Kiana Ghassemi
Senior Manager of Experience Marketing
In-person events are officially back in full force—tradeshows, conferences, expos, company kick-offs, and seminars have all made a gradual comeback after completely dropping off with the pandemic. Gatherings of all sizes, booths of all shapes, and conference halls all over the world have reopened to bring professionals together to network and work towards achieving their goals.
While everyone is excited to connect and collaborate in person, consider checking in with your events team. They are most likely not looking forward to arriving early at the event to unpack boxes and boxes of swag (that cost a pretty penny to ship since the venue put a fee on top of that). Not to mention, managing the leftover swag and coordinating how to get it back to where it’s stored.
Events teams…are you good?
We’ve learned time and time again that doing things simply because “that's how it’s always been done” is not a legitimate reason to continue on. The world has shifted, events have changed, and it’s time for our booth exhibiting methodology to evolve as well. Let’s optimize for our attendees and for ourselves. More specifically, let’s not lug around physical swag so our recipients can schlep it around afterward.
The objective
Aside from having some of the best corporate swag at the Forrester B2B Summit, I wanted to make sure the offering was desirable for attendees while removing the time-consuming and manual logistics of managing the swag—and above all, show a positive ROI (return on investment).
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The play
For this event, Postal’s Field Marketing team created branded t-shirt shaped cards. Each card contained a QR code that linked to a collection that contained a variety of items including the custom t-shirt the card was based on as well custom tote bag, some non-branded items and an option to donate to charity.
Forget lugging boxes of swag through the airport or paying a drayage fee. This play didn’t require any suitcase space or security issues that might arise from having 20 Yeti mugs in a carry-on. The only physical item that was required at the conference were the cards themselves.
Enough about us—this play was a superior experience for our recipients as well. They didn’t have to worry about carrying the swag around all day, leave it sitting around somewhere, or settle for an XL because the mediums weren’t available. They simply selected the item they wanted on their phone, chose the correct size, and had it shipped right to their door.
Executing the card
Postal automatically generates a unique QR code when you create a MagicLink. After creating your desired collection of items that you want to include as your booth swag (which can always be edited), simply create a MagicLink for it. Then navigate to “Automation” > “MagicLinks” >, find the link, and click into it. From there you’ll see the QR code specific to your MagicLink or collection of items.
We worked with our designer to create the artwork (note: this could be any shape you want, company logo, shoes, t-shirt, etc.) including giving them a screenshot of the QR code to include on one side of the card. Once the artwork was created, we sent it off to a printer to create die cut shapes of the card in a slightly thicker cardstock. The printing of the cards can be handled by your own team, a third party printing service, or our Paper Plane Agency team.
*Postal pro tip: each collection can be synced with a SFDC campaign for additional reporting and attribution.
The impact
While this did save me future back pain from carrying around bags stuffed full of merchandise and the results from this campaign are still rolling in, it has already resulted in 7 opportunities and created $155k in pipeline for our sales team. On top of that, when our recipient received the item a few days later, that was an additional reminder of us.
The takeaway
Taking our conference swag to the cloud with Postal let me focus on what really matters at any trade show or conference: creating memorable connections with booth visitors. Teams small and large can use Offline Marketing Automation to remove the logistics of physical merchandise and branded swag.
With the revival of in-person events, teams should consider managing their conference swag by taking a similar approach so they can focus on creating an engaging environment at their booth, as opposed to figuring out how to hide boxes of hats under their table.
Thinking about showing appreciation to your guest speakers? Take a look at our latest article on speaker gifts.
To see how Postal can save you time and money by managing your swag closet, request a demo today.
