Ahh the holidays. Decorations go up, festive treats are eaten, and panic sets in about what gifts to buy for your nearest and dearest. And there’s really nothing like corporate gifting during the holiday season. After all, the stakes are high - it’s a true test of speed, endurance, and the strength of your professional relationships.
But it’s not all bad. Gifting during the holidays can actually be some of your finest work. It’s just about knowing what to give and when to give it. And luckily, that’s exactly what this Reachdesk IQ blog is all about (with a few additional stats and original research thrown in).
What is Reachdesk IQ?
Reachdesk IQ is where we take a deep dive into the numbers behind the gifting. We call on our data science team and the Reachdesk Insights tool to harness the data from the Reachdesk platform to help you take a smarter approach to gifting. We share tips backed by data to help you take your gifting strategy to the next level, no matter if you’ve done more gifting than Santa or you’re just taking your first steps into sending gifts manually.
What are gifters sending during the holidays?
Top categories of gift during holiday period are:
- Gift box 🎁
- Holiday ❄️
- Unique gifts 🧞
- Food 🍔
Top three holiday gifts:
- Iced Christmas Shortbread 🍪
- 10 Holiday Spice Cookies - Classic Box with custom gift note 🍪📝
- Personalised Thank You Prosecco gift box 🥂
The redemption rate of physical items in the marketplace almost doubles during the holiday season - although we don’t see this effect mirrored for bundles or eGifts. There’s a significant increase in the number of gifts sent during the holiday period, with 1.8x sent per month in comparison to the rest of the year.
When it comes to where people are gifting the most around the world, European countries see the biggest growth in festive gifting. France and Germany are the biggest festive gifters. However, the US sees less of a spike when it comes to festive gifting.
How much are gifters spending?
The spirit of generosity comes alive at Christmas with senders spend 1.4x more on average per gift than they do in the rest of the year. However, the numbers show that it’s the thought that counts. Higher spend per gift doesn’t significantly impact the close rate - meaning you can get gold results on a myrrh budget.
When are gifters sending?
We looked at whether timing played a part in redemption rates but there was no real change throughout the holiday period apart from dips during Thanksgiving and Christmas - although we did see 21 gifts being redeemed on Christmas Day last year!
Overall, gifting during the holiday period is more effective than any other time of year - opportunities that have a holiday gift attached have a 1.3x higher close rate than those that don’t. On top of this, the close rate increases month-on-month throughout Q4 with December seeing the highest rate. However, the end-of-year effect could also play a part in this.
What have we learned?
- Gifting during the holiday period is more effective than any other time of year so now’s the time to send
- When sending festive gifts, food is a failsafe option - everyone likes cookies!
- It turns out Scrooge was right all along - you don’t have to spend more to get better results with direct mail and gifting
For more top tips on what to send to prospects and when to send it, check out our State of gifting report.
