Gifting is moving from seasonal novelty to always-on growth. The winners will be the brands that build personalization and infrastructure early and treat gifting like a performance channel.
Channel
Gifting combines social proof, physical touchpoints, and recipient conversion in a way that paid ads cannot replicate. That makes it durable. Once you instrument it, you can grow it like any other channel.
Phases
Table Stakes
Branded cards and clean gift notes are now expected. The baseline is no longer a packing slip.
Choice
Give buyers control over design and occasion. This makes the gift feel intentional and lifts conversion.
Control
Total creative control is the next frontier. Uploads, custom fonts, and dynamic templates turn gifting into a creative product, not a checkout option.
AI
AI assistants remove decision friction. They help buyers pick the right gift, write the note, and complete the order without hunting across product pages. That will expand the market and make gifting more frequent.
Here is what that looks like in practice:
- A buyer answers a few questions ("who is it for?", "what is the occasion?", "budget?").
- The assistant recommends a gift and suggests a card design.
- It drafts a message that matches the tone and fits the character limit.
- It nudges the buyer into delivery scheduling and a clean checkout.
Always-On
Micro-occasions matter. Work anniversaries, personal milestones, and "just because" moments create year-round volume that does not depend on holiday spikes. If you want to make these moments feel timely, see Right-Time Marketing.
Moat
The brands that capture recipient data and gifting behavior will build a data advantage that compounds. Better data means better personalization, which means higher conversion.
The compounding assets are tangible:
- Recipient identity and preference graph (even partial).
- Occasion history and gifting frequency by customer.
- Creative performance by segment (what designs, offers, and CTAs convert).
- A reliable match-back from scans to opt-ins to purchases.
For a deeper look at personalization in the box, see Personalized Package Inserts. For video message personalization, see Yuzu acquires GiftTagg.
Start
If you want to be early, focus on three basics: a frictionless gifting UX, a branded unboxing moment, and a recipient conversion flow. Everything else builds from there.
For a measurement framework, see The Gifting Flywheel: 6 Stages and 8 KPIs.
