re searching for year-end gifts for your clients, seminar souvenirs for your employees, or original ideas to offer at a trade show: you’re in the right place!
MS International specializes in promotional items and offers you a catalog of over 10,000 references.
You’re sure to find the idea that sets you apart.
But before placing your order, here’s a comprehensive guide to understanding all the advantages of corporate gifts, as well as best practices to ensure a guaranteed return on investment.
Corporate Gifts: Boosting Your Employer Brand
The Perfect Onboarding Kit!
An emotional communication support par excellence, corporate gifts are now moving beyond marketing departments to conquer the realms of human resources and internal communication.
Promotional items allow companies to build connections, foster lasting attachment, and convey a strong identity message. These are valuable assets when it comes to rallying employees or integrating a new member into the team.
The uses of corporate gifts for employer branding are endless.
An excellent way to mark the company’s life in a thousand and one ways:
- Organizing seminars with the creation of logoed textile articles (T-shirts, caps, tote bags…)
- Welcoming a new employee with a Welcome Pack or welcome box (pen, agenda, mug, keychain, charger, USB key…)
- Commemorating a company anniversary or a highlight event such as year-end celebrations, March 8th…
- Thanking your employees, retirement, maternity leave return, promotions…
Corporate gifts strengthen employer branding, improve satisfaction, and boost employee motivation.
The company shows its appreciation and reinforces team members’ sense of belonging. A good way to enhance quality of work life and recognition towards your collaborators.
Corporate Gifts & CSR Policy
Can sustainability and promotional items go hand in hand?
As surprising as it may seem: the answer is YES!
CSR managers now have access to recyclable products, made from recycled materials, durable, and of high quality to equip their employees.
Reusable items (mugs, cups, water bottles…), solar energy, renewable materials, help reduce the carbon footprint of your office items while conveying the message of eco-responsibility and waste reduction.
Need inspiration? Discover the MS International eco-responsible range: recycled materials, recyclable products, and renewable materials, available on over 5,900 products.
The Benefits of Corporate Gifts in Customer Loyalty
Eco-responsible promotional items for cosmetic brands
Giving to receive: the mechanics of promotional gifts
Corporate gifts, end-of-year client thank you, rewards following a first purchase… Personalized gifts are a well-known attachment vector for businesses.
A loyalty lever that allows you to stand out and leave a lasting impression :
- The public will keep (77%) and use (67%) your promotional items for a long time (up to 5 years).
Promotional gifts increase brand memorability and improve the brand’s image among its customers, who are then more likely to renew their purchase or recommend the company to others.
Putting Emotion at the Heart of Customer Relations
By creating a personalized and privileged relationship with your customers, you meet their growing affinity needs.
MS International’s diverse offering allows you to mark any item, thus meeting the desires of very different target audiences, respecting their values. Ultra-personalization allows you to refine your message even further. A good way to hit the mark every time and impress your customers.
Regardless of their tastes or your brand positioning, you can adapt your promotional item communication strategy: high tech, ecology, textiles, cosmetics, jewelry… Your customer experience is enriched with emotions at every step of the journey.
By creating regular appointments, you write a shared story that lasts over time. An essential sense of attachment in any loyalty strategy.
Acquiring New Customers Through Promotional Items
The ideal textile accessory: the branded 100% cotton cap
Events, trade shows, marketing operations… Distributed for free, corporate gifts primarily have a promotional objective:
- 64% of advertisers who offer gift items do so at events, 18% do so to promote their products/services.
Promotional gifts remain popular with consumers
Overall stable since 2016, the French promotional items market retains a special place in consumers’ hearts.
As the third media support used by brands, it withstands extremely well the digital wave that has engulfed marketing practices in recent years. Thus, faced with the decline of traditional media (advertising, press, radio, TV…), promotional items represent a real safe haven when it comes to acquiring new customers.
- 89% of French people have a favorable opinion of a promotional item received, and 78% remember the brand associated with a promotional item.
Creative and Infinitely Declinable, Corporate Gifts Allow You to Surprise Your Prospects with a Product That Matches Trends and Their Desires, Provided You Respect Certain Criteria.
Criteria for Choosing a Good Corporate Gift
The scented candle: the essential well-being promotional item
Utility, durability, and quality: the first criteria for choosing a promotional item
Being memorable, standing out from the competition, creating attachment… All of these objectives are perfectly achievable with a well-executed promotional item marketing campaign. Nevertheless, consumers will favor brands offering useful, good quality, and durable promotional items.
A reflection of the brand, its values, and the quality of its products or services, a well-chosen promotional item improves the company’s image for 78% of those who receive them.
Don’t neglect your promotional item communication strategy. Ethical, ecological, Made in France, inclusive… These values, important to your customers, must be reflected in the item representing your brand.
For 65%, a poor-quality item tarnishes the company’s image and leads them not to invest in it.
A promotional item must therefore first and foremost have real utility for the recipient, but also be capable of lasting, to be kept as long as possible.
Calculating the Return on Investment of Corporate Gifts
It’s difficult to establish a precise and quantified ROI (Return On Investment) for a promotional item marketing campaign.
Nevertheless, it’s possible to calculate the number of prospects or business opportunities generated by it. Website traffic, increased turnover, number of subscribers on social networks are also indicators that allow you to assess the impact of a campaign.
Indeed, brand memorability in promotional item communication is much higher than that generated by online advertisements, for example. The sense of attachment, the propensity to recommend the company are also stronger with a promotional gift than with any other advertising medium.
According to the study by the French federation (2FPCO) of promotional item communication, 83% of consumers are more likely to buy from the brand that gave them a gift.
Returns that are difficult to quantify, but certainly not negligible!
Long-Term Brand Attachment with Corporate Gifts for Children
Corporate gifts are an effective and profitable communication tool for strengthening employer branding, retaining loyal customers, and acquiring new ones.
They help strengthen relationships with employees, loyal customers, and prospects, and encourage them to recommend the company to their circle. An emotional relationship that lasts over time thanks to the durability of the item.
By investing in quality promotional items, companies can improve their brand image, customer satisfaction, reputation, and turnover. What more could you ask for?
Looking for your next corporate gifts? Discover over 10,000 references suitable for all areas of activity.
Photo Credits: MS International
