What is a Sending Platform?

KEY POINTS

• What is a Sending Platform and why to use one.
• What Sending Platforms can do and who they were built for.
• Tips on how to choose the right Sending Platform for your organization’s needs.

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A few years ago, we noticed a universal dilemma: Consumers and companies, alike, were drowning in digital noise. Cold emails went unanswered; apps got deleted; ads were ignored. Companies struggled with finding innovative ways to stand out amidst their competition and build more meaningful relationships with prospects, customers, and fellow employees.

We embarked on a mission to help businesses rise above the noise by eliminating spam and elevating relationships. That’s why we created the world’s first Sending Platform.

Today we help clients build relationships one gift at a time. We have over 800+ happy customers, 20,000+ active users, and hundreds of thousands of human connections either established, rekindled, or grown deeper. But how does it all work?

What is a Sending Platform?

A Sending Platform is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that lets your sales, marketing, customer experience (CX), and HR teams easily deliver corporate gifts to whomever, and practically wherever. It integrates with software you’re probably already using, allowing your teams to offer tangible gifts and virtual experiences to foster business relationships with just the click of a button.

While similar to a corporate gifting platform, a Sending Platform improves upon it by:

• Automating fulfillment and logistics for the on-time delivery of your gifts.
• Using a modern, SaaS approach to automate corporate gifting at strategic points throughout a customer, prospect, or employee lifecycle.
• Providing data and analytics dashboards so you can see the return on investment (ROI) on everything you’ve ever sent. Now see the data for yourself on how a Sending Platform generates more leads, boosts customer sales, improves employee morale, and more.

A Sending Platform makes sending gifts easy. No more hopping around from one isolated software to another. Use one central platform to curate, source, select, and send dozens or thousands of personalized gifts. And since it has software integrations, there is no new software to learn and no interruption to your daily workflow.

Why Use a Sending Platform?

Sending direct mail, gifts, and swag have always been powerful ways to engage people, and research from our 2021 State of Sending shows that:

• 65% said using a Sending Platform gave them the ability to stand out and rise above the noise of their competition.
• 46% increased their ability to close more deals and retain current customers.
• 43% increased their ability to generate demand and increase meeting attendance.

Knowing this, companies are already investing hundreds of billions of dollars into corporate gifting, direct mail, and company swag. In fact, our data shows that 79% of revenue leaders plan to use sending strategies (direct mail, eGifts, or virtual experiences) in the next 12 months, and 71% expect the number of monthly “Sends” to increase over that same time period.

What Does Sendoso Do?

Sendoso is the leading Sending Platform. We help them send:

• Direct mail
• Personalized gifts
• Thoughtful handwritten notes
• Video mailers
• Fresh flowers
• Sweet treats
• Gift cards
• Fun dimensional mailers
• Company swag
• Customer rewards
• Employee recognition gifts
• Custom gift boxes
• Client gifts
• Prospect gifts
• Virtual experiences
• eGifts
• And much more with the click of a button

Additionally, we work tirelessly to release new product features, integrations, and partnerships multiple times a year. We’ve hired some of the best logistics and fulfillment experts in the industry to manage our warehouse footprint and logistics strategy. And we have a lot of happy customers who received the ROI in the key performance indicators (KPIs) they care about most.

What we do is we have a customer-centric approach to corporate gifting. We’ve come a long way, but we’re just getting started.

What Can Sending Platforms Do?

Sending Platforms can do many things, and have risen in popularity in recent years. More companies are discovering it’s incredibly efficient to utilize an all-in-one platform that ties together direct mail, corporate gifting, branded merchandise management, and personalization all while handling the moving parts of sourcing, shipping, tracking, and measuring ROI.

But what makes a Sending Platform right for you? In general, they should have all of the following capabilities:

1. Limitless Sending Possibilities
2. Seamless Integrations
3. Worldwide Fulfillment & Inventory Management
4. Intelligent Analytics & Reporting
5. Scalable Across Teams & Budgets

Who is a Sending Platform For?

A quality Sending Platform has the ability to scale across multiple teams and departments within a startup, small business, mid-market business, or enterprise-level corporation. You should be able to control the dollars spent by creating teams and assigning unique budgets for each department. The platform should also provide monthly “sending” allowances that expire, ones that roll over at the end of the month, or that give you the option to set one-time budgets and refill them whenever needed.

How Do I Choose the Right Sending Platform for My Team?

When it comes to purchasing Sending Platforms, selecting the wrong product for you and your team could be a very costly mistake. No two companies will have the exact same needs when it comes to a Sending Platform, just like each Sending Platform functions a bit differently. You’ll want to take your time, and evaluate the capabilities and cost of all your options to make sure you’re choosing the perfect platform for you.

For enterprises especially, some practical tips to consider include:

• Navigating international obstacles with corporate gifting. This can include but is not limited to, navigating gift-giving laws in different companies, handling foreign compliance, customs, currencies, and exchange rates, and the global footprint of a Sending Platform to be able to handle an international presence or gifting strategy.
• Utilizing integrations. Larger corporations already have thousands of user licenses, established software suites, and processes to navigate. Thanks to software integrations, there is no need to teach new software to the masses and slow down current workflows.

For startups, small businesses, mid-sized companies, and enterprises check out our Sending Platform Buyer’s Guide. It dives into further detail on what Sending Platforms are, how they work, why you need one, and, most importantly, how to evaluate and buy one so you can start making new meaningful connections, one “Send” at a time.

Ready to get into the specifics? Request a demo to learn how the leading Sending Platform can work for your unique organization and needs today.

This article was originally published on August 26, 2020. It has been updated for relevance.