What Can You Learn From Gifting? More Than You Think

How much do you know about the gifts you sell, the people who buy them, and the folks on the receiving end?

For most merchants, the answer is “not much.”

When it comes to gifting insights, the data is often restricted to your favorite little liabilities: gift cards. You can see how many you’ve sold, the value on each card, and the spikes and dips of gifting seasons, but there’s a lot left to the imagination. For example, sheer gift card sales don’t tell an accurate story about the impact of gifting on your store as a whole, your brand, or your customers.

So, here’s your moment of truth. If your gifting strategy isn’t currently providing you with the whole picture, how can you tell if it’s actually working? In this article, we’ll discuss what gifting insights you could be digging into to supercharge gifting in your online store thanks to Zest.

Are You Getting the Full Gifting Picture?

Gift cards or gift certificates are typically the only gifting strategy you’ll see available on any ecommerce store, and there’s a good reason for that. Gift cards can be a good marketing tactic, and they’re commonplace in both brick-and-mortar stores and online, so they fit a consumer’s expectations. They’re also a good fit for the gifter who simply can’t decide what to buy, so they settle with the old gift card standby.

The problem with gift cards, though, is that they can’t actually be counted as revenue until they’re used, which delays the amount of insight you can have about which products are sought after in gifting (or how much of an impact gift cards have on overall revenue). Plus—and maybe the biggest kink in gift card hose—more than half of the adults in the US fess up to forgetting about gift cards they’ve received, leaving more than $15 billion in unused gift cards on the table (err, lost in the junk drawer).

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Gift cards aside, there’s another issue lurking within current gifting strategies (or lack thereof). Your shoppers are already buying your products to give away, but without a dedicated gifting platform in place, there’s no way of knowing what’s being gifted, who’s buying the gift, and who’s receiving the gift. Every part of the gifting journey is cloudy, and you’re left to simply guess. When this happens, it’s nearly impossible for brands to get the full gifting picture.

Dream Gifting Insights

You’re not in this struggle alone—many ecommerce businesses find themselves in the same exact situation. In a dream world, your store’s gifting strategy wouldn’t just be another gift card SKU stuck at the bottom of your product catalog. In a dream world, your gifting strategy would empower you to:

👉 Offer a memorable, personalized gifting experience

‍Shoppers are valuing the buying journey more and more. Your customer experience could actually be the reason people shop with you over your competitors, and gifting is not the time to drop the CX ball. Without a great gifting experience in place, buying and sending an online gift is kind of a heavy lift for the gifter. They have to sleuth for addresses, sizes, and preferences, all while sweating the finer details like gift wrap or a thoughtful card.

But when you offer an experience that caters to the unique purchase experience of gifters, you remove any friction between the gifter and the recipient. When it’s super easy to personalize, buy, and send a gift directly to a recipient without loads of legwork, your shoppers will come back to gift from your store again and again.

👉 See core gifting data

A stat like “XX gift cards sold in the last month” is a nice-to-have metric, but it leaves a lot to be desired. An updated gifting strategy should be empowering, not leave you begging for more. Instead of just one numeric stat, it should also be able to scrounge up details like:

• The number of gifts sent, accepted, and paid for
• The products being gifted
• Who’s giving your products as gifts
• Who’s receiving your products as gifts
• The number of first-time gifters
• The number of gift recipients that are brand new to your store

You get the gist. GIfting shouldn’t be one static number that you read, think “Oh, that’s nice,” and forget about. Your gifting data should be able to inform your marketing strategies, email messaging, and more with these core details.

👉 Understand the reasons people are gifting

Predictive data is your crystal ball that looks into the future of consumer spending. Ecommerce marketing continues to evolve as consumer behaviors shift. In today’s highly competitive marketplace, it’s essential that DTC businesses have the ability to stay ahead of the curve and gather data that will give them useful insight into upcoming trends. Your gifting strategy could be the secret weapon you need for planning ahead.

Obviously the big Q4 holidays make waves with your bottom line. The power of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is undeniable in the world of ecommerce, but gifting is now and forever a year-round habit for many people. Your gifting tools should be able to give you an accurate picture around why people are buying gifts—birthdays, anniversaries, just a thoughtful pick-me-up—so you are able to create more personalized marketing campaigns around those events. You’ll learn what’s important to your shoppers and when.

👉 Know how much gifting impacts revenue

With updated gifting technology and insights on your side, you’ll get a clearer picture of how much gifting impacts your bottom line. For example, you’ll be able to see how many gift cards were purchased and for how much, but you’ll also be able to identify how many products were sent as gifts as well. Knowing the dollar amount of gifted products plus gift cards tells a fuller story.

👉 Take advantage of new marketing opportunities

When you offer gift cards, your marketing is kinda stuck at that point. You could send an email to the buyer to encourage them to get more gift cards, but that messaging falls kind of flat. With a limited gifting strategy on your store, you’re cutting off gifters and recipients from the great marketing experiences you send to people who buy for themselves—review incentives, VIP discounts, first-peek product drops, thank yous and acknowledgement become borderline impossible (or simply nonsensical) with the gift card purchaser.

A dream gifting strategy should be able to open up your world to new marketing opportunities that incentivize gifters, reward frequent gifting, welcome new gift recipients, cross-sell new gifts, and turn one-time gifters or recipients into loyal customers.

These insights and opportunities are a far cry from what’s many an ecommerce marketer’s current playbook. Most of the time, these moves aren’t even possible when the only data you have is “gift cards sold” and the name of who bought it. Luckily, online gifting is changing, and there’s a new app ready to revolutionize the entire gifting experience.

Gifting Clarity Starts with Zest

Zest is a first-of-its-kind gifting app that not only makes the gifting experience a simple and convenient one for shoppers, but it also dishes up a whole lotta insight to merchants who use it.

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Knowing details like the ones above finally gives merchants insight into how much of their business is about gifting. They can use this information to optimize their gifting marketing, understand which of their goods are most giftable, and collect customer info for both gifters and recipients that can be used for retargeting campaigns, cross-selling, email marketing, and asking for gift reviews.

Gifting with Zest also gives you the power to level up your ecommerce marketing by offering a personalized gifting experience while also building a competitive ecommerce CX. Zest’s metrics give you valuable data to facilitate building stronger relationships with your customers, generate new sales leads, increase revenue, and develop stronger brand loyalty and brand awareness.

Zest’s Klaviyo integration pushes gifting events right into your email marketing, which opens up a world of automated flows at your fingertips. Deploy the right message at the right time to gift senders and recipients for a truly remarkable personalized customer experience.

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Know who’s sending gifts, why people are sending gifts, and when gifts are being sent so you can fine-tune your marketing and messaging to sell more gifts and grow your store.

Stop Settling for Foggy Data, Get Clear with Zest Gifting

Gift cards have been the go-to gifting solution for decades, but it’s a strategy that doesn’t give you the full story about your products, gifting’s impact, or your customers. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to stay this way. With Zest gifting, you have a convenient and accessible path to gifting with valuable information and insights right at your fingertips.

Knowing details like these finally gives insight into how much of your business is going toward gifting. Use this information to optimize your gifting marketing, understand which of goods are most giftable, and collect customer info for both gifters and recipients that can be used for retargeting campaigns, cross-selling, email marketing, and asking for gift reviews.

Gifting with Zest also gives you the power to level up your ecommerce marketing by offering a personalized gifting experience while also building a competitive ecommerce CX. Zest’s metrics give you valuable data to facilitate building stronger relationships with your customers, generate new sales leads, increase revenue, and develop stronger brand loyalty and brand awareness.

Are you ready to see gifts a bit more clearly?

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