10 tips for sending gifts to influencers

Sending gifts to influencers is a great way to increase brand awareness at an affordable price. However, even such a simple solution has its own nuances.

Here are some tips and insights on the benefits of sending gifts and how to do it to reach not only the influencers but also your audience.

1. Carefully select your list of recipients and ensure the influencers you choose will like the gift. For example, if you send coffee to a non-coffee drinker or dairy products to a lactose-intolerant person, you not only risk that the influencer would not share your gift on their social media, but also create an opportunity for unwanted negative feedback. After all, none of us wants to receive a gift we don’t like.
2. Get consent before sending a gift. Even if you have the personal information (address, phone number) of the influencer, you must get permission to use this data for the purpose of delivering a specific gift. Often the influencer will want to know what the gift is and only then decide whether they want to accept it.
3. It is very important to understand that the influencer is not obliged to show the delivery they have received—it is a gift, not a barter. If you state that you expect a mention on their social media or a showing of the gift, there is a good chance that the influencer will simply refuse or send you a list of their advertising fees. After sending a gift, you should not contact the influencer asking, “So when are you going to post about the gift?”. This not only destroys any chance of the gift being shown on their social media but also damages the future relationship, as the influencer may not accept the gift next time. In our experience, 50-70% of influencers show their gifts, usually on Instagram stories. 
4. The more creative or personal the gift is, the more likely the influencer will not only unwrap it but also review it. Influencers, especially mega and macro ones, receive a lot of gifts, so it’s worth investing in wrapping and design to make your gift stand out from the rest. Gifts accompanied by personalized notes are particularly noticeable, as it shows the influencer that you are genuinely interested in them and follow their social media.
5. Make sure that your gift is packaged properly and that the courier service will be able to deliver it safely and undamaged. Also note that some products, especially food, should be delivered by a promotional team rather than a courier to ensure that the food is fresh and fit for consumption.
6. Although you cannot control what an influencer says about your brand or product, try to make sure that your main message is clear to them, for example, a new product in Lithuania. It is also very important to specify not only the name of brand that sends the gift but also how to find it on social media, i.e., the Instagram account, so that the influencer can easily find you and tag it to thank for the gift.
7. #Gift. According to the SCRPS Guidelines for Social Media Advertising Disclosure, when a brand sends a gift or provides a free service to an influencer, they must clearly indicate that it is a gift (#gift tag) when sharing it on their social media. Phrases such as “thank you X for the free product” or “thank you X for sending me the gift” are also a sufficient way to disclose this information. It is not necessary to additionally tag this type of content with the word ‘ad’, provided that the influencer does not share discount codes, drive consumers to the brand’s website, or otherwise encourage the purchase of the product.
8. Prepare for Christmas in advance! To ensure that your gift doesn’t get stuck in parcel distribution centers or get lost in the massive Christmas social media traffic during the festive period, we suggest you start thinking about sending your gifts in the middle of autumn and deliver your first Christmas parcels in November.
9. It is obvious that the main advantage of sending gifts is the lower price compared to a paid entry in an influencer’s account. You will pay for the present, wrapping, shipping, and, sometimes, various add-ons to the main product that create an additional effect, such as a personalized card or balloons coming out of a box. The most important thing is to estimate the time needed to compile a list of suitable recipients, contact each influencer personally, get their consent to deliver the gift, and agree on an approximate delivery date. This time-consuming task can also be entrusted to an agency for an additional fee, which will not only take care of the gift idea, packaging, and smooth delivery but will also monitor the content of the gift recipients and prepare a report on the content created by the influencers.
10. Gifts can not only serve as a promotional tool but can also be a great way to establish or maintain an organic relationship. You can surprise an influencer with a product they particularly like without having to organize mass gifting to dozens of content creators. Often, brands with a long-standing relationship with an influencer use this practice on special occasions—a birthday, a wedding, the birth of a child, or just to celebrate a round number of followers.

We wish you to surprise influencers with gifts they have never seen before!