Corporate Gifting Keeps on Giving for B-to-B Marketers

What distinguishes a good business gift from a bad one? Where it ends up after you open it. According to a survey of 158 b-to-b marketing leaders released late last year by Forrester Consulting and direct-mail marketing firm PFL, 81% say they are very likely to open a package that arrives for them at work. Meanwhile San Francisco-based b-to-b gift sending platform Sendoso found that while 96% of company decision makers felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of people trying to get their attention, 79% said receiving a gift from a vendor influenced their decision to take a meeting. Direct mail is a part of that gifting process. The Forrester/PFL survey indicates that 80% of businesses invested more in digital marketing including email and ads during the pandemic, but 76% said they’re seeing less digital engagement than they were a year ago. Meanwhile, 76% said that analog marketing, including direct mail, performs better for them now than it did during the early pandemic. Direct Mail Makes Comeback as Brands Bypass Digital Clutter Gifts are a big part of that equation. Companies send out trinkets to help new clients discover their products (72%), to close a sale (63%) and to maintain ongoing relationships (54%). It’s part of an overall direct-mail strategy that’s proven so effective that direct-mail spending among those surveyed by Forrester and PFL increased 54% in 2022 and is predicted to jump another 69% this year. But how do you avoid sending a client a pointless bauble that will just end up in a donation bin or the trash? How do you prevent your team from offering the 25th water bottle in a b-to-b conference marketplace? Increasingly, marketers are using technology to give their 20th century perks some 21st century personalization. “We have the benefit of data to see—of all of the millions of things we've sent out—which swag items attract the most conversion or drive the most interest,” said Kris Rudeegraap, CEO and co-founder of Sendoso. “We think about it as quality over quantity: If we can have more quality conversations by providing more quality items, it sets us apart.” Paring down the presents Sendoso’s research found that 82% of decision makers said receiving a gift positively influenced a deal they made with the sender. But in the current marketplace, Forrester and PFL found that 54% of b-to-b companies lack customer data systems that are compatible with direct mail. And they don’t think you can measure its effectiveness (50%) or personalize it for clients (47%). Rudeegraap knows the feeling. Before founding Sendoso, he’d spent roughly a decade in software sales chasing down meetings with potential clients and sending out thousands of emails. When he started seeing diminishing returns on email, he began sending prospects handwritten notes. He’d raid the company swag closet and send them gifts. If he was on a call with a lead and heard a dog bark in the background, he’d go onto Amazon and send them a dog toy. The analog approach was effective, but time consuming and labor intensive. Personalization and tracking has made it easier to determine which corporate gifts work best. Eventually, he and partner Braydan Young built a platform that tracked clicks and conversion on their website, sent out gifts and tracked them back through marketing automation, customer relationship management, and automation platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot. It allows gift senders to both personalize the products they’re sending out and track whether or not the gift made a difference. Companies that use “intent data signals” on their websites can have Sendoso send users a gift just by meeting certain requirements. If they download a white paper or request a demonstration, for instance, Sendoso can send them a Starbucks card to buy coffee while they read or view it. In some cases, they might send a Yeti mug to hold it. It’s costly, but emphatically focused. “There is an expensive cost to this channel, so there is not an unlimited budget like you have with email where I could send a million emails tomorrow and it costs me next to zero,” Rudeegraap said. “If you sent a million high end, customized AirPod gifts, that's going to cost you like $20 million, so the channel has baked-in guardrails to prevent abuse.” No filler Sendoso has paired clients including Comcast, Nasdaq, VMWare and SurveyMonkey with gifts including whiskey tasting classes, Southern California cookies, New Jersey sandwiches and French macarons. Its “send curators” suggest items based on their purpose—marketing, demand generation, account acquisition, conference display—and brainstorms with customers to help them identify the best products. Depending on the client, that perfect gift could include Apple Watches, customized cakes, movie bundles or messages that need to be decoded with special pairs of glasses. Even if no suggestions appeal, Sendoso partners with Amazon to allow clients to order any item in Amazon’s marketplace, have Sendoso rebox it with a handwritten note and send it on its way. Why B-to-B Companies Are Investing More in Brand Marketing Does it work? Enough to fill a page of endorsements. Streaming platform MasterClass used Sendoso to create themed gift packages for its prospects. Win rates improved 40% thanks to the gifts. Meta noticed an uptick in meetings for its Workplace development team within the first six months of using the gift-sending platform. Finally, at the B2B Marketing Exchange in Scottsdale, Ariz., in February, SurePoint Technologies CMO Lydia Flocchini noted that offering Sendoso gift cards to site visitors who requested a demonstration drove more than 200 requests—with more than 50% leading to sales. Without that gift, both requests and sales were “much less.” Even amid recent economic uncertainty, gifts have a role to play in b-to-b marketing. “You still have to break through the digital noise, you still have to drive revenue, you still have to retain your customers,” Sendoso’s Rudeegraap said. “Because we're so closely tied to core sales, marketing and customer success teams, we are very sticky and very useful during these times.”

B2B

B-to-B Marketers Find Corporate Gifting Wildly Successful—When Infused With Data

Companies use presents to break through digital distractions, using data to weed out bad swag

Jason Notte

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Jason Notte