The Future of Gifting is AI Enhanced
Kris Rudeegraap, Co-CEO, Sendoso, shares about the future of gifting and the role of AI.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios.
Today, I'm joined by special guest Chris, how are you?
>> I'm doing awesome, and thanks for having me on the show.
>> Yeah, excited to chat with you today.
Our show is always brought to you by our friends at Qualified.
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Let's get into it today, Chris.
>> Let's do it.
>> Huge news.
Huge news.
Sendoso made a massive acquisition of Alice,
two of the titans in the space,
joining forces super exciting.
Tell us about it.
>> Yeah. We were really excited about
the opportunity to join forces with Alice and bring them on.
I think they have an awesome customer base,
some really interesting AI tech and
data that will really help us propel our AI strategy forward.
That was one of the big drivers,
aside from consolidating the space so that customers have less choices,
making it easier for customers to find the best solution,
and aside from the fact that the more spend and volume we have through our
platform,
the more economies of scale and discounts,
we can pass along back to our customers.
But the big exciting thing for me was the data and an AI and how the future
of gifting is really AI enhanced and a lot of data is taken into account to
figure out
what's the right thing to send to the right person at the right time,
with the right message.
The Alice acquisition gives us a lot more data.
>> How do you see this all changing?
How do you see gifting changing?
What are you so excited about?
>> Yeah, I see gifting being even
a more effective channel compared to other channels because I think AI and data
can really drive more conversions.
I think for other channels historically ads, etc.,
there's been a lot of AI influence over the years.
Google and Facebook, they've had AI for decades.
But now, and how fast AI is coming around for other channels,
I think gifting will just see a surge in usage because it can drive that much
more conversion
and that much more efficacy.
>> Yeah, one of the things that you posted about is $37 billion wasted
on ads that fill to reach target audiences, obviously with gifting,
it's completely different there.
And like you said, with AI being able to help,
how do you think that part of it changes?
Are we going to be able to reach people with better gifts,
with better information to reach the right people,
to see if the gifts are working?
I was talking about a great gift
because we had the CMO of TheraBody on here talking about the TheraGUN.
I was like, that would be a great gift.
You send the TheraGUNs with Sendoso, right?
And it sits in your office all day every day and you're sitting there cranking
on those tech shoulders that we all have.
But those sort of things, part of the beauty of gifting is the plant
that sits in someone's office, the TheraGUN, whatever it is that this thing
is doing impression after impression after impression.
And we don't know that, right?
And we can't prove that.
So how does that sort of change?
Yeah, so I think there's a couple of questions in there,
kind of dissecting a couple of different ways.
One is how AI can affect kind of the right, what is the right gift to send?
And so I think the plethora of data that we're sitting on from tens of millions
of sends
and what we're having access to through a lot of really interesting data
that we've built from kind of AI, but also through kind of data that's
available
through third party enrichments.
We'll be able to say, hey, does Chris like golfing or does Chris like tennis or
does this?
And so there's interest graph that we've built that will really help decide, OK
Chris gets this, it's going to resonate with him more.
Then it's like, OK, where's the best place to send it?
Is it his house?
Is it office?
So we can use data for that.
We can say the timing.
Is it good to send it today for this prospect?
Or do we think that timing when they just went to your website,
or if you're pricing page and we want to trigger that.
So there's different reasons why you want to have timing be important.
The message.
So we've launched last year a gift message writer, either the eGift message
or the handwritten note message.
And so now we can craft a better message than say an SDR can write by using AI.
And I think writing is a key area there.
So all that will make it easier to get kind of a great gift to the right person
And drive better results.
And I think the one thing that is important with the gifting channel
is that there is inherent costs.
So it reduces the saturation of that channel.
For things like email, if you send one email or 10 emails or 10,000 emails,
relatively costs are not your concern.
So people end up sending 10 gazillion emails.
With gifting, you're a bit more thoughtful and a bit more personalized.
And that means less saturation.
Yeah, I would add to that.
However, when those people hire an army of SDRs that are sending all those
emails,
then that email that they said was so cheap actually ends up being extremely
expensive.
That's very fair.
And I think we're seeing the shift to away from massive SDR armies to more
marketing,
orchestrated kind of growth outbound efforts.
At least that's what we're doing over here at SEDISO too.
Oh, yeah, us too.
It's crazy.
I would never-- I mean, each company is totally different.
And not to say that SDRs are helpful and useful and sort of their purpose.
I would never build a team of SDRs for what we're doing at Caspian
because it's run by marketing.
That type of outreach is done by marketing.
With gifting, you do have a little bit of the sales rep that can control that,
which is really exciting to keep you doing that.
In that personalized conversation-- or just it's called a conversation.
It's not even a personalized conversation.
Figuring out what that person likes, oh, their kid really likes X, Y, or Z.
I think I can remember if I told you this story.
The one of the most memorable gifts I ever got was my account rep at our bank.
We bank with Chase.
And he sent me, when we-- the birth of my son, they sent a little package
and it had a children's toy.
And that ended up being one of my son's favorite toys.
And he played with this thing for like a year.
And every single time, I thought of my guy at Chase, which again,
Chase, massive company, all sorts of infinite resources in certain ways.
And this guy made that decision in real time.
And it made a pretty big impact on me.
And that's the sort of stuff that, having the power there, but also, like you
said,
having the power on the marketing team to be able to look at the data, to look
at trends,
look at when to send it, those type of trigger moments in the sales process,
not just in the person's life process.
Yeah.
And then I think it's bleeding over, especially the last couple of years,
into the customer process and how customer marketers and customer success
and account management leaders are looking at how do they use gifting
during the whole customer lifecycle post sales, which I think is an interesting
use case,
because you're trying to build that rapport with those customers too.
Yeah, we were talking on an episode about customer storytelling
and how everybody always wants to tell the story at the peak of the excitement
phases of like, after one year, once you got ROI or like right after signing
the deals,
like why we bought and I'm like, I want day 58 of implementation when it's
horrible.
You know, when everyone hates it, they're not used to using the tool yet.
They're pissed that they have another tool, like, tell me those stories.
And like, that's when I want the gift to show up.
You know what I mean?
Like, I want it that day.
That's a really funny idea.
I think so.
Peak, peak unhappiness with new product, customer lifecycle.
That's the key there.
No, I totally agree.
And then I want to touch on something that you said sort of like ways to stand
out.
This is the part that I think far and away I love the most about, about gifting
from
a marketing perspective is, you know, there is no traffic on the extra mile.
It's one of the things we believe it casts me and that's why like the shows
that we
create are as different as we could possibly try to make them.
And sometimes that costs more money.
Sometimes, you know, it feels different, but like gifting is very much that way
where
it's like, there are tons of barriers to entry.
There's, and then even if you do it, you can do it really wrong.
So there's even more barriers to entry.
And that's why I think marketers should be investing in gifting.
It's like, it is such a way to stand out and it's such a way to win.
And because it's a little bit more expensive, your competitors might be
overlooking it.
Exactly.
It's still unsaturated and still untapped.
Yeah.
And like, I think that, and I'm curious to what you think here.
You've heard some outspoken, I think specifically like CIOs and CMOs over the
years post on LinkedIn
and be like, I don't need another blank.
I think that those are like the point one percent of people.
Yes.
Right.
So, you know, I think there's a lot of controversial decisions.
It's like, you know, people just like to create, you know, a frenzy on LinkedIn
just to, you
know, click bait, so to speak.
And I do think that there is a world where, you know, there's smarter gifting
with AI that's
going to reduce some of that.
But then there's also a lot of people that's, you know, if you get the right
gift to them,
you don't have to go to a donation to charity or another hundred bucks to
Amazon to buy
some stuff for the household.
So there's, you know, there's infinite reasons why there's more things that you
need.
And then I think it's also the gifting experience around it.
I think if you're doing, like you said, you could do this wrong.
And if you're just throwing over a Hail Mary gift, no follow-up, no
customization, like
it comes across maybe it fails to come across well.
But if you're thoughtful in what you send, thoughtful in the message,
thoughtful in your
pre and post follow-up, it can land well regardless of what you send.
Right.
You know, you give the bottle of booze to somebody who doesn't drink or, you
know, you give,
give the socks to somebody who will need more sandals, you know.
I send it, send the Patagonia to the person who lives in the desert, you know
what I mean?
Oh, I guess deserts get pretty cold.
So maybe that's still a good gift.
But about what to send, you know, I think one of the things that's probably
pretty exciting
for you of seeing, you know, getting all the data points of like all the things
that Alice
has been sending, all the things that you have been sending, you know,
combining those things
together, how do we get into like what really drives the needle for people?
Like, you know, you can imagine the Stanley Cup being something that's probably
extremely
hot right now.
Anything that's on sort of like the gift guide, you know, I mentioned something
like
the Theragon, you know, these type of potentially like slightly higher ticket
items that people
don't necessarily want to splurge on for themselves.
You know, how do you think about sort of like the trends and what to send to
really like
surprise and delight people?
Yeah, we look at it a couple of ways.
We look at what can we target the specific individual that like Chris likes
golf, has
a dog, has a baby likes tequila.
We have an interest graph of what Chris likes so we can send something very
specific to
him.
Or we can take it one step bigger and say, hey, a CEO in tech in the San
Francisco Bay
area who's, you know, mid 30s, what would he like?
And or we can take that even farther out too.
So there's different levels of personalization based on different data that
were privy to.
We also have like the ability to offer up like a choice experience where you
can trade in.
And that also really helps our algorithms and our data sets too because we can
let the
end user select what they want.
And then it gives us what are the other things they don't want.
So there's some really interesting ways to help get the person the right thing.
There's also, you know, not always a personal gift is the best thing to send to
Yeah.
It would be something more like branded swag that, you know, you have an
affinity towards
the company or you've been a long time customer.
You just renewed for the third time.
And I don't, you know, maybe it's not sending just a random bottle to kilo, but
it's sending
some really cool new hat.
And so there's some different areas where actually it doesn't always need to be
personal.
There's also reasons to send, you know, someone's browsing a blog post on your
website or listen
to a podcast.
Maybe you either send them like a really high end printed version of that or
maybe you send
them like some, some air pods with, you know, with some note around, hey,
listen to more
of our podcasts.
Here's a, and so you can really tie it into where that buyer or customer is in
their,
in their journey.
You can tie it into intent data that you're seeing and how they're interacting
with your
brand, you can tie it into, you know, time of year or sports teams or other aff
inities,
things that are happening live in real time and current events.
I think the beauty of it is it's just endless creativity.
And for marketers, creativity can be a secret weapon.
If you're good at it and, you know, we're kind of like a creativity platform in
itself.
Yeah, I love that.
And I love that you can help with the creativity piece, right?
Yes.
It's like, I think a lot of people, you know, struggle for that.
And I think that a lot of people struggle because, you know, it's, it's, you
know, indecision
by, by too many decisions, right?
It's like, well, how am I going to send something that's, that's personalizing
cool.
You know, you always hear of the, the quarterback who buys their entire
offensive line, you
know, like go karts or something like that, or, you know, uh, now the idea that
they all
have it is exciting, right?
It's like, that's part of the part of the joy of it is like, did the
quarterback pull
each of them be like, do you want to go kart?
You know, they're like, yeah, this is something that they thought is cool.
You know, to say thank you or whatever.
I think that there needs to be a little bit more of that in terms of gifting
where it's
like giving someone like an entire team or something like that, something that
's, uh,
you all get one or it's all sort of a shared experience.
I think that there's, there's a lot of value there.
I don't know if you've ever seen, you know, stuff like that or anything that
shows you.
There's, we definitely see more group gifting.
Um, that, uh, that was really popular too when people were back in the office
because it was
really easy to say, Hey, the buying, there's, you know, eight people in the
buying community,
or, you know, half of them are in this office, half of them are in this office,
let's send
them something.
We also see like shareables like sending cupcakes can be good.
We've even seen some customers use some creativity where if you want to send a
group gift, you
send one person like a locked box and the other person like the key to get in
and then
inside the box is like the gifts that they can share.
Um, so that's a really, some really interesting ways.
And then experiences too, is another area that you can use our platform on and
you can,
you know, have a whiskey tasting experience, send everyone through our platform
some whiskey
or some custom whiskey glasses.
And then there's a team of eight that are all kind of chit chatting around like
a kind
of a virtual experience.
And there's, you know, hundreds or thousands of these experiences that we've,
uh, we can
offer up and that's, uh, can be a good supplement and complimentary to like a
field event where
you want to, uh, maybe you don't want to go in the field, but you want to host
these more
frequently with a couple of customers or, you know, if you have a vibrant
community or
advocacy group or even if it's just a larger buying committee and you just don
't, instead
of doing a, you know, another demo, it's like, Hey, let's introduce a more
interesting experience
to this, uh, that'll be memorable and win over the buying committee.
Yeah.
I mean, I love the adage that your, your, your buying process is your brand,
right?
Yes.
That's, that's, quotes, gold.
Yeah.
No, I, I think about it all the time.
I mean, it's like how they're buying your product is and really, you know, your
whole
customer journey, but like, uh, you know, if your implementation sucks, then,
then,
you know, that's not great, but, uh, but you know, the, the, as soon as the
sales are up
closes the deal and they're like, see you later, you know, that's not great,
but, um,
but I really feel like that that buying process is that way.
And I think that gifting just shows that people care, like they show that they
're trying
to win your business that shows that, that you do matter to them outside of,
you know,
this other stuff.
And like you're using the corporate budget to support them personally.
Like I think that like buying technology is incredibly personal.
You know, you hear lots of people talk about it's, you know, human to human
selling.
And it's super true.
Yeah.
It's like at the end of the day, people.
Yeah.
And the person staking their career on this purchase, it's not their entire
career on the
purchase of a software, but it is like a percentage, right?
It is like a 3% chance.
And if they screw up, you know, 20, 20 software purchases, um, you know, for 3%
then they
might get fired, you know, but if they only buy four in the course of a year,
like it
could be a big, you know, impact if, if they don't do it.
Now I, I had, I had someone who is, uh, we're working on a podcast together.
And he was like, if this doesn't go well, I'm not getting fired, but like also
it is
pretty high profile, you know, and I think that that's like one of the things
that I
think we just forget about.
And so sending someone a gift, like, Hey, thank you for, you know, sticking
with me
to this process and like being a champion and, and trying to convince everyone
else,
say your company that you, that you should buy this stuff.
I think it's a worthwhile pursuit.
Totally.
And I loved your quote of your buying process as your brand.
Like, and that's a way to differentiate, uh, in a competitive market where
there's similar
looking solutions or similar looking software, the buying process can make or
break it.
So.
Yeah.
And, and I think too, that it's really exciting about all the AIPs.
And I think the other piece of this is sort of, you know, what we were talking
about with
the, the sales rep stuff, um, which is obviously there's all these tools for
listening now.
There's tools to pick up, you know, different things about people, uh, about,
you know, things
that, that mentioned in, in the conversation, uh, you know, whether or not they
have, you
know, a family or where they live or something that's, you know, these, these
little things
that the data can pick up in those type of conversations and they can, you know
, link
into something that raised the fight.
So like, Hey, you know, they mentioned that it was really cold on three calls
because
they live somewhere cold, like maybe we should send them a hat, you know, or
whatever.
Like that's where I think, um, blending those tools together and those types of
integrations
of the different technologies for, for go to market, I think, start to get
pretty exciting
from, for large scale teams.
Yeah.
I mean, like again, it shows that you listen and shows that you care shows that
you're
not just trying to have a transactional sale, but you know, they mentioned
something to
personally or the, you know, they talked about a sports team.
They talked about a trip.
They're excited to go on.
They talked about something like that.
And that's relatable.
And then it's just another talking point for the next time you talk to them, uh
, where you
can bring up what you just sent them.
And it's just again, building rapport, building relationships, people buy from
people and,
uh, especially in a noisy competitive environment.
So where the heck does this stuff live in a marketing budget?
You know, we always talk about sort of, you know, your, your uncuttable budget
items and
yeah.
And this idea of like, where should this even live?
Are we someday going to have like a head of gifting that's on your, on your
marketing
team?
Like where, where should this, uh, be sitting?
And, you know, if it's in customer success, if it's in demand, Jen, if it's in
some of
these places, like, and if it's everywhere, you know, and even our HR teams,
you know,
obviously send stuff as well, uh, that kind of makes it pretty confusing that
nobody owns
it.
And then where do you put it in the budget?
Right.
Yeah.
We, uh, so we usually see, uh, a few different teams in marketing will own it.
Um, it could be field marketing and this is sometimes dependent on if field
marketing
is enabling sales reps, so they are going to own this kind of tool that crosses
the chasm
for marketing and the sales and vice versa.
Uh, we see demand, Jen, which, uh, in some cases will have like ABM roll into
them.
Um, and so then they will, uh, share the ownership.
Um, those are kind of the more common ones.
Uh, for some, uh, larger companies that we've seen, they have like campaign
teams that want
to own this, um, some companies will want to take a more data first approach
and a more
automation first approach in marketing ops owns it.
So, um, I think the good news is for us is we can, uh, we could find and sell
into a
variety of different personas.
Um, you know, it's just, it's not perfectly cookie cutter.
In some cases, sales won't still raise their hand and leave the charge and you
'll find
budget for it.
Like you said, CX and HR, but, um, yeah, there's usually a few people in
marketing that
are, uh, that are usually doing something like this either manually or have
tested something
manually and want to scale it out.
So, um, you know, it's, I'd say it's not like we're like the brand newest thing
that
they've never heard of.
It's like they know this works or they've tried it before, they want to try it
more and
they just need to scale it out.
They need to use software to be more effective.
They need to use software to track it better.
They want to use access to our global marketplace for, for a reduced effort for
shipping or
reduced costs for kind of our economies of scale.
So, uh, yeah, I think that bodes well for us to be able to kind of do a lot of
good discovery
within which teams are really feeling the pain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that that's one of the things that's pretty challenging about gifting
is it's
not clear, you know, what percentage of your budget, your marketing budget
should be gifting.
Right.
And it's like, if it were to just say, Hey, we're going to have it live in, in
marketing.
And maybe, you know, it's executed by sales, but it's like, you know, a
marketing budget
line item or, you know, however you want to do it.
It's like, you know, whatever, 2% of your marketing budget needs to go towards
gifting.
And then you can be creative in how you do that.
Like, you know, maybe you send, you know, one big gift, you know, to your, to
your top,
you know, 50 key accounts, or maybe it's something smaller to, you know, your
top 500
or whatever your sort of strategy is, um, that sort of nest into your, your
existing marketing
strategy. But it seems like that that would make sense, uh, to be able to have
something
like a little bit more rigid to say, like, Hey, this is like part of our go to
market.
You know, that we want to, we want to lead with this type of an initiative or
follow up
with this type of initiative or have it sit in a very specific part of our, you
know,
of our playbook.
Yeah.
You're used to your thoughts.
We do see, uh, we do see some companies have gifting, uh, budgets, line items.
Some have had have direct mail and we kind of fall under this direct mail
budget, which
has been, you know, around forever and people know what direct mail is.
So oftentimes there's a line item for direct mail, um, or they're creating, you
know,
new line items and, and, um, I think that's also helpful.
And then one of the recent trends we're seeing actually is kind of existing, uh
, kind of
legacy channels like a, uh, you know, someone's running ads and they want to,
uh, like digital
ads and, and they want to put a, you know, a Yeti mug in their ad to entice the
, the
click or the, uh, the view.
Um, and so we're seeing that within ads, within, uh, content, uh, incentives.
So download this white paper or case study and we'll send you a $25 Starbucks
card, attend
this webinar and get this.
So it's actually like, uh, existing field and webinar channels, existing ad, uh
, channels,
existing content channels are all able to say, Hey, we can drive better results
We can drive more conversions if we use gifting, uh, incentives or, or gifting,
um, kind of
thank yous.
Um, and so we're seeing that's the sprinkled across different marketing teams.
Yeah.
And this is why I think it's so complex and like where there's complexity,
there's opportunity
for marketers because it's like to me and obviously there's completely
different place,
right?
I think doing $100 demos, which, you know, we had, uh, Jason, what a, uh, like
a year
ago on the podcast talking about how they ran a really sophisticated demo, uh,
you know,
pay demo strategy that worked really well.
Um, that's like one part of like quote unquote gifting, right?
And then, you know, sending someone a plant that sits on their desk is like a
completely
other tactic within the same sort of, you know, overall strategy, which should
probably nest
into an overall strategy, which is like, Hey, we want to get a meaningful touch
on every
single prospect that's in pipeline, you know, within a, uh, every month within
a year or
what, you know, whatever it is.
Um, but they're so different, right?
Yeah.
And I think that's where like why we've seen such a rapid rise and success over
the last
like eight years is that software can really help kind of, uh, manage all of
those kind
of coexisting campaigns so that you can track back to your CRM or your
marketing animation
tools, all the different campaigns that we touch or that gifting touches.
You can also have different funding sources and different budget line items and
even tying
back to different POs for some of these different sends.
And so there's a lot of complexity in the, the budgeting, the funding, the
reporting on
all of that so that you don't just have this like, you know, one pool of money
that says,
Hey, this is our gift budget, but then it's actually like, well, it's
influencing all
these other channels.
So we want to track it all separately and they all have separate budgets.
So how do we, you know, intertwine, but not intermingle and commingle these
funds?
So I think, uh, it's where like doing it on your own without software becomes
an I-Mare.
It really is an I-Mare.
And then the pool of monies, the, uh, you're not comparing apples to apples,
right?
Exactly.
Which is the hard part.
And then you're like, well, what did we spend all this money on swag for?
And you're like, you know, oh, actually all the swag that we sent was, you know
, we gave
people T-shirts, which like have our logo on them to people who wanted to do
demos of
our product.
Like, that's a net positive in two ways because they're wearing our logo on
their stomach.
I think that's where we've been able to take over the swag industry by storm
too.
And that, you know, his legacy swag companies have really been this like one
budget, no
software.
They send you some shirts to your office.
Maybe they've sophisticated a little bit more and will send directly to the
customer or
the prospect.
But again, if it's not tied to individual campaigns that are tracked back to
real contacts and
accounts and opportunities, it really creates a problem for marketers that want
that need
attribution reporting and that need to show the efficacy of one versus the
other or do
A/B testing.
All that is like critical for marketers, especially in a world where budgets
are tightened.
So you don't have unlimited budget.
You got to say, I only got, you know, eight million bucks a year to spend.
Where am I going to put it?
And how did it work last year so that I could invest in channels and strategies
that work
better?
So, you know, I only invest in marketing that is remarkable.
This is sort of like my personal marketing philosophy.
I like that.
So it's like you, you have to be a, it has to spur a conversation of some kind.
And the conversations that I get feedback on pretty, pretty commonly are like,
Hey, listen
your podcast.
I love it.
Hey, I read your newsletter and I love it.
Hey, I see you everywhere I'm linked in.
Hey, the shirt that you sent me, I wear all the time and it's the most comfy
shirt I've
ever worn.
Yeah.
All the time I hear that, which is great and fun.
But that piece of the swag thing, I think like somehow, somewhere along the way
, the
idea of sending people swag got like overdone or overblown or whatever to this
idea that
like it wasn't a good idea.
And every single time it makes me crack up because I'm like, this is someone
who is,
if they are a prospect that is actually wearing your gear, what do you think
the percentage
chance if they wear, you know, that shirt once every two weeks that they're
going to
buy your software someday?
I mean, like, could I get the date on that, you know?
Yeah.
Or if it's going to influence the people in their community, going out to
dinner, going
out to lunch, going to grab beers and you wear a hat or a jacket or a beanie.
If it's cold and you're going to a lodge and skiing, there's so much extra
value that
is impossible to quantify, but is intrinsic and known.
I kind of related in some cases to field marketing where, you know, I think
sometimes
field events get bad wraps because you're like, okay, I've tracked some of the
leads,
but I know more people saw our booth.
I know we had conversations that didn't get like logged in some system, but
there's just
ancillary benefits from showing up at events at times.
And I think that's a, you know, gifting swag can have that effect where it's,
you know,
there's more benefits than the direct attribution.
100% and like, you know, 13 impressions still equal sale, right?
And the quality of an impression when someone goes, hey, what's that shirt?
And you're like, oh, this, this vendor send it to me.
It's, you know, like, it's just really comfy shirt.
And they're like, oh, that's like, what do they do?
And then all of a sudden your prospect is explaining what your company does,
you know,
to another person, like how valuable is that?
I just think that there's so much opportunity in those sort of things because
there's like
outsized results.
Like when you pay $70 for a lead because you have been running a pay campaign
and you
got X amount of impressions and, you know, X amount of clicks and, you know,
whatever
and somebody raises their hand or whatever your numbers are.
And that's great.
But then it's that it stops working, you know, forever and always, right?
Like there's there's no way that that thing can grow.
Whereas when you give someone a gift and it creates a story that that story
will live
on in some form of format and it like might be one time that they tell one
person, but
it might be something where they tell people, you know, 20 times I had a sales
force, Patagonia,
like quarter zip that I must have wore like a thousand times, you know, like, I
'm like,
well, the other trend we see in swag, which I think is gives you even more long
lasting
longevity to is where you come up with, you know, more kind of creative, you
know, not
just your logo centered on the shirt, but, you know, like New Relic, like a
data nerd
shirt, like you like, you know, there was a lot of people, tens of thousands of
people
that just wanted the data nurtured and the logos on the sleeve.
But you know, the main shirt was like something you'd probably go and buy that
if you were,
you know, going to go shopping, you know, at the mall.
Or I think a lot of brands and a lot of companies have cool logos or mascots,
you know, like
yours, you know, you throw that on a shirt and that could actually be like
something you
go buy at a store.
So I think there's an opportunity for marketers to continue with creativity.
And this is one of the things we push from our campaign services team is you
don't just
have to like upload your logo and throw it on the center of the item, but maybe
you want
to create a brand or a new like line of, you know, a new line of clothing or a
new logo
that matches your logo, but in a different format.
And there's a lot of creativity that can go into that to provide longevity too.
So I did this back in the day, I was going to speak at a conference and I
wanted to make
shirts for our podcast.
And so I made a shirt that had, I just designed it on camp, I think, but it had
a kip from
Napoleon Dynamite.
And it said, you know, yeah, they downloaded my white paper.
We're getting pretty serious.
And I must have had 50 people that were like, can you tell me where to buy that
shirt?
And I was like, oh, it's not for sale.
I just made it for this event because I'm speaking at this event.
And like it was one of those like moments.
I'm like, why do I not have a store on our site that just sells this, you know?
Yeah.
Why not have it's like, why not have fun with your brand and fun with your,
your engaging
the ways that you're engaging with your prospects and customers?
Because you don't need to just run this boring playbook of, you know, boring
gift or a boring
logo.
And, you know, I think that's a perfect example of, of, you know, having fun
with it and creating
much more appeal and much more demand and much more awareness.
Yeah.
I had another one that, and I think it's important to tell all these stories on
, especially on
this podcast, but because they are memorable and like, I think I obsess about
this stuff
all the time.
So I think about it all the time, but we had, I went to an executive event with
the good
people at Pro-Core.
And one of the things that they sent was a letter board.
I've told this story before, but they sent a letter board and we had just found
out,
you know, that my wife was pregnant and it was during COVID and like we were,
we were,
you know, going to go buy a letter board so you can do all the, you know, fun
stuff when
you can just one month or, you know, all those things.
And we had this Pro-Core one.
So that was the one that we used for my son for the first like, year of his
birth is this
little Pro-Core, you know, letter board that literally had their logo on it.
And so, yeah, it's just, again, it's like they, how many people use that little
letter
board that they sent out?
Like, I might have been the only one, you know, but it made a difference on me.
And, and, and that's like, yes, there's waste and yes, there's other stuff and
obviously
you want to limit waste as much as you can.
But, but that was something really cool and special and like made a difference
for me,
like in my actual life and that's where gifting, I think, is at its best.
And it's serendipitous, right?
Like they didn't know, but like that's the thing.
Everything in marketing doesn't have to be, I intend it to be to do blank and
it has to
do that thing.
It's like, that's why events are great is because of serendipity.
It's like, I just ran into Chris.
I haven't seen him in years or I've never actually met him in person, but he's
been
on my podcast.
Like that's the sort of stuff that I think, you know, with that combined with
good marketing,
and I have like, outsized results.
100%.
All right.
Before we get out of here, we'd love to talk uncuttable budget items.
Where are y'all spending your money these days?
What type of marketing are you investing in?
Yeah.
So I think the, if I pick, where to pick a few, one is content is huge for us.
Thought leadership, I guess that boils into SEO, but just content is an uncut
table budget
item.
It's kind of our growth, our outbound growth operations motion, which I would
say is like
our evolved SDR function.
That is uncuttable.
And then, you know, we've got to give some love for some does zone gifting.
Love it.
Anything that y'all send that's been extra fun or any things that you've pushed
your
team on that has been especially cool.
I mean, we've just doubled down on this smart send feature that we released
recently, where
you can plug in a prospects email or it will give you like highly personalized
things that
you can send them using some AI.
So I think it's kind of a catch all that, you know, using AI and tech to
personalize.
And then that really drives the wow factor forward.
I love it.
Chris, before we get out of here, we'll do our final segment.
Quick hits.
Okay.
Your quick questions, quick answers just like how quickly qualified helps
companies generate
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Quick hits, Chris.
Are you ready?
Let's do it.
Number one, what's a hidden talent or skill that's not on your resume?
I'm like an Upwork master.
I love using Upwork and I love finding freelancers.
And so I think I've spent like a million bucks on Upwork.
It's like my hack that I tried to tell everyone in my company to do too.
We have to.
I've done the same thing.
It's crazy building a digitally first company and like the tools that you can
use to build
a company now.
And it's like all these things that it's just, it's just remarkable.
We found just so many, so many talented people on Upwork that end up becoming
employees,
which is fun.
I love it.
Do you have a favorite book podcast or TV show that you recommend?
I love my first million podcast.
It's my favorite.
Favorite non-marketing hobby that indirectly makes you a better marketer.
I love playing with Legos.
I'm building Lego sets of creativity.
I think going back to that as a marketer, you need to be creative.
So I'll go with Legos for that one.
If you weren't in marketing or business at all, what do you think you'd be
doing?
I would be.
So I would, I love marketing.
I love starting companies.
I'd be starting another company.
What's your advice for a best advice for a first time CEO?
I would say be data obsessed.
And final question here.
Do you have anything to plug?
Obviously, we talked a lot about send us.
So today everybody can go to sendos.com to learn more.
Yeah, any final thoughts, anything to plug?
I would say, well, we have a newer free product.
So you can sign up and get sending today for free without a subscription.
So if you're an individual listening to this or you want to test out something,
you can
get the gifting today.
So you can go to our website and click sign up for free.
So I'd say check that out.
And then the other thing is follow me on LinkedIn.
I'd be on LinkedIn and would love to connect and would love to have you read
more content
that I'm sharing.
Which by the way, I buried the lead here.
Casping sign up for the free product as soon as it came out and started using
it and it's
awesome.
So yeah, I highly recommend to go do that.
We sent some maternity gifts, send some meals to expecting mothers because
goodness gracious
that time you need as many as many meals as you could possibly get that you don
't have
to make.
Oh yeah.
Chris, wonderful having you on the show.
Great to finally chat long form on this after our short little snippet on
Pipeline Summit.
It's been great, you know, following along huge fans of Sendoso and congrats on
the outside
acquisition and everyone will be following along and try to fit gifting into
our budgets
if it's not already.
(drum beating)