How To Use Swag To Boost Employee Engagement And Customer Loyalty

Jeffro (00:00.974)
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. Today, I’m joined by Jeremy Parker, co-founder and CEO of swag.com. Jeremy has made it his mission to help businesses enhance their brand identity through high quality branded merchandise, whether they are a startup or an industry giant like Facebook, Google or Amazon. In this episode, we will explore how small businesses can use branded merchandise to create memorable connections with their customers, increase brand loyalty and make a bigger impact.

So if you’re ready to think beyond business cards and start building lasting brand impressions with quality swag, this episode is for you. Jeremy, welcome to the show.

Jeremy Parker (00:35.845)
Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.

Jeffro (00:37.711)
Yeah, I’m excited. And this is a topic that might be new for some small business owners, know, branded merchandise. So it begs the question, why should a small business even care about swag? You know, at what point in a business’s growth should they even consider it?

Jeremy Parker (00:51.217)
That’s good point. We find that we have so many different clients. We have from small shops to, obviously, Amazon and Google at this point buying swag. We work with about 20,000 companies that buy it, and a lot of them are small. They’re either small startups or they’re coffee shops, restaurants, all these different things. A lot of times, swag is used for internal employees. It’s really the person who started the business, maybe their co-founder, maybe their family investors, maybe some of their friends.

it builds this community and feeling proud of what you’re building. So a lot of times these smaller companies are not really doing it for external marketing. It’s really so they could wear every single day their products and be seen by people on a day day basis. You you’re, when you’re really early and you’re small and you’re starting out, you’re your best marketer. So having something on yourself at all times that really kind of showcases what you’re about is very important. And obviously as you get bigger, as you have a marketing budget,

You know, there’s all these different ways you can get customers and a lot of them are very expensive. So if you think about it, swag is a very economical way to get customers out there. It’s like very inexpensive in the scheme of things to give something some of some quality where they, you know, love it, they keep it, and then they ultimately become an evangelist for your brand. And they start shouting from the rooftops. But we we feel that, you know, swag is one of these just connectors. I think about this way. If you’re walking down the street.

and you see somebody wearing your favorite sports t-shirt, you’re gonna have this instant connection to that person. Otherwise, if you were not wearing that shirt, you would just walk by and it would be another day. And we find that if somebody’s wearing something or using something, it could bring people together and it’s not that expensive if you think about it and you do the math.

Jeffro (02:35.79)
Well, I love that you mentioned how it can be used internally as well, because that can really help create cohesion with your team to get people on board behind your mission and brand and really, you it’ll probably have you have fewer problems with your employees, right? You’ll have a better team if they’re, you know, on board of what you’re doing and feeling like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. So that’s great.

Jeremy Parker (02:41.563)
Yes.

Jeremy Parker (02:55.463)
Yeah, that’s exactly right. We always say in our own internal tagline is we made this. That’s the swag.com tagline. And really it’s not just about swag.com we made this as the t-shirts that we make. It’s for the person who puts the shirts on and they, you let’s say they work at Facebook and they’re putting a Facebook shirt on. We want them to feel like we made this. We were part of making Facebook. If you work for Netflix, we made this. We’re part of building Netflix. You know, if you’re part of the team, we really want you to feel that way.

Jeffro (03:22.837)
Yeah. And then you also mentioned, you know, once you have a marketing budget, obviously you can use that for outbound stuff and giving it to potential customers and things. What impact can, you know, well-designed, well-strategized swag choices have on a business’s kind of brand identity and even customer loyalty?

Jeremy Parker (03:41.905)
man, it’s immense. We work with thousands of marketing teams at this point and we built this whole inventory platform. So think of it as like an online swag closet. So Amazon, for example, could buy $10,000 worth of swag. We’ll warehouse it for them and then we’ll give them tools to individually distribute that swag to remote employees, keeping the company culture thriving, even when known as in the office or sending swag to their best leads or customers or all these different things. And they keep coming back.

For more, the reason for that is that when you send somebody a gift, they say it basically increases the likelihood that they’re gonna act by 10 times. So it’s really, it’s called account-based marketing, sending swag to get people to do what you want them to do or to show appreciation to them. And people really respond well to gifts. So giving them a gift, whether it’s branded or non-branded, really has an impact. So we just wanna make it really effortless to not only find what you’re looking for, design it, buy it, distribute it, warehouse it.

all from one central platform. we have companies that are five person, 10 person companies who are ordering 20, $30,000 for the Swaggy year because they’re using it as a marketing channel and they’re starting to see really great growth with this. It’s a real ROI marketing channel, if done right.

Jeffro (04:58.326)
Now, think depending on the type of business, you can more easily see an opportunity for how to use swag, right? If you’ve got a corner coffee shop, you can buy hats or aprons for your baristas, and you could even buy mugs and stuff with your logo on it for the customers to buy, right? That kind of makes sense. What about for service businesses? Obviously, you can buy them a t-shirt to wear on the job, but for customers and customer loyalty, what does that actually look like if you’re a roofing company or something like that?

Jeremy Parker (05:27.931)
Yeah, we do have a lot of roofing companies, frankly, that do it. And a lot of it is internal employees. So obviously that’s the, you want to keep everyone showing up at the houses when you’re doing the roofing, wearing the same thing. So it comes across as more professional. Swag is not just about marketing. It’s also about, you know, consistency of brand and keeping everything, you know, cohesive. So that’s one aspect. And then in terms of marketing, imagine a roofing company after you do the roof, you leave a swag box as a appreciation for being a great customer.

and that person might become an evangelist and wanna spread your name and get your name out there. We have brokers, real estate brokers, every time they sell a property, they give a bottle of wine as well as a Swag water bottle or something that will live in that home so that when future people come to the home and they see that logo, they could then get triggered, maybe I’ll use it if I’m selling my home. So it’s all about lasting an impression. And what’s good about Swag, especially Swag that’s high quality, obviously,

If you’re offering, if you’re buying swag that’s gonna be thrown away, it’s not gonna do any good. But buying swag that’s actually kept and of real value, it’s gonna be there, no one throws it away, it’s gonna be used to get a lot of impressions, and it’s gonna easily pay for itself.

Jeffro (06:39.542)
Yeah, that was going to be my next question because we’ve all seen those cheap trinkets at trade show booths and stuff. And most of it gets thrown away. So that quality aspect is really important because if it sticks around, it’s going to do its job for a lot longer.

Jeremy Parker (06:53.671)
When we started our business, that was the entire premise of building swag.com. There’s all these websites that offer that junk. We were going to all of our competitors’ websites and buying stuff directly from their site. was all of our initial capital was trying to learn what’s good, what’s not good, why does one website have a thousand mugs. A thousand mugs can’t be good. We found that about 99 % of the stuff that we were buying and testing just was garbage, which is obviously not going be good for the company.

It’s going to tarnish their brands. It’s the exact opposite intention. It’s not good for the environment. ends up in the trash. So our entire premise was, what if we just offer the curated selection of products that make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for and not showing them thousand mugs, show them the top 20 and the 20 that we’ve each tested and made sure that these are the best in comparison to what else is out there. The top 20 mugs, water bottles, pens, notebooks, umbrellas, everything, and really give a really curated experience, removes decision-making.

People don’t get paralyzed by choice, but they also know when they buy something from our site, they feel proud that it’s gonna be really quality and it’s something that we will be proud to show off. So we really wanted to take our design eye and make sure it’s stuff that people actually wanna keep.

Jeffro (08:04.757)
love that. Now what about for small businesses that have the smaller budget though? If some of these things are higher quality, they obviously are now in that give and take a little bit like, okay, maybe I can’t get as much, but I want it to be good. What should they keep in mind when they’re picking out these promotional products?

Jeremy Parker (08:22.311)
I think ultimately the thing is, you think the person who receives it is gonna love it? That’s it. So instead of giving somebody five things, buy them one thing. Make sure that one thing is gonna be actually kept. That’s what I always recommend. We did a deal with Facebook early on in our business, which was interesting. It taught me a lot. We did a really high-end backpack, like a $200 backpack, leather, beautiful backpack. And when I was talking to them, I was thinking…

Well, we put the Facebook logo on a beautiful backpack. It seems kind of a weird thing to put the logo on this beautiful leather ruined backpack. And what we decided on with the client is to print the logo on the inside of the backpack. So really the only person who actually sees the logo of Facebook would be if they actually opened the bag and they saw the logo. So it’s just for the person using it. It’s not to be a walking billboard for the brand. It was about the person receiving it, them feeling connected to Facebook, them seeing it every day when they open their bag.

and then ultimately they become closer and closer and closer to Facebook. And we’re seeing that trend really shift to be more about the person receiving it, less about the person receiving it becoming a billboard for the brand. like socks is a very popular product nowadays, even though it’s only person, you the person who receives is the one who’s actually seeing it. So things are shifting, but encompassing all of it, it’s really the quality standards just have to be really high.

That’s it, people are going away from buying all the tchotchkes and they’re saying instead of buying five tchotchke type products, let’s buy one or two really high quality products for that same budget.

Jeffro (09:49.833)
So it seems like there doesn’t have to be a direct connection behind the item that you choose and the services that you offer. What are your recommendations there for how you create a meaningful connection with the people who going to get the stuff?

Jeremy Parker (09:57.777)
Yeah, definitely.

Jeremy Parker (10:04.847)
Yeah, I just think about who are you giving it to? I mean, if you’re a roofing company, the person who you’re giving it to, whose home it is, they don’t really care about roofing, primarily. I they’re homeowners. So really try to understand the demo, who is your customer? Not exactly the service you provide, but who is the customer? And try to figure out products that would appeal to them. That’s really it. And every service business has different types of clientele.

You guys know your customers better than I know your customers, but try to understand what you think if you had to put yourself in the shoes of your client. By the way, there’s other ways you could do it. There’s things that make, you know, we have this giveaway functionality where you could buy swag and then create a giveaway page and it says to your recipients, hey, choose two of the five products, choose one of the five products. Give your recipients the ability to choose exactly what they want. So there’s all these different ways you could do this and you could learn, but I say ultimately you want to get

the right product for the right people. Because if it’s stuff that they would never use, they’re just gonna put it in their closet and forget about it. And then you’re not getting any value whatsoever. They’re not gonna see your logo, they’re not gonna get those impressions. Make it so it’s something that they would wear or use or visualize every day.

Jeffro (11:16.125)
Awesome. So when you’re using this for internal uses, your employees and stuff, obviously it’s kind of, you know the purpose is to build your brand and you know, the experience that the customer is getting. If you’re using this as more of a marketing outreach option and giving these away at a booth or something, is there any way to kind of track the effectiveness of the swag items? And I’m sure a lot of people focus on ROI for their marketing spend. So is that even possible?

Jeremy Parker (11:40.585)
It is possible, it’s not as easy. Obviously sometimes we have a swag.com, after you place your first order with us, there’s a little quick questionnaire, it says how’d you hear about us? It’s not foolproof, but oftentimes people do say, saw you at a trade show, or went to a conference and received one of your items. With swag.com, every t-shirt that we did, not every t-shirt, but there’s a lot of our most popular t-shirt is the swag.com t-shirt. So a lot of people buy the swag.com t-shirt,

and then every logo in the inside says Power by Swag.com. So when people buy 100 of them and give 100 away, because Swag is meant to be given away, that’s 100 new people who could become an evangelist or a potential customer. Or somebody gives a mug and we create the mug ourselves, it says Swag.com in the bottom of the thing. We have a lot of customers that our customers purchase from us, they give it away, and then we get new customers. It’s like a viral loop, if you will, for our business.

I’m sure a lot of people could do the same thing. They could really try track that and understand that or build like a widget, like a small pop-up to understand their customers and where they’re coming from.

Jeffro (12:43.89)
So what would you say to that business owner who’s like, don’t know if I should spend money on some of it. I don’t know if it’s really gonna actually be helping, know, month after month. Where’s the money going?

Jeremy Parker (12:53.243)
Yeah, I would say it’s the same thing with TV commercials. How are you really gonna know where they come from? Sometimes brand building and brand awareness is good and things don’t necessarily need to be trackable on a data perspective. Some of the best marketing that we’ve done at swag.com has not been trackable via data. It’s been brand awareness, getting the name out there, getting customers to market ourselves. And obviously there is ways to track it as well. So there’s different ways that you could do it. Also try to just think about it’s like,

If you’re gonna be buying your clients a gift, because a lot of people do that, it might as well have a custom aspect to it. Or if you buy somebody cookies, they’re gonna remember for that day, that was really nice of Jeff for getting me those cookies, and then you’re gonna forget about it. If you get them a cookie and a water bottle, they’re gonna appreciate it, and then they’re gonna see that water bottle of your logo every single day. So it’s gonna stay on their mind for longer, and ultimately they’ll remember you when they have to make decisions.

Jeffro (13:47.046)
Yeah, I think with a lot of marketing, some of the best stuff and PR too, it’s not directly trackable, but it leaves that lasting impact. So can you give us some examples of maybe some small businesses you’ve worked with that use branded merchandise to build longer term relationships with their customers, even if they’re not, you know, a household name or something.

Jeremy Parker (13:55.143)
Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Parker (14:07.143)
Yeah, mean, tons of restaurants. I’ve, we’ve, I 20,000 companies. We’ve had restaurants from Springbone in New York. I mean, there’s a lot of companies. And obviously at this point in my, I’ve been doing for nine years, don’t follow every single client of ours. know exactly who I’m trying to think myself back in the early days. I mean, we have small insurance companies. We do have roofing companies. We have painters. have, mean, there’s so many different types. We have trash companies. Like sometimes we get orders. We get about, you know,

Jeffro (14:20.808)
Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Parker (14:34.951)
150 or so orders a day and I’m looking, I’m like, I’ve never heard of this company and I look them up and it’s like a small shop in Memphis, Tennessee. It’s like a small kind of coffee house or a small restaurant or it doesn’t really matter. It’s every company wants it needs it whether they want to give it internally, they want to give it for free to their best customers, they want to sell it.

frankly because this is something that they can make a whole nother revenue stream. We have a Shopify integration for a lot of companies who want to buy swag warehouse with us and spin up a Shopify site. They could start buying, you know, start selling stuff and when their clients buy it, pings our system and we handle all the distribution as well. So we’ve built all these other ancillary tools to allow distribution of swag in any way that clients want.

Jeffro (15:20.22)
And that’s really helpful. One thing I was wondering is, you know, as a small business owner, it kind of feels good to see your logo on a thing, right? It makes you feel like you’re official, you’re growing your business. But how do you make sure that it isn’t just that? Like you didn’t just spend money on this so that I can be proud of it. How do I give it away in a way that actually helps the business and not just like…

Here you go out into the world, you know, is there a strategic method of who to give it to or when to give it and all of that kind of thing.

Jeremy Parker (15:51.921)
think every company is different, but I wouldn’t discount the feeling of that boost, I guess as you said, whether it’s ego boost or that jolt of confidence boost that we were starting something. That does have an impact. I remember myself when I was starting Swag and we made t-shirts for ourselves in the early days and it was just me and my co-founder Josh. Honestly, wearing something, wearing a hat, or even seeing your logo on coworking space at WeWork, it does make things feel more real and it does give that

that urge to keep building and keep growing. And then you start seeing some of your employees where and it’s like, wow, we have employees now. Wow, this is amazing. Keep growing. Now we have over 140 people and we’re doing $40 million a year in sales. And it just scales from there. I think sometimes in business, you need those small wins and you need that feeling of camaraderie and togetherness and like us against the world and the small, mighty team is going to build something. So I wouldn’t discount it. think even having that alone could be worth it. But in terms of figuring out who to give it to.

Every business is different. Try to figure out who your core customer is, exactly who is the most impactful customer that you really need to win over, and try to figure out how to get there. Whether that’s going to a trade show and deciphering this, don’t just go to a trade show and give it out to everybody. That’s not gonna do you good. But maybe have a conversation with somebody and see are they a potential real, does it have to be a real client or are a potential client? And maybe give it out to people after you have a conversation with them. So we’ve done that before. We’ve had, you know,

Video meetings in early days and we making sales and after the video meeting I asked them for their address and I sent them a swag box in the mail Because I felt like and not to everybody but ones that I felt could be actual customers of ours

Jeffro (17:30.194)
Yeah, no, that’s a great reminder to kind of be choosy, especially at trade shows, because there are definitely people who only go to trade shows to grab free stuff. They don’t even want to talk to you. They just swoop by the tables, grab the stuff. If it’s laid out on the table in a pile, they’re just going to grab one and be like, thank you, and leave. And they’re probably not a potential customer. And so I love that. Holding it back to at least you’ve talked to them. And then if, like you said, if it’s a big possibility, send them something even bigger afterwards just to kind of keep that relationship going. But that’s really helpful.

Jeremy Parker (17:40.455)
Thank

Jeffro (18:00.006)
What about, do you have any other creative suggestions that you’ve seen business owners use swag to engage both their customers and employees?

Jeremy Parker (18:08.519)
Yeah, I we’ve made bicycles for clients before. I mean, it doesn’t have to stop as just the classic t-shirt or notebook or pen or mug. There’s unlimited things you could do. We’ve done pots and pans for clients, honestly, in the bottom of like a cast iron skillet, had the logo of the client. We’ve done, I don’t want to say the names because people, I don’t want to spread it out there, but there’s a lot of health companies that thought it would be cool to buy 200 bicycles for their exec team. So we made fully custom bicycles.

for them. There’s just cool things you can do and be creative and be different, but really try to understand who you’re giving it to and make sure that you’re buying or building or you’re choosing the product that will actually be used and will actually, the recipient will find value of it. That’s the best part. we can’t really make that decision for the clients. We can give them suggestions of what we’ve seen in the past and some ideas, but that’s why we have 7,500 products on our site and we give a really wide variety.

and a wide range of products for people to choose from. And we have a whole customer success team and account managers who are really plugged in and really try to understand the brands that we’re working with and trying to give them suggestions and guide them into make a good decision.

Jeffro (19:17.765)
So you’ve got 7,500 products now. It sounded like when you started you had a very curated specific collection that you’ve expanded over time. Do you still follow the same? Go ahead.

Jeremy Parker (19:26.279)
Well, I guess it’s two things. Yeah, I guess it’s two things. In the very beginning, the idea was to be very curated because we wanted to make sure people were unparalleled by choice. That was very important and to make sure everything is really good. But as we were growing, we noticed that we would lose a lot of customers because customers would come to us and the ones who were browsing, we didn’t know what they wanted. They would find a product and they would buy it. But anyone who came to our site who knew exactly what they wanted, if they had a pre-determined idea of what they wanted and they didn’t see it within those 20, they would leave.

And so we’re like, how are we gonna loop, gonna, because there’s two types of buyers, the browsable buyer and the buyer who knows exactly what they want. We can’t just turn off 50%. So what we did is we kept the curated experience. If you go to swag.com, it’s the top 20 mugs, top 20 notebooks. But if you’re searching or if you’re using our filters, it pulls from a larger database of products of the 7,500 in the backend. we, because that’s what we found when people are searching for something or they know what they want, they don’t even use the browse because they’re searching.

If they’re that type of user we pull from a larger database, by the way, all the 7500 are still vetted and tested by us, but it’s more to get the robustness of the offering.

Jeffro (20:32.559)
Yeah, that was part of my question that you vet and test all these different options. And do you actually look at those searches and say, somebody search for something we didn’t have. Do you then go out and see if you can do it?

Jeremy Parker (20:41.614)
Totally. Yep, exactly. Yep, we’re constantly adding new products, we’re talking to clients, we’re seeing the searches, we’re seeing where people drop off. They can look for five products and then drop off. Why did they drop off? We reach out to clients. We do a lot of things. People abandon cart, we have their email address, they leave, we reach out to them. We’re all about learning and trying to make sure the product is as best as we can and we have the right solution. It’s an ever-growing process and we’re probably not 100 % there for everybody, but

The more we do this, the better we get. then ultimately, we’re going to get a really awesome curated and also robust catalog for different types of buyers.

Jeffro (21:20.293)
Awesome. Well, I love that. Thank you for giving us that glimpse into your business and also all the ways that other businesses can use these promotional items. Thank you again for joining me today. I hope your platform continues to help people use branded merch in all these cool different ways. Like having a bicycle for your team, like that’s really awesome. Like there’s so many creative things you can do with Swag. For those of you guys listening at home, use the links in the show notes to connect with Jeremy and be sure to go check out swag.com for your business, for your employees.

I have one last question for you, Jeremy, before we close out here. What’s your all time favorite piece of swag?

Jeremy Parker (21:56.519)
Wow, that’s a good question. I know for me it’s kind of meta to say it’s My own swag calm brand you’re like swag that confounder wearing swag the calm t-shirt, which is inherently swag is kind of fun I like stickers, you know I have a lot of different things and I have so many cool different stickers from different times and different like Life cycles of the business and I remember exactly where I was and what my thinking was when I designed that specific sticker So for me, it’s it’s more about like remembering

And I’m sure a lot of people when they open up their closet and they have a t-shirt or they have a water bottle or something, it reminds them of that specific moment. So to me, it’s about remembering different times in your life. And so that’s it for me. I’ve made a lot of really different weird stuff, I said, pots and pans. And we’ve done some really weird stuff. Alcohol bottles, wine bottles, we’ve done cans of…

of water for like events, the specific water bottles for with the Head of Brands logo on it. But for me, it’s just bringing back the memories and only high quality stuff. That’s really it.

Jeffro (23:00.379)
Well, thanks again for being here, Jeremy. Thanks to all you guys for listening. If you thought this was valuable, please leave a review for the show on Apple or Spotify and keep getting after it. We’ll see you back here for the next episode of Digital Dominance. Take care.