Dark side of gifting: 4 avoidable B2B marketing hassles

Corporate gifting platforms like Sendoso are excellent tools to help marketing teams execute campaigns at scale. Take Terminus for example. The B2B company managed to use corporate gifting to influence $5.5 million in pipeline.

Gifting swag or branded merchandise isn’t reserved for marketing.

Sendoso also improves sales strategies by curating meaningful one-to-one gifts to help set meetings. The sales team at Tipalti tried it. The results totaled $3 million in revenue thanks to sales development representatives sending branded gifts.

We’ve mentioned it, preached it, and posted it.

But we’ve rarely mentioned the real problem that Sendoso solves –  the DARK SIDE of sending gifts to B2B customers and prospects.

I interviewed marketers on Zoom, LinkedIn messages, and Slack to learn about their struggles before Sendoso and what I learned will shock you.

Marketing hassle #1 – scary swag closets

The marketers I interviewed painted a spooky picture of cluttered swag closets, overflowing branded mugs, and digging through piles of junk to find tape dispensers.

Swag closets are usually managed in tubs by people who have more important things to do than organize this year’s stress balls and breath mints.

Picture yourself, an ambitious marketing professional who just hosted one of the most successful virtual events of your career. You rush to the swag closet to start shipping follow-up promotional items and you walk into a sad, windowless room full of clutter likely bound for a thrift store pile.

Scared yet? We’re just getting started.

Marketing hassle #2 – hours wasted on packing

You made your parents proud with that business degree. You have marketing ideas that are going to change your company forever, and then the world. You plan events and webinars that get great attendance from your target audience. Outbound campaigns that flood your sales teams with leads. And everybody loves the jacket you ordered for the employee onboarding kit.

But at what cost?

Three to five hours a week are spent digging through the closet for shipping supplies, then copying and pasting addresses from an excel sheet that the summer intern put together for you.

And the worst part hasn’t even happened yet. Keep reading.

Marketing hassle #3 – lugging boxes to ship

You’re only halfway done with your marketing campaign after spending hours prepping webinar follow-up kits for your B2B prospects.

Now you have to mail all 60+ boxes.

Time to load them up. One by one, and drive to USPS or UPS and wait in line!

You can’t wait to see the results of this campaign that you spent weeks on. You can’t wait to see the look on your manager’s face when the qualified leads come in.

But instead, you’re in a line hopelessly scrolling through Facebook and watching the clock tick away.

Marketing hassle #4 – international shipping codes

One nightmare. Three words. Harmonized System Codes.

Shipping a box internationally can be the biggest hassle of all if you’re unprepared.

The Harmonized System is a standardized numerical method of classifying traded products. To ship things overseas you have to accurately classify your product.

If there’s a mistake, it doesn’t ship and could never be seen again.

On top of that, the items are hard to track. Making it impossible for your Sales team to know when to follow up with your leads.

Solutions for B2B gifting hassles

But there is hope.

Sendoso can help solve B2B marketing hassles, reduce manual labor, and track more than your packages. Sendoso even tracks your analytics so you can see your return on investment in real-time.

Let’s start from the top.

1. Ditch the over-cluttered swag closets.

With Sendoso, your items are stored in our warehouse and managed virtually from the platform. You can even level up your gifting strategy by letting prospects pick what they want from your online Swag Store™.

2. Cut down on manual tasks.

When you’re ready to send, Sendoso handles tracking down all the right addresses with its Address Confirmation feature. No more labels for you.

3. Never wait in line again.

Ship items to your recipient’s address with just a couple of clicks. Packaging is customizable and can include a handwritten note done by the professionals at Sendoso.

4. No more HS codes and lost packages.

Sendoso automates HS Codes and tracks shipping internationally. When an item is received overseas, your team is notified for timely follow-up.

Long story short: Sendoso automates THAT.

Save time by skipping the swag close

Spend less time in the swag closet and more time changing the world, one campaign at a time. Check out this blog post on how your sales team can use your campaigns to set meetings with decision-makers and convert your leads.

Are you in sales? Wow, can’t believe you made it this far. Let’s chat about how your team can utilize Sendoso for one-on-one sending that drives meetings.

About the writer: Giano Fiore is a strategic account representative at Sendoso where he connects prospects with personalization + Sendoso. He began as a sales rep and believes sending creates more deals, more conversions, and more meetings.