International gifting is a beast for most companies in the United States. From addresses to worldwide customs enforcement, it can be intimidating to know where to begin.
Over the last several months, the product and engineering teams have delivered many corporate gifting capabilities that make global gifting far easier than it ever was before.
But first, a quick introduction.
Hi, there! I’m Kellie, the new Director of Product here at Alyce. While I’m new to this role, I’m not new to Alyce. I’ve been a product manager for over a year and am excited to lead this excellent product team. We help our customers express Outbound Love through personal, relevant, and thoughtful experiences. My 5-to-9s are being outside skiing, hiking, and paddleboarding. I also love to bake and travel to new places to discover local bakeries!
Alright, back to our groovy platform updates.
Q2 Unwrapped: International & Branded Gifts
This past quarter’s two main themes focused on gifting internationally and branded items.
As we’ve spoken with our customers, we’ve heard these gifting needs come up more often. So we set out to solve them by:
- Adding thousands of gift cards to the marketplace in more locations
- Forging a new partnership with a top promotional item distributor Overture
- Expanding the options to send physical, personalized gifts in the UK, with more to come!
What We’ve Heard From Customers
Our team is laser-focused on understanding our customer’s needs around outbound marketing and solving for those in innovative and easy-to-use ways. In conversations about international and branded gifts, some trends emerged.
Here are examples of what you’ve told us:
Their pain points can be boiled down into a few main things:
- “I’m getting pressure to expand our gift marketing campaigns to locations outside North America.”
- “I want to understand gifting best practices around the world. For instance, should I send this coffee mug to someone in London or is another gift better?”
- “I need the user experience for global gift recipients to be similar to the experience in North America. With other solutions, my items arrive late, address verification is manual and language translation is a barrier.”
With these in mind, we had our work cut out.
More Gift Cards, More Places
One of the quickest, most accessible ways we felt we could help solve international gifting was to add more gift cards in more locations.
We’ve expanded our gift card catalog to include 100+ countries with 2,800 gift options — growing our marketplace by 25%!
Some of the additions include your favorite retail brands that can be redeemed locally in your recipient’s country. Also, we can handle the currency exchange seamlessly, so you don’t have to. (Phew!)
These gift cards are ready for you to send from your Alyce dashboard. Reach out to your Alyce representative if you have questions or have ideas for gift cards to add — we’re always open to suggestions.
We also know that gift cards aren’t always the most personal gift but are a great place to start.
Sometimes, though, sending a branded care package is bound to delight recipients worldwide. And this brings us to our next product update.
Alyce Branded Items Powered By Overture
When you think about branded swag, what comes to mind?
We heard that some of our customers were trying to get more out of their branded item strategy. They wanted more creativity, connection, trackable ROI, and transparency from their branded gift campaigns.
We immediately searched for a partner who shared our sense of customer-centricity, was an expert at global logistics and fulfillment, and could provide the same level of service that we value.
We found that in Overture Promotions.
We’re excited to partner closely with Overture to make the world of branded items available to our customers. Alyce customers will now be able to work directly with their Alyce success manager to manage their entire branded item strategy. No additional contracts, no additional relationships to manage. Just one single source for personal gifting.
Through this partnership, users can send bespoke branded swag boxes to recipients from the Alyce gifting platform.
🎁 Watch Now: Alyce Unwrapped Q2 2022 Webinar + Q&A
Send Gifts Worldwide With Alyce
We’ve told you about our expanded worldwide access to gift cards, but what about physical items?
As a global company with teams spanning the globe, we understand the intricacies of international gifting.
Gifting globally is incredibly complex. It’s not enough to pack and ship an item to someone in, say, London.
You must consider customs, taxes, shipping times, and if that gift will even be well-received. We wanted to ensure we applied the three ingredients of Outbound Love: Personal, Relevant, and Thoughtful, no matter where the recipient resides.
The missing link in most global gifting strategies is the ability to deliver culturally relevant gifts promptly.
Now in Beta, our new UK gifting options allow you to select gifts from local suppliers and send them to recipients in the United Kingdom. As always, we’ll do the work of collecting and verifying addresses and getting the gift there on time. You can now add your UK partners, customers, and employees to any gifting campaign.
🌎 Global Gifting Tips to Build Lasting Business Relationships
Wrapping it Up: What’s Next?
The entire team here at Alyce is rallied around Outbound Love. Our product team is at the forefront of those conversations as we look to the future of our corporate gifting platform.
So might the future of our gifting platform look like? We plan to:
- Look at the top ways our customers use gifting and find ways to make them more personal, relevant, and thoughtful.
- Work on ways to add more in-depth ROI tracking to our platform to make it easier to see high-value ways to gift, where to optimize, and more.
- Continue evolving and expanding our international gifting choices and strategies.
Please reach out to your Alyce success manager if you’re interested in taking advantage of these new features.
Ready to explore gifting with Alyce? Schedule a live demo and start imagining what’s possible.
📣Related: New Marketing & Sales Integrations to Scale Outbound
Mary Matton
Mary Matton is the Growth Marketing Manager for Alyce, and is obsessed with all things inbound and demand gen. Outside of work, her #5to9 interests include perfecting her mobile photography, the quest for the perfect iced coffee, and spending time with the people most important to her.