How to avoid getting stuck with old swag

KEY POINTS

• Look for centralized, warehousing options to house inventory.
• Consider an automated, full-service corporate gifting platform to manage inventory, pack boxes, and ship direct mail.
• Opt for a sending management platform that tracks and measures sends while integrating with current workflows.

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Boxes and boxes of logoed purple seat cushions. With no one to send them to.

That was the monstrous situation Tessa Corcoran, former event marketing coordinator at Quantum Metric, found herself in after one recent holiday season.

“We had 200 leftover purple seat cushions after we sent them to everybody in the company and after we sent them as holiday gifts!” recalled Corcoran, laughing. “I still have 120 in inventory with our old logo on it.”

That wasn’t the exact moment Quantum swapped their corporate gifting platform, but it was close.

Outsource warehousing and swag intake

Quantum Metric is a Software-as-a-Service company that specializes in analytics, so they know a good data set when they see one.

They also do a lot of B2B direct mail marketing. Quantum’s sales development people, account managers, and executive teams use gifts to open opportunities.

“Being able to keep our items in the Sendoso warehouse and being able to ship them when we need, that was a big piece,” said Corcoran, thinking back to when they switched over. “For us, it was really the analytics piece that Sendoso offered in comparison to the prior platform we had.”

Painless warehousing and top-notch analytics? Sendoso serves up a virtual swag closet for thousands of B2B clients who dumped the shipping, storing, and data mining for a better solution.

So after that disastrous cushion order branded with the company logo, Corcoran said the Quantum Metric team reexamined what they were getting out of their vendor. In the end, the numbers don’t lie.

“They didn’t have enough insights into the individual sends that [the executive team] wanted to have,” said Corcoran. “And the warehousing was terrible.”

Track direct mail metrics

Sendoso’s straightforward metrics show exactly when, where, and how much each account is driving revenue.

When it comes to the complex measurements around return on investment, analytics have to be more robust than just a response rate. Sendoso’s dashboards can report out campaign-by-campaign analysis of open rates, meeting conversions, and closed-won opportunities. The automated gifting platform is designed to read data from Salesforce campaigns as part of the workflow integration.

Teams can measure each campaign’s performance over time to demonstrate pipeline influence.

Send Tracker is also a favorite feature among Sendoso’s top users. It shows the entire campaign process, from packaging to delivery. That means no more lost gifts and no more wasted budget. View the journey of any send, whether it’s an eGift or perishable item.

Once you dive into Sendoso’s dashboards, you’ll be neck-deep in data and won’t want to get out.

Skip swag storage headaches

When marketing teams typically talk about their warehousing and storage for swag and gifts, it’s a major pain point.

“Honestly, I don’t know how Sendoso does it! It would stress me out,” Corcoran laughed.

Keeping a warehouse in order is no joke. It’s a logistics challenge, even for the most organized marketing professional and warehouse manager. But the network of well-coordinated and stocked warehouses that Sendoso offers caught Quantum Metric’s attention.

“I know we looked into [another sending platform], and they didn’t have the warehousing capabilities that Sendoso had,” said Corcoran. “Or the kitting or fulfillment that Sendoso offers.”

Rely on send curation experts

Shopping for the perfect gifting sets, ordering, sizing, personalizing, packaging, and shipping takes up way too much bandwidth. You have accounts to close and pipeline to grow. With Sendoso, you don’t even need a storage system anymore.

Sendoso can step in and handle it all on a large scale. International mail may be a hassle with other platforms, but not for Sendoso.

Quantum Metric learned that even last-minute sending campaigns are a breeze.

“I think that’s why I love Sendoso because we didn’t have to be so prepared,” said Corcoran.

Marketing teams don’t need to spend months meticulously planning gifting ideas. Just shop, click, and ship. A team of dedicated send curation experts helps Sendoso customers shape campaigns with thoughtful and creative gift ideas.

“We can go on Sendoso Direct, pick the items in stock…and make our customers happy,” she said. “We didn’t need to keep inventory.“

For a B2B company that makes a lot of sends, it raises the question, Why mess around with stocking, storing, and tracking big, bulky items when someone else can do it for you?

Less waste. More Options.

What happened at Quantum Metric after the purple cushion debacle?

Their next holiday campaign was executed with ease by Sendoso. Corcoran even set up gift options for each client and decision-maker to choose from.

“It was a really nice touch to send everything through Sendoso,” she said. “You’re not going through third-party vendors and shipping individually. We just had the landing page set up that people went to, it shipped, and it was beautiful.”

Quantum Metric are glad they switched to Sendoso for business gifting. Not only do they have clear campaign metrics and personalized packaging options, but they no longer need a storage unit.

“This year, with Sendoso, I don’t have any extra inventory,” said Corcoran. “Everybody’s happy, and the world moves on.”

In recent months, even the people team has started using Sendoso for employee recognition. Employees award each other points using the HiThrive integration. Those points can be cashed in for branded merchandise in the Quantum Metric storefront.

See how you can adapt Sendoso to fit your sending needs by requesting a demo.