12 Ways to Utilize Swag with your Remote Team

You have a fully remote workforce, no office, no warehouse and your company wants to send over 100 packs to clients or employees. Sound familiar? The pain and headaches of trying to figure out a way to do this daunting task without it being a full time job is exactly the use case SwagUp is here to solve! We take all the heavy lifting from ordering swag, assembly and distribution. We are your one stop shop for swag! So rest assured, you came to the right place.

Why should I send swag?

Having a fully remote team can make it challenging to promote team spirit, company culture and values. How can you mimic real life interactions in a virtual world? Swag is a great way to do that. Think about it, onboarding a new hire with swag can make that new hire team immediately part of the team. It's similar to getting your jersey for a sports team, you are not officially part of the team until you get your name on a jersey. Employees want to feel like they are a part of something bigger and swag it a good start to get there. Sending swag to employees also helps them promote the company, especially if you are sending high quality swag they would want to keep or wear. While swag is not the most important thing you can do to make employees feel part of the company, we see it as an effective tool managers can use for various occasions.

Swag can be utilized to company milestones, rebranding, anniversaries and birthdays. The use cases are endless, for branded swag can be utilized for almost anything. Let’s face it, who doesn’t like to receive company swag?

What can swag for remote teams look like?

When planning out remote swag for teams, you should think about a few things, how do you want teams to receive swag, what do you want them to do with the branded swag and will it be something they will be excited about?

How do you want teams to receive swag?

It’s important to plan out how you want your teams experience to be. Is it for when they first get hired? Are you giving away swag for virtual trivia? Did you want to have some on hand to give to clients? We had our client Breeze plan their rebranding around swag. Swag packs were sent in advance and teams were told not to open their swag until their scheduled zoom call! Everyone opened their branded swag packs together while on zoom! It made for a memorable experience for everyone and made for a successful launch of a new brand! So think about the experience and how you want to make it a memorable one!

What do you want your team to do with the branded swag?

It’s key to think about the purpose of the swag. If you want swag to bring from brand awareness the best way to do that is providing swag they can wear. If you want something they can use to work from home a branded charging pad or logoed mug with a company phrase or value on it. Aside from thinking about how you want the experience receiving the swag packs, think about how you want your team to use them. If you send something no one is going to use, you just wasted time and money on swag no one will use. So it’s important you think of items your team will find useful and actually love the swag they receive!

💡Check out our most popular swag packs!

How to use SwagUp for your Remote Team 🎉

1. A single source of truth for your company’s brand information.

“Where did I put that logo file again? And was it the correct file type?” You just can't seem to remember.  (Pro tip: check out our article on raster versus vector files)

Keeping track of your brand’s assets can be a pain. Wouldn't it be nice to upload your logo once... and then from there, your logo is automatically added to any new swag you wanted?

Yeah, we thought so. 😉  Good news. Use your SwagUp account to manage your company's information in the account settings. You'll be able to upload up to two logos in .pdf, .png, .ai, .eps, .jpeg formats. You can even add your company address for easy shipping.

💡Don’t have a SwagUp Account yet? Sign up here!

2. Work efficiently with bulk contact imports into the shipping directory.

The bigger your team grows, the more you'll need an easy way to manage everyone's addresses. (Our sympathies to anyone who has had to do it with scattered Post-It notes before.)

One of the benefits of SwagUp is the ability to ship to multiple addresses at once. And typing in one or two addresses? Boring, but doable. But when you have to ship to 20, 50, 100+ new hires, clients, and so on… it starts to become a nightmare.

Instead, if you have a CSV file, you can upload all your contacts into the directory of your SwagUp dashboard. This makes it easy to not only ship to multiple contacts for your current project, but also track order history for each contact and ship more swag to them as needed in the future.

3. Easy, centralized team collaboration on swag proofs.

We think this one's really cool. Ever had a wicked piece of swag mocked up, and then wondered how to easily share it with the rest of the team?

The answer is as simple as getting your team on the SwagUp dashboard! Anyone who needs to, can instantly see proof updates in the Proofs tab. They’ll also have the ability to add comments and request changes all in the same place, keeping everyone in the team on the same page. This is asynchronous swag collaboration at its finest.

(And yes, you can also get the PDF to share — but do you really want yet another email thread in your inbox?) For more about the team collaboration experience on the SwagUp dashboard, reach out to a Swag Expert.

4. Automate company swag for a stellar onboarding experience.

This is one of the most popular ways to utilize SwagUp. Remote onboarding new employees can be confusing, and stressful. With SwagUp, you can create a personalized employee onboarding experience without the hassle (check out some of our preset packs for inspiration.) 

It's a no brainer; easy for you, meaningful for them. Craft a first day that'll fire them up for all the days after! You don’t have to automate this if you don’t want to, but if the idea of automation is giving you pause, two words for you: no code.

The list of SwagUp integrations is growing, and one of our favorite integrations is Zapier. What that means for you is a simple way to connect SwagUp to over 2000+ apps, including Google Sheets, Typeform, and Gmail.

Imagine this: a new hire signs their paperwork, and at the end of day one, they receive an awesome swag surprise on their doorstep! You can make all that happen… with zero effort on your part! 😎

5. Guardrails to easily stay within budget, and set you up for success.

With our pack builder, you'll get a live quote estimate as you build a pack. This makes it easy to figure out what items can be substituted. As an added bonus, teams on the SwagUp dashboard can be allotted a specific budget for swag spending.

Your team wants to know the company is not wasting money on bad swag — luckily, all the items we offer in our catalog have been handpicked by the SwagUp team for quality and excitement. So you can be smart about the swag you give.

Working with SwagUp allows you to skip sorting through the junk. Just head to the SwagUp catalog for a curated selection of quality swag that fits your budget. And if by chance our (intentionally) limited selection doesn’t carry what you’re looking for, you can work for a Swag Expert (for free!) to find the perfect swag for your company brand. Because we want to make sure you get it right.

6. Support a thriving company culture with all the right moves, like celebrating important employee anniversaries and company milestones! 🎉

Culture does not happen spontaneously, whether teams are remote or in-person. It takes the right intentions and effort — something that is more obvious with a remote team than in-person at the office. It can be hard to instill culture and values in employees who work remotely, but it would help if your company culture and values are well-crafted, impactful, and visible at all times — that all you need to worry about is how to consistently express them to assure recall.

But don’t worry. We’re here to help you get started. Because good swag is about supporting and expressing your company values. Give them a warm welcome at onboarding, then follow up periodically based on your company’s team rituals. For example, celebrating an employee’s 1 year mark. Or setting up swag packs for a company retreat.

And we help you take care of your clients too. Whether you’re reengaging old leads or simply appreciating the people valuable to your company, the more you use SwagUp, the easier your swag projects become. So here’s to keeping up strong relationships. Sometimes all it takes is a nice note and their favorite snack.

7. Store your extra swag in the SwagUp warehouse until you need it.

Oh boy. The stories we’ve heard from you guys — swag in car trunks, all over the kitchen table, blocking off the spare bedroom. After all that time spent on making some seriously awesome swag, you’d probably like to avoid any “accidents” with pets and toddlers. Also, shipping from the post office is an activity no one puts at the top of their “things I want to do on Saturday morning” list.

Let us help. We’ll hold onto your swag until you’re ready to ship. Added bonus: you get live inventory counts direct in your dashboard. Ship, reorder, whatever. Do it on your schedule.

8. Painless rebranding for your team and customers.

A rebrand is a critical moment for your company and its identity. With all the things to get right, the last thing you want is to stress over swag. That's why we're here. With SwagUp, you can easily design, build, pack, store, ship, and automate swag in a way that makes sense. It's just one less thing to worry about. 

Work with our Swag Experts to discover the best swag for your rebranding needs. You'll get a free mockup within 24 hours, and a team of professionals ready to assist, so you can focus on the big wins.

9. Always have swag on-hand for your team to gift to valuable clients.

Understatement of the day: inventory management is a P.I.T.A. That's why we do it for you. With your SwagUp dashboard, you won't ever miss when you're running low on swag. Not only will you have the choice to restock the swag you want in a click, but you'll also be able to instantly ship company swag to your contacts at a moment's notice. Live inventory updates and tracking are just a few of the benefits you'll get with a SwagUp dashboard account. Schedule a demo with us today to learn more.

10. Boost team morale, and show company pride!

This one's pretty straightforward — get some branded mugs or t-shirts in the office and watch the atmosphere change before your eyes (we really like the Next Level Triblend Unisex Tee). Company swag can help new hires feel like part of the team on their first day as they see their co-workers wearing the same t-shirt and using the same mugs around the office. As they say: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." Your team matters; help them feel it!

11. Give them 24/7 access to the latest company swag with a virtual swag shop, and points to shop with for friends and family!

There's more than one way to do this, but if your first thought was gifting swag, you might be interested to know that it's not the only way (and sometimes, not even the best way.) Instead of choosing the swag, why not give them the choice? 

Set up a swag shop for your company, complete with a curated catalog specific to your company's brand, and you'll be able to empower your employees and best customers to pick the swag rewards they want. You can offer credits for employees, or simply make it an option for employees to shop in themselves. Contact a Swag Expert to learn more today.

12. Create swag that aligns with your company values.

We're a team that believes in innovation and going “to the moon.” We take pride in our work, and care about the people we work with. That means you! This is what makes us different from other swag companies, and we think you will see the difference in the products we select for our catalog — each is an item we believe will delight.

We know the swag you choose is a reflection of your company. That's why you'll find quality at any budget, fun and interesting products that satisfy the latest trend, and crucial efforts like sustainable and eco-friendly options. We're SwagUp, and we've mastered swag packs, so you don't have to. Get started with yours today!