“Long Distance Short” is back with another episode to help you unlock the power of gifts. Natasha, Director of Digital Marketing at Gift Baskets Overseas, brings us a new guest — Marianne, Digital Marketing and Brand Manager for Giftsenda. Both are ready to dive deep into the topic: how gifting impacts conversions in your industry. This data-driven deep dive will answer your questions about how impactful gifts are to your bottom line, and give you tips and tricks to improve your team’s performance. Stay tuned to learn more about the unconventional ways to boost your conversions, and leave your VIPs smiling!
How Gifting Impacts Conversions in Different Industries
“Long Distance Short” is back with another episode to help you unlock the power of gifts. Natasha, Director of Digital Marketing at Gift Baskets Overseas, brings us a new guest — Marianne, Digital Marketing and Brand Manager for Giftsenda. Both are ready to dive deep into the topic: how gifting impacts conversions in your industry. This data-driven deep dive will answer your questions about how impactful gifts are to your bottom line, and give you tips and tricks to improve your team’s performance. Stay tuned to learn more about the unconventional ways to boost your conversions, and leave your VIPs smiling!
Episode Transcript
NATASHA
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of “Long Distance Short,” your podcast on all things corporate gifting. Today, we have a very interesting topic to cover: how gifting impacts conversions; and for this conversation, we have a very special guest. Marianne, could you please introduce yourself, and let us know a little bit more about Giftsenda?
MARIANNE
Hi! It’s so nice to be here. I am Marianne, and I am Digital Marketing and Brand Manager at Giftsenda. Giftsenda is a corporate gifting platform that enables businesses to send corporate gifts all over the world using automated gifting and various other tools.
NATASHA
Thank you! So, let us start from the beginning. What is a good conversion rate? How does the conversion rate change by industry, and why? Can you tell us a little bit more about this?
MARIANNE
Sure! Conversion rates depict the percentage of targeted leads that arrive at a desired outcome — and it can be clicks, form submissions, file downloads, or even closed deals, — and they are often measured against a business’s predicted results. Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult to say what is a good conversion rate, because these have to be vetted against different verticals of the industries, and also channels. And also, low-cost B2C items are easier to sell, and there’s typically less risk involved than a B2B item, for example.
And then, if you look at these slides, these are also good examples of how they can vary. For example, if you look at this one, the average conversion rate for “call” and “forms” for organic search, — you can see that professional services, B2B services, industrial and travel verticals have higher conversion rates. And these differences will be across various channels and verticals.
NATASHA
Thank you! It’s quite interesting. So, from what I am seeing here, it’s actually, — depending on the industry your company is in, your product, the nature of your product, and also the channel that you are trying to sell it through, — the conversion rates, for different types of communications with your potential clients, will be quite different!
MARIANNE
Exactly. So that’s also why one would adjust the way that you are trying to achieve these conversion rates according to your needs.
NATASHA
It’s quite natural to think here that, probably, some piece of communication being sent — like an email that we have on-screen right now, — sent to your customers who already know you, know your product, — will convert much better than, let’s say, organic search, when people just come to your website from search results — maybe they see the brand name the first time in their life — and they are much less likely to convert in this case.
MARIANNE
Yeah!
NATASHA
Sure. So, let’s talk about unconventional ways to boost the closing rates, to boost the conversions — converting people to buy the product. What can you tell us about the unconventional ways to improve this?
MARIANNE
So, gifting is one of these unconvential ways that you increase your conversion rates with, and it’s a great tool because it is something that businesses can use to build relationships, and also nurture relationships. And some ways that you can use this, for example, is to use gift invites as part of your meeting invites, and this should help increase the invite acceptance rates.
And you can also get more form submissions with first-contact gifts; for example, if you’ve got a form on your website, you can use a call to action saying… Say, for example, you have a form for demos, and you could say: “Book a demo — and receive your free gift!” And this gift could then be sent to your lead using Giftsenda, and we have various ways to do this, and one of the best ways in this instance would be using a link. And the person could access the link, and then fill in their details — the delivery details and the delivery date that they require, — and they could accept the gift, and then you’ve sent the gift with minimal effort.
NATASHA
It’s wonderful!
MARIANNE
Yeah — it’s all about making things as easy as possible. And, especially if you’re sending gifts internationally, one doesn’t always know the delivery details of your recipients, and it’s also much safer to ask them to provide them, to prevent failed deliveries, for example.
And then, also, you can send gifts to loyal customers, for client retention. We all know that nurturing your current clients is very important, because getting new clients is much more expensive. So you can send gifts to them during milestones, for example, saying “thanks for working with us for five years,” or send them holiday gifts, or even if you’ve got a business partner that you have been working with for a while, and you understand their interests, maybe on their birthday — send them something personal that they will enjoy to make them realize and remember that you’re putting them first, and that you value their business.
NATASHA
It totally makes sense! So it sounds like you can use this unconventional approach, or a personal, and human, on every step of the way of converting your customer. I can see that you have a suggestion of coffee chats to increase meeting invites — so, when you are just getting to know your potential customer, if you don’t ask them for a call but you invite them to a virtual or in-person coffee chat, it can increase the likelihood of them actually accepting the offer!
MARIANNE
Yeah!
NATASHA
But, when you get deeper into the funnel, you start using gifts; do you think that sending a gift to someone on the stage of a coffee chat is a little bit too early?
MARIANNE
Yeah, it probably is. You don’t want the gift to come across as a bribe, for example. I know in some countries it would not come across well, so, using a coffee chat — or a coffee voucher — it’s a nicer way of doing it. If you think about it, if you had an in-person meeting and you were a sales rep, you would probably pay for the coffee for that other person; so you’re just taking it online now. And it also just shows that you’re really ready to put some money into the relationship.
NATASHA
Yeah.
MARIANNE.
Yeah. And — sorry!..
NATASHA
It’s all right!
MARIANNE
Another thing that you could do — and this is later in the funnel — is to use gifts to reignite cold leads. And a way that you could do this is, for example, if you were using Hubspot or SalesForce, pull up a list of all your cold leads, and then you could integrate this with Giftsenda, and create a special campaign for these people, with a nice message — and maybe a gift that is not too expensive. Just to, sort of, get the conversation going. And, once you have that, then you could possibly convert more of these leads and turn them into actual customers.
NATASHA
It’s a wonderful idea, I think, — so we have an introductory strategy here; we have means to increase submission of forms or leaving their contacts, in some kind of an exchange for gifts; and we can also retain loyal customers better, improve relationships with them; and — awake some sleeping contacts as well! I think it’s wonderful.
MARIANNE
Yeah, there’s a gift for every occasion!
NATASHA
Yeah, for sure! Let’s jump on our next question: why do you think that this means of improving conversion rates is unconventional?
MARIANNE
Well, firstly, not all of your competitors will be using this, and using a gift-first approach is still quite a new idea, so it is something where you’re giving a gift without requiring them to give back. So you’re trying to open the floor for conversation. And I think a lot of companies might say: why would I put money into something where I’m not 100% sure that I’m going to get a return?
But the actual fact is, that you will probably get more conversions by doing this, because you are changing the normal way that people expect companies to do business. So, people expect companies to say: “Hey, buy from us, we’ve got something for you!” — and not come to a conversation saying: “Hey, here’s something for you — you know, we think you might like this, and also, would you like to talk to us about doing business with us?” So, it’s a different conversation.
NATASHA
I totally understand this. I think that having something in your lead converting arsenal that is not used by all of your competitors, something that, as you say, breaks away from others’ sales approaches, is a really, really interesting thing to have. As a customer of so many businesses, I would say that they have a much higher probability of having a conversation with me if they don’t just send me an email saying: “We can solve all of your problems — let’s chat!” If it’s something like: “Let’s have a coffee chat — coffee’s on us!” — and you can choose the time when you want to have this conversation, I would probably consider talking to them much more seriously than I usually do with all these cold-sales outreach emails that I receive.
And having received some gift of — any token of attention or appreciation from the company that I have some business with — probably will influence my decision to stay with them, or to be upsold at some moment with their services… No matter how we humans try to stay logical and, you know, cold, calculating, we are still influenced by these emotions of reciprocation, and this kind of connection — even with the businesses, not with individuals.
So I think it’s really a good unconventional method to try and increase conversions of your leads to customers, or visitors to your website or someone on your email list to your actual active leads… It’s a good one.
MARIANNE
Yeah — and, I mean, who doesn’t like receiving a gift? (laugh)
NATASHA
Sure — especially if I can choose one!
MARIANNE
Yeah! Yeah.
NATASHA
If you know my preference well, so research comes into play as well — for the business that wants to influence their customers.
MARIANNE
Yeah, definitely, and, I mean, also, for example, if you could choose your gift — which is also possible: anyone can send gift collections, and the person can choose a gift from that collection that they would like most, — the fact that you’re letting them choose something that they like, instead of sending them a generic cap with a logo on, or a coffee mug, you’re letting them maybe choose a gift basket, or something for their desk. And if they don’t necessarily book a meeting now, they will receive the gift, and it will stand on their desk, and they will look at it, and it will be a reminder — and maybe, a week or two later, they’ll think: “Hey! Oh, I was looking at this company” — they may book that meeting. So it might also be a, sort of, longer game in some instances.
NATASHA
Sure. And, to wrap up this conversation about the gifts as the means to improve your conversion rates, can you please tell us a little bit more technical aspects of a platform solution: how do businesses benefit from using a platform solution for their gifting needs?
MARIANNE
Sure! I think the one thing that people would think first about saying: “Okay, how can I use gifting for my business,” but… You would also want to track it, right? You don’t want to just spend money on gifts and not be able to track your return on investment. That is why one of the main features of the platform is that you are able to see the return on investment of your gifting activities. All the campaign results are tracked on the dashboard, and you can also export reports to look at it and optimize your campaigns. So, tracking is one of the main things.
Another thing is, when you are trying to send gifts internationally, it can be quite difficult because, if you weren’t using a gifting platform that allows you to do this, you would have to do research and — say, for example, you want to send to Poland, Canada, the USA, India, — you would have to go to websites in all those countries, maybe use Google Translate to understand the shops, so this seems like a lot of time and effort. But what a platform does, it has all the gifts in one space — it can specify which countries you want to send to, select those gifts, and if there’s something that you want to send, and it isn’t on the catalog, you’re always able to reach out to Giftsenda team, and we’ll try and source that for you, and make it happen. Basically, you can buy, send, and track all your gifts in one central space.
NATASHA
It’s wonderful!
MARIANNE
Yeah — it makes it much easier. And then, another thing is, a lot of companies also use CRMs, so you can integrate your sales posts and Hubspot CRM with Giftsenda. This means you can send gifts directly from within your CRM to your contacts. And this is all still tracked, it just fast-tracks your gifting; and we also have a Gmail addon, so you can send gifts from within Gmail, — you can create your Giftylink and add it to your Gmail, and you can share Giftylinks to a thousand people, if you want to. The cool part of the Giftylink is that they can choose the gift they want, provide the address and details, and only when they have accepted, — upon their acceptance of the gift, — will you be charged. So you won’t be spending money that you don’t want to spend. And that’s quite a cool feature!
The other thing is bulk gifting: you can send gifts in bulk very easily using the platform; there are various automated features that let you do that. You can also upload contacts, you can sync contacts from your CRM, or you can use the Giftylink, or email gift invites, to send out invites which people can then accept. And this can take you a few minutes to do — instead of hours!
NATASHA
It’s wonderful. To me, it sounds like gifting, here, becomes measured — and what is measured, can be optimized and improved. And for me, as a marketing executive, — and, I’m sure, for a lot of specialists around the world, in biz dev, in sales, — it will be something that can make or break their decision to actually use gifts: “How do I measure? How do I know if something was influenced in the process by my sending a gift?”
So, if I have access to some, let’s say, dashboard that will provide me with the information: okay, this was the budget spent, this is how many gifts were accepted, this resulted in this outcome for my business, — and I can actually put some conversion rate on my delivered gifts… I think it’s something that makes it a real strategy for improving conversion rates, for achieving sales, not just a beautiful gesture to, you know, send something to your important clients, or leads, whom you perceive as potential customers. Yeah: what gets measured and tracked, can be impoved, and can produce better results! So it seems to be a very viable solution for a business.
MARIANNE
Yeah, and I think we mustn’t forget that it’s also just about spreading joy and building good business relationships by actually putting people first.
NATASHA
So, thank you so much, Marianne! It was Marianne Flentge from Giftsenda, introducing the deep dive into unconventional methods of closing deals and improving conversion rates for your business. Thank you so much!
MARIANNE
Thank you so much!
You’ve listened to our new episode, How Gifting Impacts Conversions in Your Industry. What’s Next?
This has been another episode of “Long Distance Short” — your podcast for tips, tricks, and real-life stories of how to make the most of any long-distance relationship. If you want to learn more about a corporate gift campaign with GiftBasketsOverseas.com, you can email the team at [email protected], call toll-free from the US and Canada at 1 888 673-2822, or request a call by going directly to the website: www.GiftBasketsOverseas.com.