Swag Success: Why Top Supporters Deserve the Best

Meet BurnRate

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
— Mike Tyson

That’s life. Except what if instead of freezing up, you not only knew how to take the hit but also how to quickly adjust course?

BurnRate helps its users “stay agile in the face of uncertainty and plan for multiple scenarios without the hidden mistakes of spreadsheets.”

All of this is critical for controlling costs and scaling at the right place. Robert McLaws, co-founder and CEO of BurnRate, explains, “If you can figure out what your plan is, understand how you need to hire to meet that plan, or if you even need to hire at all but do it in just a few minutes, then you can do it more frequently. And with everything going on in the world these days, that’s even more important than ever.” 

But BurnRate knows a complex, quality product can take a bit of buy-in. 

“We were looking for a welcome kit for new customers. Our product is not cheap, especially with our early adopters, we know that they're taking a risk with their hard-earned capital on us. Building a strong brand connection early on is really important for helping welcome them to the family. We want them to consider us as an extended part of their team,” says Robert. 

The swag customers deserve

“I had experience with getting great swag from a company called Auth0, and they were using another swag vendor. They put us in touch with that vendor, but that vendor was unresponsive,” says Robert.

“The experience was not very cohesive. And the website felt very 1997. Very small text. Not designed to bring you joy sending your first swag to customers. It was like picking out a few things, and maybe we'll customize something for you. It was not well put together.”

Then Robert stumbled upon SwagUp. It didn’t take long to realize he was onto something. “It was very clear, being able to get this sample pack... just that anticipation was fun. And then getting it and seeing the quality of the box, and the quality of the products, and being able to identify which products in the catalog to put in our own pack. The process was great.”

“We just did our first trigger for shipments in the last 24 hours, so that was exciting. Having access to SwagUp API and being able to do what we need to with it, integrating it with our backend systems, it’s powerful.”
— Robert, CEO, and Co-Founder at BurnRate

“We iterated through some things and submitted our logos. The SwagUp team got back to us, and then our designers kind of ping-ponged off of that, and came up with some stuff together that we're really happy with.”

BurnRate’s handcrafted welcome kits automatically ship out to new customers once they sign up. “We use qwilr.com for our proposals, and that's integrated directly with Salesforce. Then we're doing some stuff with our own APIs to upload those customers directly to SwagUp, and then approve sending a pack to our paid customers,” Robert says.

The verdict?

Full speed ahead. “I'm of the belief that design is everything,” Robert says, “And I've seen that in action. Our app has had an evolving design, starting from what I built myself, and people just didn't get it… until my co-founder Ben evolved it into the amazing design we have today. Then it started clicking for people and making sense. So I know how important that is.”

“We’re incredibly impressed with the quality that was apparent from the second we stepped on the website throughout the entire process. We had expected the embossed binders to be more expensive. And the shirts we expected to be more expensive. So the fact that you were able to get us decent rates even at a low initial order quantity - we wanted to be conservative about our spend - was very, very reasonable. And we're extremely pleased with the quality at the product price.”

About to start your own swag project? Robert has a tip for you: “I'm always thinking about ways to automate [and] it was a discovered process, in that it wasn't necessarily clear we would need to think about warehousing, and after we put the package together, it's kind of like, Oh, yeah, right, we need to store this stuff. So that became really neat when we saw that it was available on the website. I think there's a time-cost savings around the process because your team worked very quickly, and that saved us indirectly a lot of money.”

At SwagUp, we believe in embracing discomfort and eliminating the unnecessary. We’re excited to partner with BurnRate in their mission to help companies scale smarter. If you’re tired of not knowing which of the multiple spreadsheets floating around is the current model for your team, BurnRate is the secret weapon you’re looking for. Did BurnRate’s story resonate with you? Want to welcome your most valuable customers into the fold? Get help from a Swag Expert!

“SwagUp shows a level of thought and consideration that made me really confident you are going to build me something quality for my customers. At this point, I couldn’t even dream of working with anyone else.”
— Robert, CEO and Co-Founder at BurnRate