Digital shopping and payments app Klarna has partnered with the Nift gifting platform, offering Klarna users a choice of gifts at key points in the purchase cycle in categories including fashion, jewelry, restaurants, music and home goods. Operating within the Klarna app, the AI-powered Nift platform matches recipients with six personally tailored gift categories and then gives them the option of choosing between two gifts. The brands provide the gifts and, in return, get exposure to prospective customers that can be even more effective than traditional advertising.
“We constantly look for innovative ways to elevate our customer experience by making shopping with Klarna more personal, pleasant and rewarding,” said David Sandstrom, Chief Marketing Officer at Klarna in a statement. “By partnering with Nift, we’re able to thank our customers for making a purchase with surprise, high-value gifts that introduce them to new brands, products and services that are curated specially for them.”
The Nift offering is now available to all U.S. Klarna users. Since partnering with Nift, Klarna has seen a 30% click-through rate and a 40% gift-activation rate. Proprietary Nift data reveals that 88% of gift recipients rate their gift positively; 72% say they like the company that gave the gift more after receiving one; and 70% of those who redeemed a Nift offering plan to use the brand again.
“Our thought was, why choose between creating a positive customer experience and generating revenue?,” said Elery Pfeffer, Founder and CEO of Nift in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “All retail media networks try to monetize their users with ads, but instead of that they can just give a gift and improve customer sentiment at the same time. And for brands, instead of spending most of their ad dollars on Meta, they can give users a free or heavily discounted gift.”
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Gifting at Strategic Moments in the Shopper Journey
Nift earns a cost-per-click fee with each gift that’s selected, and the offering can be inserted “in any moment of the customer journey,” said Pfeffer. “It could be post-purchase or when something shifts [like reaching a new spending tier within a loyalty program], as well as on the shopper’s loyalty anniversary or birthday; there are almost 20 different moments that we can give Nifts.”
Pfeffer added that the Nift process encourages customer engagement: “It’s not an interruptive ad that has to fit within a narrow number of pixels,” he noted. “Consumers engage with the ad and make a considered choice between the gifts. The minute they pick one, we share what we’ve earned on a cost-per-click basis with the commerce media partner.
“Consumers will appreciate it, brand sentiment will increase, and it will generate a significant revenue stream,” Pfeffer added. “Many retailers use the funds to drive further acquisitions on Nift, so they’re giving and receiving.”
In April 2023 Klarna rolled out a suite of new shopping tools, including a personalized shopping feed, and in February 2024 Klarna expanded its “Sign in with Klarna” service — which allows customers to choose which data they want to share with the merchant — to 23 countries, including the U.S. and the UK.
