Merchandise is more than just a freebie—it's a powerful tool for driving brand awareness, building customer loyalty, and turning satisfied customers into brand ambassadors.
When investing in merchandise, company leaders typically aim to achieve three primary objectives:
Brand Awareness: Ensuring that as many people as possible are exposed to and recognize the brand.
Loyalty: Creating an emotional connection with customers that fosters long-term relationships.
Word-of-Mouth: Encouraging customers to refer others, spreading brand awareness through word-of-mouth.
One of the biggest challenges companies face is the lack of a system to track who receives merchandise and to follow up on its impact. Without proper tracking, it's nearly impossible to measure the success of your merchandise initiatives. At Sunday, we solve this problem through our Wardrobe platform, which logs merchandise distribution and facilitates follow-up to measure brand awareness, loyalty, and ambassadorship.
Merchandise can be deployed in various ways to support marketing goals. These are the most common and easiest campaigns to start with:
Fairs, Events, and Exhibitions: Merchandise handed out at these events can generate significant brand awareness and emotional connections with potential customers. However, it's essential to log who receives the items to measure their impact effectively.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Targeted merchandise campaigns aimed at specific high-value accounts can strengthen relationships and accelerate the sales process. Tracking these interactions as part of the customer journey is key to measuring their effectiveness.
Loyalty and Ambassador Programs: Merchandise can be used to reward loyal customers and turn them into brand advocates. By setting up a merchandise shop where customers can earn and spend coins, you can track who engages with your brand and identify your most active ambassadors.
Short-Term Impact: The immediate effect of gifting merchandise includes feelings of appreciation, connection, and belonging. These can be measured through initial feedback and customer engagement metrics.
Long-Term Impact: The long-term value lies in continuous brand exposure and the creation of brand ambassadors. As customers wear your merchandise over time, they generate brand impressions and engage in conversations about your brand, keeping it top of mind.
Our scientific study with the University of Brussels and NMBS (National Belgium Railway) revealed that over 86% of recipients regularly wear the merchandise they receive. Moreover, these items spark one to two brand-related conversations every time they are worn, demonstrating the long-term impact of well-designed merchandise on brand awareness and ambassadorship.
We went deeper into the campaign and built a strong data driven report on the impact:
To quantify the success of your merchandise, focus on the following metrics:
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measure how likely customers are to refer your brand after receiving merchandise. An increase in NPS indicates stronger brand loyalty and ambassadorship.
Brand Awareness: Calculate the number of brand impressions generated by your merchandise by tracking how often it is worn and seen. Through our platform we can retrieve data on the wearability numbers and estimate visibility numbers.
Customer Loyalty: Compare retention rates between customers who received merchandise and those who didn't, using your CRM system in conjunction with the Sunday Wardrobe platform.
The Sunday Wardrobe platform automates the process of tracking merchandise impact by logging who receives items and sending follow-up surveys. This data allows you to measure brand ambassadorship, awareness, and loyalty over time, providing valuable insights into the effectiveness of your merchandise campaigns.
The key to success is discipline in logging all merchandise distribution through a centralized system like the Wardrobe platform. This ensures consistent data collection, enabling you to make informed decisions about the impact of your merchandise on your marketing goals.
Plan Ahead: Define clear goals for your merchandise campaign and ensure all distribution is tracked.
Use Data: Regularly analyze the data collected to refine your strategy and maximize ROI.
Collaborate with Experts: Partner with experienced professionals who can help you design, track, and optimize your merchandise campaigns. Our team of Sunday experts can help you setup your first campaigns to track the impact of your merchandise. In no time you'll be able to do this yourself.
Merchandise is a powerful marketing tool, but its impact must be measured to maximize its effectiveness. By leveraging the right tools and strategies, you can track the impact of your merchandise on brand awareness, loyalty, and ambassadorship. To get started with a data-driven merchandise strategy, contact our team at Sunday—we're here to help you every step of the way.
Looking to start dressing your team?
Want to discuss a project? Interested in
visiting one of our offices? Let us know!
