Every now and then, you'll want to say thank you to an employee or congratulate a client on their success. Corporate gifting is the perfect way to do that.

In this guide, we'll take you through the basics of corporate gifting, tell you what you need to know about the tax implications and share our recommendations on the best way to manage your corporate gifts in 2023.

What Is Corporate Gifting?

Corporate gifting is sending someone a gift from your business. Your lucky gift recipient could be a client, customer, employee, vendor, or prospect. You might extend the gifting experience to the families of those people too.

​Sometimes you'll send a corporate gift just because, but other popular reasons to send them are:

• Birthday presents
• Holiday gifts
• Personal achievements like growing a family
• Professional achievements like gaining a new qualification
• Client appreciation gifts
• Welcome gifts for becoming a new client or employee
• Anniversary gifts for time spent as an employee or client

Corporate gifts don't have to be big or grand. They can be as simple as sending a vendor a gift basket to welcome them to your business family or sending an employee a Hoppier card with funds to spend on their birthday.

Why Corporate Gifting Is Great for Business

Corporate gifts are a fun way to welcome, celebrate, and give thanks to the people who help your business thrive. But they're also great for your business strategy — here's how.

Build Relationships With Clients

There are lots of ways to impress clients and build long, lasting business relationships: Offer an amazing product or service, provide high-quality customer service, and have a smart approach to pricing. You can also add corporate gifts into the mix.

Your clients don't want to feel like a number on a spreadsheet. They want to feel valued, appreciated, and like they're one of your VIPs. Use thoughtful corporate gifting to create that experience — you could send a gift to acknowledge your client's anniversary with your business or to congratulate them when they win an award or achieve a business milestone.

Encourage Prospects to Become Customers

You can also send corporate gift boxes to people who aren't your customers yet. This can be a great way to start an awesome client relationship and show prospects that you're the company to do business with.

Sending corporate gifts can help you stick out in the mind of company decision-makers. If you follow up the first meeting with a thoughtful, personalized welcome gift, you're likely to bring a smile to that person's face — and be someone they think of when they need your services again.

Motivate and Inspire Your Team

Corporate gifting isn't just for your clients. Your employees are your most valuable asset — take care of them with a generous and heartfelt approach to corporate gifting.

Your employees are like your business family. They want to work where they're appreciated and feel at home. Set up a corporate gifting strategy to send thoughtful gifts to employees during key moments like birthdays and corporate anniversaries or times when they've done an amazing job on a project.

You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on these corporate gifts. Even in a small company, that can add up quickly. A great way to do corporate gifting for employees at scale is to use Hoppier to send them a digital card loaded with a small balance just to say "thank you."

What You Need To Know To Start a Corporate Gift Program

Before you jump in and start sending corporate gifts to everyone you know, there are a few things to consider.

Gifting Strategies and Policies

While you want to create a personalized gifting experience for your clients and team members, an overall strategy and policy will help you create similar experiences for all clients and employees — and it will help you simplify the gifting process.

Set a clear policy that outlines your business's approach to corporate gifting. Think about your budget per gift, the types of gifts you'll send, when you'll send them, and how you can align corporate gifting with your values. For example, if you're hot on sustainability then an e-gift like a digital gift card is the perfect option. Instead of mailing a product across the country or world, you can send a gift without worrying about emissions or your carbon footprint.

You'll also want to set a policy on whether your employees can accept personal gifts from contacts at other companies or not. Chances are, if you start sending corporate gifts, your teams will start to receive them too. Make it clear whether that's okay or not, and whether they need to inform you of any gifts received.

Tax Implications

Sometimes, sending corporate gifts can be tax deductible. It all depends on the value and type of gift.

The IRS states that organizations can deduct gifts of up to $25 for each individual per tax year. This applies to gifts that are considered either direct (given to an employee) or indirect (given to the family of an employee or to a client).

This means if you send your employee a $65 basket as a gift to celebrate a personal milestone, $25 of that is tax deductible. Incidental expenses, like engraving, can be deducted beyond this $25 figure — but only if they don't add significant value to the item.

Some types of gifts work differently for tax purposes. An example of this is gift cards where the full cost is tax deductible. That's because they're classed as income, so you'll need to withhold taxes from your employees for these. Company swag is also tax deductible if it costs under $4, has your company name engraved, and is something you'd normally distribute — like pens.

You should keep records of any corporate gifts you send, along with the business purpose for sending the gift.

Restrictions for Clients

While many organizations allow their employees to accept corporate gifts, some don't. Government employees or people in positions of power may be unable to accept your gift — no matter how much it's appreciated.

If you're sending gifts of high value, check with your client's company first to ensure they're able to accept them. If you know you'll want to send surprise gifts to clients in the future, include a question in your welcome process to ask if they can accept gifts so you have them on file for later.

Fun Corporate Gift Ideas

Now that we've covered the basics, let's take a look at some corporate gift options. Here are some popular business gifts to send to clients, employees, and vendors.

1. Luxury Gift Basket

Luxury gift baskets have long been a popular corporate gift idea. They combine that high-quality feel with the freedom to curate a gift basket filled with the recipient's favorite items, gift vouchers, or products from your local area. Hampers can get expensive though, so they're best reserved for annual gifts or as a welcome gift for a VIP client.

2. Baked Goods

A delicious delivery of brownies, cookies, or cake can brighten a client's or employee's business day. Baked good boxes sent by mail have risen in popularity as a corporate gift, as they're easy to order and send directly to your team or clients. If you're sending cookies, you could also have them personalized with your corporate logo.

3. Wellness Box

With so many of us balancing working from home, wellness gift boxes have become popular corporate gifts. Inside you'll find items to help your giftee focus, find balance, and work on their wellness — like tea, positivity cards, a tumbler, and a candle.

4. Customized Snack Box

Everyone loves snacking, and customized snack boxes can be a fun client welcome gift or surprise gift for your teams. Give each snack box a theme and over time your employees can eat their way around the world — or ask your gift recipients for their preferences and build custom gift boxes based on these.

If you are looking to get started, Caroo allows you to build your own snack box with custom swaps to add in company swag, luxury items, healthy snacks, and personalized messages for a delicious corporate gift experience.

5. Personalized Stationery

It's always fun to receive a personalized gift, and stationery is a great option for corporate gifts. Many gifting companies will create a series of notebooks, pens, or pencils that are personalized with your client's business or personal name. This customization makes for fun, bespoke, unique gifts for clients and employees.

Hoppier: The Ultimate Corporate Gifting Solution

Often the trouble with finding corporate gifting options is that they're not flexible enough or are hard to manage. You need to find the perfect supplier, put in a request, and organize all the addresses. There are also challenges involved in organizing gifts across multiple countries.

Corporate gifting should be easy and fun — which is why we've created Hoppier, a digital corporate gifting platform, that lets you treat your clients, partners, and employees wherever they are.

If you want a smart, organized, and thoughtful way to send corporate gifts, Hoppier could be the ideal partner for your gifting needs. With our digital gift cards, there's no need to worry about most of the gifting program process — you can focus on getting your thank you or congratulations gift out there right away.

Hoppier cards are the perfect gift for most corporate gifting moments — like birthdays, milestones, and gratitude gifts. They're great for virtual events too, which means you can manage all your client gifting in one place.

Set Up a Program

Setting up a program within Hoppier is super easy. All you need to do is create an account or log in, then you’ll have the option to create a new program. Fill in the essential details like your program name, then you can jump into customization.

Customize your Hoppier cards with your company logo and colors, so you can continue your company branding through your corporate gifting program. You can also add a fun stipend icon to your program, which helps you easily sort through them in your dashboard.

Decide on a Gift Balance and Accepted Vendors

After you’ve customized your card, you can set a program balance per gift recipient. Choose a dollar amount, and decide whether it’s a one-off gift or a recurring gift — like a yearly anniversary gift. If you want, you can also specify a time period when the balance can be spent.

One of the best things about Hoppier is that, if your gift recipient doesn’t use their full balance, it doesn’t get lost. You get to recoup those unspent funds and bring them back into your marketing budget for future corporate gifting.

In addition to setting a gift balance, you can limit your gift recipients’ choice of stores. The gift selection is quite diverse though and includes options for food, wellness, home products, and entertainment. Alternatively, you can give them access to all of our vendors if you want your giftee to use their digital card anywhere it’s accepted.

Send Your Invitations

Once you’re happy with your corporate gifting program, it’s time to send those gifts out to your employees, clients, or prospects.

All you need to do here is to use our template to create and upload a CSV file with recipients' email addresses. From here, you can decide when to send the invite with the digital card. No fussy checkouts or profile assists.

Send the Best Corporate Gifts to Your Team and Clients

Successful corporate gifting is all about sending thoughtful gifts at the right time to the right people. Create a gifting strategy that lets your employees, clients, and vendors feel appreciated, and go the extra mile to stand out in their minds with customized gifts.

If you're ready to simplify your corporate gifting program and create a fun experience for your recipients, book a free demo with our team. We'll take you through all the different ways you can use Hoppier to send corporate gifts so you can mark the personal and professional moments in your clients' and employees' lives.