400 Marketers Reveal the One Channel Cutting Through Digital Fatigue

We're always asked…

 “What does good look like?" 

"What's happening in the space?" 

"Where is gifting going?" 

We know customers see the value. Prospects are looking at solutions for a reason, and the space is no longer niche. But why does it work? What do buyers think? And where is it actually headed?

We went in with a hypothesis that growing digital fatigue is a factor in why gifting and direct mail strategies work. So we asked over 400 marketers about the impact of gifting and direct mail on them as buyers - and how they plan to use it in 2026.

To be honest, the results blew our minds. We're in an epidemic of digital fatigue, but we’ve identified the one channel that still cuts through.

Keep reading for the highlights or dive right into the full report here.

Your buyers are exhausted

‍You feel it, but here’s the proof. Cold calls fatigue 84% of buyers. Marketing emails? 83%. Sales outreach emails? 82%. The channels you're probably spending the most time and money on are the ones buyers are most tuned out from. Cool, cool.

Meanwhile, direct mail and gifting cause the least fatigue of any tactic we measured. 40% of buyers report zero fatigue with it. That's not a small gap - that's a different category entirely.

Perception drives purchase, whether buyers admit it or not

Over 96% of buyers say they're more likely to buy from a brand they genuinely like or respect. Yet only 17% consciously attribute that to emotional connection. The gap? That's exactly where gifting operates. Quietly building the kind of brand equity that moves deals.

Most teams are leaving the highest-ROI use cases on the table

Gifting is mostly used for events (61%) and brand awareness (57%). But only 20% use it for pipeline generation and 29% for deal acceleration - the two use cases with the most direct line to revenue. Our platform data shows deals with a gifting component close 29% faster. That's not a rounding error.

A $7 bag of more worms beat a $200 bottle of whiskey

We asked our own team about the best gift they ever received from a brand. The winner? Sour gummy worms. Because someone remembered a detail from a conversation. The average gift on Sendoso is $45. It was never about the spend.

Budget is following the results

82% of marketers plan to maintain or increase their gifting budget. Teams spending 50–75% of their budget on gifting jumped 57% year over year. When something works, smart teams pour gas on it.

The data is clear: gifting delivers 59x better pipeline ROI than ads, closes deals faster, and generates the lowest buyer fatigue of any channel. The brands winning in 2026 aren't the loudest or the one’s shelling out the most expensive gifts. They're creating memorable moments by treating buyers as humans, not signed contracts.

Read the full report.