We've all been there. It's 9 PM on Christmas Eve, and you suddenly remember you forgot a few clients on your gift list.
Or maybe you’re sitting at your desk when someone tells you you’re in charge of gifts for your team this year (just a week before everyone checks out for their holiday break).
Or there’s a good chance everyone on your team works from home, scattered across time zones, and about half of them are traveling at different times through the end of the year.
No matter the situation you might find yourself in, two things are true for any of ‘em:
1) this scenario is a fast path to peak holiday stress, and
2) sending a physical gift directly to everyone is just not in the cards.
If you run a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand, though, this is your time to shine.
No one wants to stress-buy a stack of gift cards from the nearest Walgreens kiosk or resign themselves to the idea that recipients will just get their gifts the first week of January. Instead, your store can be there with a modern gifting savior for these trying times: e-gifting.
For DTC brands, offering instant e-gifting directly on-site isn't just a nice-to-have feature anymore — it's becoming a competitive must-have that can dramatically impact all the good stuff, like revenue, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty.
(Plus, saving the holidays for countless shoppers is a really sick move in general.)
See why your store needs to offer e-gifting yesterday and what instant gifting could mean for your holiday sales.
The Last-Minute Gifting Reality
Let’s be honest about human behavior: procrastination is universal. Research consistently shows that a significant portion of gift purchases happen in the final days or even hours before an occasion. While some of this is genuine forgetfulness, much of it stems from busy lives, decision paralysis, or simply not finding the right gift until it’s crunch time.
The typical ecommerce flow puts scrambling gifters in an impossible position. Even with the most expedited shipping on earth, there's no guarantee a physical gift will arrive in time for the big day.
Watching tracking numbers and hoping for miracles isn't the ideal gift-giving experience, so this is precisely where e-gifting transforms the entire journey from stressful to stress-free.
What Makes Online E-gifting Different Than Traditional Gifting or Gift Cards
If you’ve shopped online, you’re deeply familiar with the logistics of directly shipping an item to yourself or someone else. Now imagine the same plight but with a mountain of gift recipients all counting on you for a holly jolly holiday.
After cruising through products and adding a thoughtful item or two to your cart, you head to the checkout and you’re met with all your classic questions: first and last name, billing address, shipping address, shipping method, yada yada.
And that’s right where the first issue for last-minute gifting arises — the address. If you’re already pressed for time, you might not have a big enough window to get a gift recipient’s address (a problem that compounds as recipient lists grow).
This problem may be alleviated when a customer decides to go the digital gift card route, where they may only need to know a recipient’s email address, but then the shopper is forced to sacrifice their meaningful, memorable gift for the sake of convenience.
E-gifting, conversely, eliminates this tyranny of logistics, details, and compromise.
When a customer purchases an e-gift from your DTC brand, they're buying certainty and convenience wrapped in thoughtfulness and a modern gifting experience.
How E-gifting Works
Unlike the slog of the traditional ecommerce gift purchase, e-gifting is an A-plus combo of fast, convenient, and thoughtful.
When someone purchases products as e-gifts, they have the power to be delivered instantly to recipients, whether that’s one or hundreds, via email or text message. Plus, e-gifts are beautifully presented and ready to delight the recipient—whether it’s ordered three weeks in advance or three minutes before a big event.
But instant delivery is just the beginning. E-gifts offer a level of flexibility that physical gifts simply cannot match. Brands can opt to let recipients choose their preferred product variation, size, or color, or even swap their item for a similarly priced product you offer.
What’s more is that recipients can choose to snooze when their gift is sent. For instance, if a recipient digitally unwraps their surprise on Christmas morning while they’re out of town on a 3-week ski trip, they can “snooze” the delivery and schedule it to ship when they get home (dodging porch pirates or, in the case of perishables, spoiling on the front steps).
All of this autonomy turns a potentially stressful transaction into a personalized experience that respects both the gifter and the recipient while creating a memorable moment.
The Business Case for Last-minute Gifting
From a revenue perspective, enabling last-minute gifting opens an entirely new sales window that many DTC brands are missing. Think about the calendar: every major gift-giving occasion — birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, graduations — has a last-minute shopping surge. Without e-gifting capabilities, you're essentially closing your doors during some of the most motivated buying moments.
In its first holiday season using Zest, Milk Bar was able to extend its holiday sales window well past shipping cutoff dates thanks to e-gifting. The team was able to extend their typical holiday rush by 9 days, growing sales incrementally for their gifting channel.
On top of an extended selling window, it's also important to consider that last-minute shoppers often have different purchasing behaviors than early planners. They're less price-sensitive because urgency outweighs deal-hunting, and they're more prone to adding extras or upgrades because they're compensating for the time crunch with perceived value.
Speaking of time crunches, e-gifting solves a critical problem in the customer journey: cart abandonment due to shipping concerns. How many potential sales have you lost because a customer realized standard shipping wouldn’t arrive in time and expedited shipping was too expensive? You’ll never know. But you will know that e-gifting eliminates this friction entirely with its instant delivery.
Building Customer Loyalty and Repeat Customers Through Reliability
There's something powerful about being the brand that comes through in a pinch. When you enable last-minute gifting, you position your brand as reliable and customer-centric. You're telling shoppers, "We understand real life happens, and we've got your back."
This reliability breeds loyalty. The customer who successfully sends a last-minute anniversary gift through your platform will remember that you saved them from disaster. They'll return not just for future last-minute needs but for all their gifting occasions because you've proven trustworthy when it mattered most.
Additionally, e-gifting introduces your brand to new customers through gifting relationships. After all, each e-gift is a customer acquisition opportunity thanks to the ability for recipients to opt into your marketing right from the gift acceptance flow.
This all means the recipient receives an introduction to your products and brand values without having made the initial purchasing decision themselves. When done well, this creates a warm lead who’s already positively disposed toward your brand and welcomes emails from y’all to learn more.
E-gifting Erases Anxiety for Last-minute Shoppers
One of the most elegant aspects of last-minute e-gifting is how it reframes urgency. Traditional retail creates anxiety around deadlines — order by X date to receive by Y date. (A game that nobody, customers and brands alike, enjoy playing.) E-gifting transforms urgency into empowerment. Even with minutes to spare, customers can still deliver a meaningful, high-quality gift in literally just a few clicks.
This shift in psychology is significant. Instead of feeling guilty about procrastinating, customers feel clever for finding a perfect solution. Your brand becomes associated with problem-solving, not logistical limitations.
In an increasingly digital world, consumer expectations are evolving rapidly. Instant gratification isn't just desired — it's expected. DTC brands that embrace e-gifting and last-minute instant delivery aren't just adding a feature, they're fundamentally expanding their customer reach, capturing high-intent purchases at the exact right time, and building deeper customer relationships far beyond the gifting moment.
The question isn't whether your DTC brand should offer instant e-gifting. The question is when can you get started?
