How to Send Swag From Home and Tips On What You Should Know Before Sending
In this article
Why should you send swag?
With restrictions on traveling and even something as simple as going into the office or having dinners with clients, the need for genuine engagement that people appreciate is higher - and more difficult - than ever.
So here you are, struggling to find creative ways to engage and humanize your virtual interactions. Don’t despair. Branded swag is one of the best ways to engage with clients and employees while working remotely!
If you are thinking about sending swag to employees, you might be wondering: is it really worth it? Swag is understandably difficult to measure the ROI of. Most people who have used swag know anecdotally how it has impacted the team, the company, and their community. They know, for instance, that a new hire felt like their new team really cared about welcoming them — even if they were on the other side of the world and never met them in person. (Pro tip: personalized insert cards are a great way to boost the thoughtfulness of any swag pack.)
So while you don’t see an immediate ROI, you will see that providing swag for onboarding new hires and other special moments like milestones and anniversaries go a long way. Studies from Harvard research suggest that giving employees swag is even better than a cash bonus.
While sending swag to employees can have a positive effect, so can sending swag to clients for corporate gifting. It creates a memorable experience and allows your brand to stand apart from the competition. Making that initial investment to onboard clients or to simply say thank you for the business can boost your ROI and get you some referrals along the way.
Companies like SmartBug, an Inbound Marketing Agency, provide clients with an onboarding kit when they sign up for their services. When they launched this onboarding program they saw clients really felt like they made the right choice signing with SmartBug for they were willing to provide value before even getting started on their service.
How should I send a branded swag from home?
Sending swag from home might seem like doing the impossible. You have to think about who’s going to design the items, what products should you pick, how do you handle sizing, who’s going to assemble these items? The list goes on. We breakdown all the questions and best practices for sending swag from home.
Creating branded swag should be fun! Selecting from top products and how they should look and feel is the exciting part of this process.
We have a few tips on making sure you are making the right choice.
5 Tips on what you should know about sending swag from home
- Select items that reflect your brand’s voice and culture. If you have a company culture that is very techy then selecting quality swag that offers that would be a hit with the folks receiving it. Companies like LunchBox do an excellent job of creating brand swag that not only looks similar to their website but the messaging on each product really conveys the brand's tone and culture. People’s response to their swag has been extremely positive since it mirrors what they stand for.
- Select items that travel well. One of the most common mistakes some people make is selecting items that don’t travel very well or aren’t accepted for international travel. For example, there are some travel restrictions on tech products that have batteries. So be sure to ask if there are any additional shipping fees for tech items! If it’s too costly for your budget, you’ll get more value per dollar selecting something else. The same thing goes for certain types of branded mugs. If you love the idea of shipping a ceramic mug, just be sure you buy additional packaging to protect it while in transit. The last thing you want is someone receiving a mug that is broken 😕
- If sending apparel, try to figure out sizing ahead of time. Take it from us (and past clients): hunting down people for their shirt sizes is not something you want to do last minute. We suggest getting a head start on collecting sizing if you are looking to send some branded Bella Canvas tees. There are a few ways you can go about sending swag that includes sizing,
- Forget about collecting sizes and send everyone a Large. This is simple and hassle-free but you run the risk of sending someone a shirt that doesn’t fit them and may not end up using.
- Another way to avoid selecting sizes is by using a standard distribution of sizes. Pro tip: If you select this option make sure to order 3% extra shirts in case someone needs to swag sizes or if the sizes didn’t exactly line up. You can adjust this standard distribution if you know your audience really well. For example, if you have mainly female recipients, ordering more smalls and mediums would probably work better than ordering more larges. So feel free to adjust this suggested standard sizing to what you feel fits best for your team.
- Redeem pages by SwagUp! Have a branded landing page set up for you to send to recipients to fill out their address and shirt size. This works great since you can avoid having to do the heavy lifting of collecting sizes and addresses.
- If you are shipping international, plan ahead to avoid delays with customs. We see it happen so often where clients want to send swag right away to recipients without taking into consideration that international shipments will take longer. If you have a set date you want people to receive swag by, keep in mind swag for international shipments can take 7-10 business days. It’s also required to have the receipt ants phone number in case customs call them to confirm shipment. Also, keep in mind some countries have some really strict customs.
Countries to look out for…
India - Requires recipients to fill out KYC forms in advance to confirm they are receiving the swag pack. So if you were planning on surprising someone with a gift, you would have to let them know you are sending swag and have them fill out a form. Customs will contact them to confirm they are receiving shipments. Our SwagUp Redeem pages can help with supplying the forms to anyone who addresses is from India to give them the heads up to fill out the form to avoid any shipment delays. It also helps to make the experience of knowing about their little surprise more personal.
Brazil - While you don’t need recipients to fill out any forms to ship to Brazil, they do have one of the highest import taxes from any other country. Taxes can be as high as 150%. So be prepared to budget a little extra for shipments going here.
Russia & Cuba - No shipment zones for both of these countries. If you plan on shipping swag from the US to these countries, they are simply not permitted.
5. Make it easy for yourself to create, assemble, and ship swag all in one place. If you are planning to ship swag while working remotely, the SwagUp platform allows you to create swag from the comfort of your home without having to leave the couch. Get the help you need every step of the way without having to stress about assembling swag in your living room or turning your garage into a storage facility for swag.
Other platforms that integrate nicely with SwagUp
- Postal.io - a platform designed for direct mail campaigns as scale. Use Postal to manage your marketing and sales campaigns while using SwagUp to do the heavy lifting.
- Shopify - If you are launching a swag shop for clients or employees, you can easily add your SwagUp account to handling sending out branded swag without having to do anything. Simply create your swag on the SwagUp dashboard and sync the products to your Shopify account.
- Rippling - Perfect all in one platform for HR managers. Rippling helps you automate the onboarding process easily from selecting the laptop someone needs to sending swag right away with the SwagUp x Rippling integration.
- Zapier - If you are using another platform like Hubspot or Salesforce, you can plug in your SwagUp account to those platforms using Zapier.
🔥 OTHER BLOGS YOU MIGHT LIKE:
12 Ways to Utilize Swag with your Remote Team
How to Use Swag to Humanize Your Virtual Conference Campaigns
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