32 Engaging Virtual Gifts for Employees and Clients

If you’ve been in the professional world for a while, you’ve likely amassed a sizable collection of gifted items, whether a swag bag from your last conference, a plastic water bottle from a client, or a branded company t-shirt. 

While some physical items bring practical value and are worth gifting, some miss the mark—and when they do, there are greater consequences for society at large. A whopping 80% of corporate gifts are discarded within 24 hours—meaning that, as an employer, you’re contributing more to the landfill than you are to your employees and clients.

What if there was a way to make giving more meaningful, scalable, cost-effective, and eco-friendly? That’s where virtual gifting comes in. 

Done correctly, virtual corporate gifting can benefit your company, employees, clients, and the world at large. Let’s explore how to swap clutter for connection by incorporating digital gifts for employees and clients into your strategy. 

• Corporate Gifting FAQ
• Virtual Gifting for Employees
• Virtual Gifting for Clients

Corporate Gifting FAQ

What is corporate gifting?

Corporate gifting is the practice of recognizing clients, employees, and other important stakeholders with gifts. Companies use corporate gifting to show gratitude, recognize key contributors, build relationships, and (for certain items) enable social good.

Some key categories of corporate gifts include:

• Physical: Tangible items, such as t-shirts, reusable water bottles, or a houseplant.
• Digital/virtual: Gifts available via digital mediums, such as a streaming subscription.
• Experiential: Access to reduced-price or free experiences, such as a sports game. 
• Non-monetary: Gifts that convey meaning without a significant price tag, such as peer-to-peer recognition infrastructure for employees. 
• Impact: Funds contributed to a cause the recipient chooses, often provided by an organization like Benevity.
• Combination: A mix of any of the above gift categories, such as a workout outfit (physical) alongside a personal training session (experiential). 

Later in this guide, we’ll review specific corporate gifting ideas for different audiences.

Why is corporate gifting important?

Effective corporate gifting programs are well worth the investment. They can bring the following benefits to specific audiences within the company:

For employees 

• Improves employee satisfaction. An estimated 78% of employees report increased satisfaction after receiving a meaningful gift from their employer. Engaged and satisfied employees are more productive, innovative, and loyal to their companies, meaning gifts have a tangible impact on core business outcomes. 
• Strengthens company culture. Gifts can reinforce company values and help employees feel more connected to their colleagues. This is especially helpful for remote work environments, where employees are more likely to feel isolated from their coworkers. 
• Enhances workplace wellbeing. Certain gifts directly contribute to employee wellness, both physically and mentally. This helps prevent burnout, allowing employees to enthusiastically approach their responsibilities. 

For clients

• Increases retention. Client-facing work is all about providing an outstanding experience to win their loyalty. Showing your gratitude to the client by investing in practical gifts creates a memorable milestone for your relationship and shows the client just how important they are to your business. 80% of top executives agree that corporate gifting can strengthen client relationships.
• Boosts brand credibility. Corporate gifting empowers you to share your products or services to demonstrate the quality of your work and win brand loyalty. 
• Reinforces brand values and mission. Corporate gifting helps position your brand as socially responsible by gifting charitable donations or limiting environmental waste, which can attract new clients and fortify existing relationships.

What’s the best type of corporate gift?

Every company has different gifting capacities and needs, so the best corporate gifting solution will vary. However, if you’re gauging “best” by metrics like scalability, environmental-friendliness, cost-effectiveness, and memorability, virtual gifts are your best bet. In particular, consider these unique benefits of digital gifts:

• Personalization. Corporate gifting should never feel like a “one-size-fits-all” experience—otherwise, your gifts will be less memorable, and you could risk your return on investment (ROI). Digital gifting infrastructures make it easy for recipients to choose the most meaningful gift from various options and receive it immediately. Everyone wins—your recipients get a truly valuable gift, and you get a great ROI! 
• Easy-to-measure ROI. If your company uses a digital interface to disburse digital gifts, you should be able to easily measure key performance indicators (KPIs) like claim rate and recipient satisfaction. 
• Environmental impact. Virtual gifts can’t end up in a landfill, meaning your company can effortlessly integrate green practices into your gifting strategy. In fact, we at Unwrapit are a carbon-negative corporate gifting company and have reduced 148 tons of carbon dioxide emissions through our operations since 2021. 
• Customizable unwrapping experience. Who doesn’t love the anticipation of unwrapping a gift? Unwrapit provides a customizable digital unwrapping experience that effortlessly reflects your branding and visually engages the recipient.
• Convenience. Digital gifts remove pesky logistical hurdles, such as printing shipping labels. To set up your campaign, all you have to do is pick the gifts, customize the branding, and personalize the messaging. Then, you can hit send and wow your recipients instantly!

To be clear, physical gifts can provide much value when done correctly. However, as a carbon-negative and connection-focused company, we strongly suggest considering other more engaging and eco-friendly options in the virtual space before sending a physical gift.

Virtual Gifting for Employees and Clients: Best Practices

If you’re sold on virtual gifting, prepare thoroughly before jumping in to ensure an effective and well-rounded program. Keep these best practices in mind for executing virtual gifting programs:

• Prioritize personalization and authenticity. As previously mentioned, personalization can make or break your virtual gifting campaign. In addition to ensuring recipients can choose their preferred gift, address the digital gifts to each recipient by name and, if possible, include a personalized message. Doing so will show that you care about recipients as individuals and want to build strong relationships with them.
• Improve user experience. Recipients will only claim gifts if it’s easy to do so. Guarantee your gifting platform’s user-friendliness by ensuring your site is accessible and proactively patching any bugs. If you don’t have access to your site’s backend, be sure you can contact the web developer quickly.
• Optimize timing. Timing can greatly affect open and claim rates, so select an ideal time to send gifts. For instance, you might only send employee gifts during the work week so they actually see their gifts before they get buried in more messages. 
• Integrate gifts with company culture. When used to recognize employees, corporate gifts are a natural conduit to express company culture. Ensure your gifts tie back to corporate culture in some way, whether by directly reflecting a value or simply gifted for adhering to a value. For instance, a team might win a trip to an escape room to represent their aptitude for teamwork. 
• Monitor sustainability. If possible, measure the emissions reduced by your program as a KPI. Even if sustainability isn’t the program's main goal, reducing emissions can contribute to your brand image, and having specific data to back it up can help fortify your claims. 
• Collect feedback. Go straight to your recipients to gain insight into how the program is performing. They can provide unique opportunities to enhance your strategy, from offering different types of gifts to improving timing. 

We know that checking these boxes can be overwhelming for program managers, but you don’t have to tackle this alone! We suggest working with a corporate gifting company (like Unwrapit) to streamline the process. We’ll handle all the logistics so you (and your recipients) can focus on the fun part of giving and reap the rewards! 

Best Virtual Gifts for Clients and Employees

Before we jump into the best virtual gifts for employees and clients, it helps to understand which audiences suit each gift. We characterize gifts with these labels:

• One-to-one gifts are best for small, personal exchanges.
• One-to-many gifts are best for when a single person or entity wants to send a gift to multiple parties at once. 
• Many-to-one gifts are best for when a large group gives a gift to a single person.
• Many-to-many gifts involve large groups exchanging gifts with each other. 

Now, let’s dive into the gift ideas!

Virtual Gifts for Employees

1. Donation to charity

Making a difference can be challenging without funds to donate. Show employees you care about their passions by providing them with a donation to a cause of their choice. 

Audience: One-to-many

2. App gift card

Whether your employees have a paid productivity app they like to use or love mobile games, an app gift card to marketplaces like Apple’s App Store or the Google Play store can satisfy many interests and passions. 

Audience: One-to-many

3. Meditation app subscription

Work can be a persistent cause of stress, but you can proactively combat burnout by providing employees a way to blow off steam. Apps like Calm or Headspace help employees maintain mindful practices on the go. 

Audience: One-to-many

4. Fitness app 

Another key aspect of wellness is physical exercise. Help employees get their steps in with convenient digital fitness experiences, such as Apple Fitness+ or DoYogaWithMe.

Audience: One-to-many

5. Online professional courses 

Employees want to enrich their professional skills, but these pursuits can be expensive. Empower high-performing employees to sate their curiosity and grow their professional skills with subscriptions to online course providers like Udemy or GoSkills. 

Audience: One-to-one

6. Virtual escape room

Escape rooms allow your team to solve problems as a unit, improving their cohesion while strengthening their relationships. Bring together team members from near and far with a virtual escape room event. 

Audience: One-to-many

7. Virtual creative classes 

Do your employees have more creative curiosities they want to pursue for fun? Gift them a certificate for a virtual creative class, such as cooking, art, or music. 

Audience: One-to-many

8. Book-lover package

Avid readers no longer have to trek out to the library to pick up their next read. Platforms like Kobo, Libro.fm, Kindle, and Audible bring vibrant storytelling experiences to your employees’ phones, and you can help them expand their literary horizons with relevant gift cards and subscriptions.

Audience: One-to-many

9. Delivery app subscription

Who has the time (or energy) to cook every night? Employees can try new restaurants and cuisines without leaving the house via a delivery app, like DoorDash or Uber Eats.

Audience: One-to-many

10. Resort gift card

Paid time off (PTO) is a leading employment benefit for a reason! Empower high-performing employees to enhance their time off with a luxurious resort gift card.

Audience: One-to-one

11. Concert ticket voucher

No matter your employee base’s average age or interests, concerts provide a unique way to recharge and connect with art. Provide a Ticketmaster gift card so your employees can see their next show at a discounted price.

Audience: One-to-one

12. Lunch and learn with a gift card 

Digital gifts are especially helpful for engaging fully remote employees. Offer the classic reward of a great meal by sending remote employees gift cards to local restaurants and organizing a remote social event.

Audience: One-to-many

13. Goodable subscription

Five minutes is all it takes to brighten an employee’s day! Goodable provides daily feel-good stories from beloved celebrities to inspire your employees.

Audience: One-to-many

14. Care/Of experience

Providing a truly unique experience is challenging, but Care/Of makes it possible. Care/Of coordinates custom events your employees will love, such as seasonal cooking workshops from professional chefs.

Audience: One-to-many 

15. Rewards point system

If you need a straightforward method of rewarding high performers, look no further! A rewards point system assigns values to different tasks. Once an employee reaches a threshold, they can redeem their points for a gift of their choice. 

Audience: One-to-many

16. Virtual hobby club

Another way to improve employee engagement is by starting a club for different interests. Ask employees about their hobbies and provide a budget for each club to purchase materials. For instance, every team member could get $50 to join the book club and purchase all the books for the year. 

Audience: One-to-many

Virtual Gifts for Clients

17. Streaming subscriptions

Streaming platforms (Hulu, Spotify, Netflix, etc.) are a given in the modern entertainment landscape and are always a popular gift. This option is great for helping clients boost their own employee engagement efforts by offering gift cards as an incentive for great work.

18. Curated virtual gift basket for their industry

Your clients are experts in their fields, so providing them with a unique industry-specific experience is sure to stand out! Curate a virtual “gift basket” with industry-specific opportunities. For instance, if your client manages restaurants, you might offer a restaurant gift card and a ticket to a restauranteur conference. 

Audience: Many-to-one

19. Personalized video message

Sending a digital message is effective, but you can go the extra mile by sending a personalized video message. In the message, you might address the client by name and feature their main point of contact in the engagement. 

Audience: One-to-one

20. Software subscription

Nearly every industry has a custom software service for their niche. Provide clients with a more efficient work experience with a software subscription. 

Audience: One-to-many

21. Virtual drink-tasting experience

Whether your employees prefer coffee, tea, or even wine, there are many tasting opportunities for them to try! Book them a virtual tasting experience where the employees receive the product at home, and a product expert walks them through the different options on a video call. 

Audience: One-to-many

22. Induction into a virtual Client Hall of Fame

Some clients have permanently impacted your company, so why not cement them in your company’s history? Induct influential clients into a virtual Client Hall of Fame that lives on your website. 

Audience: Many-to-one

23. Tickets to a conference

Conferences are useful networking tools, but they can be expensive. Allow clients to make new connections by gifting them passes to transformational conferences.

Audience: One-to-one

24. Discounts for your services

Your clients love working with you for a reason! Secure their loyalty by offering free or reduced services or products (whichever you specialize in). 

Audience: Many-to-many

25. Groupon gift card

This crowd-pleaser points out different activities and products at great deals. Empower clients to make the most of these opportunities with a Groupon gift card.

Audience: One-to-many

26. Movie certificate

This classic date night activity is still popular in the streaming era! To up the ante, provide a gift card to an upscale movie theater that offers full meals to customers. 

Audience: One-to-many

27. Spafinder gift card

There’s no doubt that the business world is exhausting. Whether they want a massage or a facial treatment, give clients the chance to unwind and destress with a Spafinder gift card.  

Audience: One-to-one

Bonus: Virtual Gifts for Event Attendees

A corporate gifting guide wouldn’t complete without mentioning the events space! 

28. Digital Event Access Pass 

Events often have many events happening simultaneously. Gift key attendees with a special access pass to content from the event, such as recordings of webinars or workshops they didn’t get the chance to attend. 

Audience: One-to-many

29. Curated digital gifts from event sponsors

This opportunity is a win-win-win situation—your sponsors get brand recognition, attendees get a useful gift, and you win attendees’ loyalty. Send gifts from the sponsor during or after the event, such as an online gift card.

Audience: One-to-many

30. Reduced-price marketing opportunities

Corporate events are all about networking, and everyone wants to get their name out there! Gift exclusive digital marketing space to loyal attendees on your newsletter and event website. 

Audience: One-to-one

31. Custom thank-you eCards

This relatively small gesture allows you to make a big impact in showing appreciation for attendees and speakers. Send out eCards with the attendee’s name and a unique design thanking them for their support with the press of a button!

Audience: One-to-many

32. Loyalty discount

If certain attendees frequently attend events, reward their dedication with a discount for the next event in your rotation! 

Audience: One-to-many

Wrapping Up with Virtual Gifts for Employees and Clients

Ready to get started with virtual corporate gifting? We suggest reaching out to a corporate gifting company first to ensure a smooth process from the beginning. 

If the ideas from this guide inspired you, you’re in luck—we offer many of these items (and so many more) through the Unwrapit platform! Check out even more of our offerings on our ultimate gift ideas page. 

‍

‍