Event and Custom Kit Fulfillment
Every event you do requires marketing materials to support the effort. Collateral, swag, signage, branded tablecloths, and monitors are just some of the items typically needed at events to effectively generate leads and promote your brand.
Even though it’s important to have the right materials at your events, materials sourcing, inventory management, packing, and shipping is often put off until the last minute or even overlooked until it’s too late. Who has the time or inclination to take on this grunt work?
We do! We can procure, store, and ship all the materials you need for your events. We always ship materials as early as possible and track them to make sure they are delivered. Not only will you save money on shipping, you’ll never have to worry about getting that 6:00 a.m. call from your sales rep asking where his stuff is!
We also provide custom kit fulfillment services, and can easily source, kit, pack, and ship branded swag and print items to send to your prospects, customers, partners, virtual event participants, and employees.
If you’d like to have an online ordering system that enables your sales, HR, and community teams to order materials and kits themselves, we’ve got you covered there as well.
Our event and custom kit fulfillment services are outlined below.
Materials Sourcing
It can be incredibly challenging to find the best, most affordable printers, swag suppliers, signage vendors, and other providers of the materials you need for your events and custom kit programs. Many vendors seem to be the same, so it’s hard to tell who provides the best value. Not only must you perform lots of research to find the right vendor for each item you need, you then need to order your materials from multiple vendors. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go to a single source to handle all your materials requirements?
Big Up can be your go-to source for event and custom kit materials. Since we’ve been in the fulfillment business so long, we’ve established relationships with all the best vendors. If you need a retractable banner, we know who does the best job for the lowest price. If you’re looking for branded swag items, our preferred supplier can get you the latest and greatest promo items at the most affordable price. If you need printed items in a hurry, our printer next door can usually print them the same day so we can get them to an event on time.
Inventory Storage and Tracking
If you store your materials in a “marketing closet” at your office, there’s a good chance you don’t know if you have the right items and quantities you’ll need for your next event or custom kit program. If you don’t realize until the last minute that you’re short on materials, you’ll be frantically calling vendors to try to get what you need delivered on time. No one wants to be in that position.
Big Up understands the importance of proper storage and tracking of event and custom kit materials. We have warehouse space where we can store your collateral, retractable banners, table signs, collateral, swag, booth exhibits, and anything else you need for your events and custom kit initiatives. We provide all our clients access to their inventory status via online tracking systems that include inventory descriptions, images, and quantities. You’ll always know what’s in stock and have visibility into what you’ll need to order for upcoming events and custom kit programs.
Packing and Shipping
If you don’t have resources dedicated to packing and shipping materials for events and custom kits, this function often goes to you or someone else on your team whose time would be better spent performing other tasks. Moreover, you and your team are likely so busy that you often wait until the last minute to send materials. When that happens, you pay much more for rush shipping services. You might even miss delivery deadlines, which can be disastrous.
Our team can work with you to determine what materials you need for your events and custom kits, then pack and ship them so they always arrive on-time (or early, if allowed). We are very detail-oriented in our approach. Of course, we always ship the correct items when and where they are needed. We also include event items that are often overlooked, such as return labels, tape, and scissors. Your valuable materials will always be returned to be used again instead of being thrown away or ending up in your sales rep’s garage.
Coordinating Returns and Receiving Materials
Packing and shipping can be challenging but getting your stuff back from events is sometimes more difficult. If you forgot to include a return label in an outgoing shipment, you need to generate and send return labels to the on-site team – sometimes in a rush. If a venue requires that you schedule a FedEx pick-up after an event, you need to coordinate that and make sure it happens. When materials come back, you must open all the boxes, count each item, and update your inventory. That’s a lot of work!
Big Up can take on these critical tasks for you. We always include return labels with outgoing shipments and can produce and send more should your on-site team need them. We can coordinate FedEx pick-ups and make sure your materials get picked up after events. If they aren’t, we can work with the venues and FedEx to get your valuable materials back. When your materials are shipped back, we can unpack, count, and update your online inventory system to accurately reflect what you have in stock.
Custom Kit Fulfillment
Sending branded swag items to your prospects, customers, partners, and employees is a proven way to build goodwill, grow brand awareness, and boost participation in online events. However, it can be challenging if you don’t have the time or resources needed to source the materials, assemble the kits, pack, and ship them out.
Big Up is equipped to handle all your custom kit fulfillment needs in a turnkey fashion. From simple direct-mail programs, to more complex executive gift kit initiatives, we can manage every aspect of your project. If you’d like to send prospects a simple kit that includes an analyst report and a personalized note from a sales rep, we can handle that. If you want to send your top customers a larger kit comprised of numerous branded swag items, print pieces, and a gift card, we can execute the program from start to finish.
Below are some of the types of kits we routinely fulfill for our clients.
- Work-from-home kits
- Pre- and post-event kits
- New customer kits
- New employee kits
- Holiday gift kits
- Industry analyst kits
Online Ordering Systems and E-Commerce Stores
You work in the marketing department, so everyone comes to you when they need swag and marketing materials. Sales reps want brochures and t-shirts to bring with them to their sales meetings. HR wants to give pens, coffee mugs, and notebooks to new employees. Your CMO wants to send out welcome kits to all new customers. You want to take care of everyone, but you don’t have time to manage all these requests. Moreover, you need to reserve your materials for upcoming events and other programs.
The solution is to give them online, self-serve ordering systems. We can set up online “stores” for all these scenarios. Your users can log in to their store and see pictures of all the items they can order, along with the quantities in inventory. They can choose how many of each item they want and submit their order just like they would at other online stores, but with no payment required. We can customize your system to limit how much people can order, restrict users from viewing and ordering certain items, include authorization steps, and more. After orders are shipped, emails with tracking numbers are automatically emailed to users.
Some of our clients use e-commerce stores such as Shopify to sell branded merchandise. We are experienced with this technology as well. We can configure and manage your e-commerce store, and pack and ship orders to your customers.