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Deliver Boxes. Deliver Pipeline: How Gifting Drives B2B Revenue
17 Plays9 days ago
Direct mail isn't dead. It's back and it's smarter.
In the Season 2 premiere of B2B Marketing Pint, we’re joined by Kris Rudeegraap, Co-Founder and CEO of Sendoso, to break down why gifting and direct mail are showing up again in serious B2B demand gen programs — and why it’s not your grandparents’ mail campaign.
We cover what’s driving the comeback (rising ad costs, crowded inboxes, shrinking email response rates), the best-performing use cases (SDR meeting-booking, ABM buying committees, demo show-rate boosts, customer expansion), and the biggest ways teams screw it up (hello, spray-and-pray).
Kris also shares how AI is changing the game with better targeting, address data, personalization, and the move toward always-on, automated sending—more like an ad platform, but physical. If you want pipeline without just throwing more money at clicks, this one’s for you.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction: Welcome to Season Two
00:00:00
Speaker
Your B2B Marketing Pint is the podcast for B2B technology marketers who want to sharpen their competitive edge. Joined by other marketing veterans, your hosts, Brian O'Grady and Brendan Ziolo, share expertise on what works today and why.
00:00:16
Speaker
Grab a cold pint of hot takes on branding, content marketing, demand generation, and more, served with a side of sarcasm. Hello, everyone. Welcome to season two of the B2B Marketing Pint podcast. We took a little
Guest Introduction: Chris Rudigrap of Sendoso
00:00:35
Speaker
break. Hopefully you didn't miss us too much, but super excited to be back with ah Chris Rudigrap, who is the co-founder and CEO of Sendoso.
00:00:45
Speaker
ah Chris will be the first guest to... I don't think Brian and I knew before. he He politely reached out to us and asked if he could join us. ah Like other guests, he liked the concept of drinking while we do a podcast. So I think we're on to something, Brian, with that approach here.
00:01:03
Speaker
Looks good. And i i had my doubts, but then I saw the size of Chris's Stein and I thought, this guy's into it. And so chris ah Chris, as I mentioned, is co-founder, CEO of Sendoso, which is a leading gifting and direct mail platform. So that will kind of give you a hint on the topic we're going to cover today.
00:01:22
Speaker
But we have a few other questions for Chris to catch him off guard and not deviate too much from our typical B2B marketing pint questions. from last season. ah And Chris is actually a native of California and currently residing in the Bay Area. So maybe our most, oh, I was going say our most distant guests, but no, we had a guest from India on. So sorry, Chris, you're number two on that list. Yeah.
00:01:48
Speaker
um but all good. ah So to kick this off, i don't want to go off script too much. Brian, what are you drinking today?
Podcast Beverages: What Are We Drinking?
00:01:56
Speaker
I thought you'd never ask. Here we are season two, and I've brought a new one to the B2B marketing pint, which is, I'm probably going to butcher this pronunciation as well. It's ah another Polish beer. Followers from season one will know I butchered a Polish name last season, but this is a and Poorly named in English anyway, Lech.
00:02:16
Speaker
It's probably pronounced Lesh or something, but it's a Lech. I promise you it tastes better than the name implies. Which makes me wonder, Brendan, what are you drinking?
00:02:29
Speaker
ah So I didn't decide to start drinking alcohol in the break between season one and season two. So I'm still partaking of the non-alcohol beer variety. I have a sober carpenter, which I think I may have had on season one, but thought it was a good opportunity to start season two and IPA again.
00:02:49
Speaker
ah Quite tasty. And Chris, you hinted and teased us with a giant... beer stein but maybe you can elaborate and let us know what you're drinking today oh he's gonna dive right in i'm gonna just start drinking i've already been s sipping it so i might need to fill us up again it was a long introduction this is a four point uh beer company it's a ksa kolsch so it's a lighter fresh beer that uh tastes real good in the morning
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. For our listeners, yeah we yeah, we don't always remember the time differences. So yeah, Chris, we appreciate you partaking in a breakfast beer with us today. Of course. i wouldn't have it in any way. All right. Well, before we get started, and Brian, I'll give you the honors of asking the first question. Let's do a quick cheers.
00:03:39
Speaker
Cheers. Cheers to season two. All right. Okay, Brian, get us rolling here and let's ah try and get some answers out of Chris. All right,
Origin of Sendoso: Why Gifting and Direct Mail?
00:03:49
Speaker
let's talk marketing. It's time to put Chris over a barrel. I'm going to go right to ah the elephant in the room because I was kind of fascinated when we learned about your company and you reached out and we bumped into you and I checked you out.
00:03:59
Speaker
And I thought to myself, isn't this freaking direct mail? Did I just get it transported back to the 1980s or something? What's happening here? So who the heck are your customers? who's Who's using you? What are they using you for? Is anyone actually doing this and why are they doing it? This is ah mostly a digital marketing podcast. What's going on, Chris? Yeah. Glad you asked.
00:04:23
Speaker
and Maybe I'll start with a little founder story to give you some of the inspiration on why I started it and what we're seeing. um But you know about nine years ago when I started Sendoso, I was in sales myself and I saw a mixture of email response rates diminishing, not getting as many replies, um as well as I was sending out gifts and direct mail manually myself and it was working really well. People were like, what's this? I get an inbox full of emails, but I don't get much on my desk. And so it allowed me to stand out.
00:04:53
Speaker
um And it worked really, really well, booking meetings, closing deals faster. And so, you know, I basically started Sendoso out of my own need. um Little bit, you know, now fast forward almost a decade later, i think some of those same ah things that I saw, you know, ad prices are going up, making that channel harder, email becoming more noisy, deliverability becoming harder.
00:05:16
Speaker
ah ai is even making that ah email even easier to send out.
Is Direct Mail Cost-Effective Compared to Digital Ads?
00:05:21
Speaker
And so I think in B2B, you know, using direct mail um is a no brainer now because you can, you know, grab the buyer, um you know, where they are, you know, you know, disrupt the patterns of just getting emails and ads. um And it's hard to ignore.
00:05:37
Speaker
um You also don't get as much of it you know, because there is a baked in process. price component, unlike email where it feels free-ish. So you know there's less direct mailers landing on doorsteps and there's some kind of emotional connection to unboxing a box or or even figuring out what's in the box. you know I think a FedEx box on your doorstep has 100% open rate.
00:06:00
Speaker
For a porch pirate maybe, but it'll get opened. ah So as ah as a follow-up to that, i was being a bit facetious in my introduction because obviously what you just described has some real value. If you get something cool on your desk, you're probably going to open it and then you're probably going to think better of whoever sent it than you did za before.
00:06:18
Speaker
I have been involved in some programs like that. It is fun. It does seem to make a difference. And I have so many questions about about this. um I don't know where to go next, but...
00:06:30
Speaker
You mentioned one that really struck a chord with me, which was the comparison to, add prices and click costs. yep Um, is this now much more likely part of the mix because of that pricing?
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a mixture of, you know, ah for the for the best marketers, they're comparing a dollar and what channel is producing how much output or pipeline. And and so while there is some misconceptions that gifting direct mail is expensive, I think for our best customers, they actually think it's cheap if you say $1 and, you know, direct mail generates $4 in pipeline. But if $1 in ads generates $1.20 pipeline, well, then you know, that comparison makes sense for it. um So I think, ah you know, marketers are using this, we're seeing sales teams use this really well, um you know, customer success teams, and the list goes on, I think, in terms of some of the different unique use cases we're seeing.
Why Does Gifting Work? The Reciprocity Principle
00:07:28
Speaker
i'll I'll throw you the the microphone in a second, Brendan, but it occurs to me that one thing, Chris, you might have, maybe you know, maybe you know this already, maybe you're this clever, but one thing you might be triggering is this very fundamental marketing law of reciprocity.
00:07:42
Speaker
ah Years ago, i should know the psychologist's name, but I can't remember. Uh, this dude wrote a marketing book and said one of the things you can't get away from as a human being because we're all social creatures which is if i do something decent or nice for you you can't help but want to do something decent or nice for me which is basically the opposite of an email i want to delete your emails i don't feel like you've done anything nice for me if you send me an email but if you send me a shiny object is that is that why this is working for you because you're triggering that fundamental notion of reciprocity
00:08:13
Speaker
100%, yeah, I think that's one of the big factors is, ah especially when you personalize the gift of the direct mailer, and so you're you know standing out, you're being personal, you're grabbing their attention, you're being different, you know all those things are gonna help. and And I'm a firm believer in you got to, you know, ah reach out to these buyers on every channel all the time. So, i you know, I think it's not just send gifts, close your eyes and your calendar is going to fill up with a million meetings. It's how do you, you know, send them um a mailer one day, you know, you get on the phone, you get in their inbox, you get in their social streams, you get in... you know, all these different channels that add up to being, you know, right place, right time to grab the attention when your buyer, you know, is wants to respond and, you know, is into figuring out how you're solving their problems.
00:09:04
Speaker
Makes sense. Brendan, a better stop because I'm monopolizing things. No worries. No worries.
Use Cases for Gifting in Marketing
00:09:09
Speaker
ah You triggered something for me there, Chris, when you said use cases as part of your answer on on different ways people are doing this and wondering if you could maybe drill down a bit into that. Is it, you know,
00:09:22
Speaker
about getting that initial lead gen, that initial prospect? Is it more conversion? Like, does this work better in the ABM space? Kind of, what have you seen over these, you know, nine plus 10 years in terms of, you know, maybe the best use case? And I'm also somewhat curious if there was like a unique corner use case that you were like, damn it, that's a good one. i saying that someone came to you. So maybe start with the best ones first.
00:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, the best and most obvious are, you know, demand gen teams using it to increase pipeline and SDRs using it to book meetings. I think that is the most cut and dry obvious use case and a why a lot of customers come to us and to fill those problems. But we ah we like to kind of do more of like ah what I call like a leaky bucket consultation with our our prospects or customers and figuring out where are the other opportunities to solve ah you know pains in their pipeline.
00:10:17
Speaker
And so we've seen some really interesting things like um you know we have got use cases where ah folks are putting ah gifts in ads. So it's like, hey, book meeting, get some AirPods. And those ads are converting better now.
00:10:31
Speaker
So it's like, okay, now your ads are converting better because you're using gifting and ads. Or you're trying to drive a CSAT or MPS and you're saying, hey, you get you know this gift card if you fill out the survey and boom, now they're getting responses. Or you know you're doing enterprise ABM and you're figuring out how do you ah you know create a larger buying committee. And now you're sending out gifts to other people in the buying committee, grabbing their attention. um Or informational mailers. I think that some people forget that they have this you know, a library of amazing digital content on their website. But what better way to get that and expand the buying committee is printing those and mailing those out to prospective clients or even clients that you want to expand their usage. So we see we see that working really well.
00:11:17
Speaker
um You know, a use case that I hadn't thought of, but we're seeing a ton lately is demo show rates. You know you spend all this time trying to get them to the demo. um and We had a client that had like sub 50% demo show rates. They sent out a Starbucks gift card, e-gift card the morning of the demo or DoorDash gift card if it was later in the day. And they, like I think they're up to like 90 plus percent now. It was a huge gain in terms of people just, again, in reciprocity feeling like, okay, you reminded me to show up. I showed up. um So even increasing those like demo response rates, you know, I could go on and on. But it's interesting, these different use cases where you can apply gifting or direct mail in order to drive conversions.
00:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it was really cool how a lot of your answers were integrated with something else, like the like the ah the the digital ad example or getting people to the demo. So, yeah, i really ah I really appreciate the fact that this is part of a bigger campaign, which... I know I i talk a lot about when I'm when i'm discussing marketing with clients and on other ah venues. um Interesting to see that. And yeah the yeah, the other thing that was super cool, and maybe there's other insights you can share, is that the leaky but bucket analogy really resonated with me. Like, is there...
00:12:37
Speaker
Is that where you're seeing more opportunities to help clients or is it in the initial phase of that or kind of what's working best ah in terms of initial ah direct mail or gifting campaigns?
Gifting in Account Management and Customer Engagement
00:12:50
Speaker
Yeah, usually we spot a couple of these different use cases up front where they inbound with like a direct need and then it's our job from the customer success team or we even have like a campaign studio team that's almost agency-like helping our clients like figure out what else they can use us for. But we're we're seeing a lot ah lately over the last year in more post-sales on the account management side for expansion and retention. and And I think there's a big push for companies that are launching new product lines and trying to educate their customers um or expand those customers or
00:13:26
Speaker
M&A and acquisitions that say, hey, we need to cross-sell this other subsidiary product now. What are we going to do? um And it just becomes so much easier to expand the product line, expand usage, engage your customers more while sending them thoughtful gifts and mailers to grab their attention.
00:13:46
Speaker
you You just triggered that. It sounds like Chris could go on and on, on and on here, Brian, with use cases. So maybe it's time for another question. I'm just getting warmed up. I've got so many questions. ah You made me think of bankers and and I don't always think fondly of bankers for both of our banker listeners. Maybe you're all right. But for bankers, I've always been vexed when I see those ads like, hey, if you're a new customer, we're going to send you a toaster.
00:14:11
Speaker
But for our existing customers to heck with you. Yeah. That's that's not the opposite of good marketing. So I was intrigued when you said, what if you sent them to the people who are already customers? That makes a lot of sense to me.
00:14:22
Speaker
Exactly. yeah I think there's, um you know, a lot of marketers focus so much on top of funnel um MQLs and forget they have this amazing customer base that they can market to. um And so we we see that being, ah you know, an advantage for customers that have our platform, have a large customer base. and We can give them some really good inspiration and ways to engage that customer base and and ultimately drive more cross-sell and revenue.
00:14:48
Speaker
I hear you. And I just realized that we're living a use case here, ah Brendan, Chris, we sent a beer to Chris's door. yeah He showed up for the podcast. He showed up for the podcast. That's kind of a coming together of the world. I think so far we're a hundred percent when we send beer, Brian.
00:15:05
Speaker
Almost. How's that for conversion and show up? yeah yeah really an case There's a use case. Okay, well that's how it all works. um So that's no fun. we want Let's talk about the things that don't work.
00:15:18
Speaker
I've been in marketing long enough. This will shock you, I know. I've been in marketing long enough to do some things that don't work. That's probably never happened to either one of you. ah But when people go wrong with gifting, these especially b our B2B audience, how do they screw it up? What's the what's the number one mistake?
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say the number one thing that comes to mind is kind of using that same spray and pray mindset from email and just saying, okay, we can just spray and pray to a uploaded CSV. um And people are just going to open our box and call us immediately And so I think, again, this is ah a strategy, it's a technique, but it's something that you should layer into all of your other channels. So whether that's, you know, an email before the delivery happens, you know, setting the stage or a phone call after or ah a social post. And even some of these don't have to have hard CTAs. It's not like every time you need to be like, let's do a demo, let's do a demo, let's do a demo.
00:16:14
Speaker
It's really building that relationship and knowing that that could take weeks, months, quarters. And how do you build that relationship, build some trust, um you know, and figure out how you can get to the buyer when they need you most. And so I think spray and pray is a definite tactic that is ah a fail.
00:16:31
Speaker
um Furthermore, we see companies that, you know, have bad mailing address data and are just wasting money there. um We see people thinking that they have to save direct mail for special occasions or like gifting is only for the holidays ah versus like an always on strategy. So I think that's ah or like a one campaign strategy versus, hey, like we can do campaigns to drive results, but we should also enable our sellers to have the ability to click send when they have the you know the right time to to meet the buyer when they they need that most.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the tooting my own horn, it's if you're not using ai and technology to do direct mail and gifting like a platform, you oftentimes are spending way too much time and effort or you're having your you know head of demand gen pack boxes in the afternoon, spending their salary unwisely there can also be a mistake.
How is AI Transforming Direct Mail Strategies?
00:17:26
Speaker
Cool. Yeah, I can add that all my list of mistakes. and chris Chris kind of touched one of the rails of B2B Marketing Pine. He brought up that acronym that we're um always on about that AI acronym.
00:17:38
Speaker
He did. Yeah, I was going to take that in that direction anyway, but now he's just opened the door so wide. I think we have to ask this. So, yeah, Chris, it's kind of become typical on this podcast. I mean, any marketing podcast, I guess we've got to cover AI. So, you know,
00:17:54
Speaker
Where do you see the connection? i mean, you started to hint at that, but maybe you can go into a bit more depth on the connection of of direct mail and and AI and gifting and and how one helps the other, or more importantly, how AI helps the the direct mail gifting side of things. But kind of walk us through um how you're seeing that used effectively and and where you see the AI side of this going in the future.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah. um So I think we're at a really cool time for for AI and direct mail and gifting because I think it hasn't, it's just beginning to to ah layer on that the AI, big data automation technology now. I think for some other channels like you know, digital ads, for example, like, you know, Meta or Google had AI years and years before us all had ChatGPT. So, you know, I think some of the extra value has already been extracted there. But so long story short, the thing that we're seeing really well is hyper personalization.
00:18:54
Speaker
You know, how do you use AI to send the right gift to the right person at the right time with the right message and the right delivery channel? It's a lot of rights. um But dumping jumping into the a little bit of those, ah you know there's a big difference between you know sending Chris golf balls because we know he likes golf and sending him some generic gift. What is what am I going to respond to better? Or, hey, you know Chris works from home. Let's use AI to figure out his home mailing address and send it to his home versus you know mailing to his old office that is not has been closed down for a year.
00:19:31
Speaker
um So I think AI can ah help with targeting can help with the messaging. um and it's why we spent years and years and you know have seen hundreds of millions of data points go into this smart suite that we developed to make it easier for marketers to just turn it on um and drive better conversions.
00:19:49
Speaker
So I think ah we launched our kind of AI product offering a few months ago, kind of the first in the space to do it. um We now see ah about 25% of all of our sends are, you know, AI-ified. i don't know if that's a word, but maybe it is. No. Now it is. um And so that's been something that's been interesting to see just the quick adoption. You know, if I think if we did this podcast in a year from now, I'd say it would probably be nearing 100% because it's just a no-brainer to use better targeting and better hyper-personalization.
00:20:22
Speaker
So that's like the now. That's what it's available like today. um The future, I think, is really, really fascinating for me. It's like I try to live in the future. I try to build our our roadmap. I try to talk to as many CMOs and CROs as possible.
00:20:37
Speaker
I think the biggest future ask that AI can bring to direct mail and gifting is ah creating kind of an always-on autonomous ah campaign strategy. Similar to how when you're running ads, you just, here's your ICP, here's your budget, here's your messaging, here's your copy, and like let's just let it run.
00:20:56
Speaker
um i think historically for the last you know decade, direct mail and gifting have been more of like ah a once in time, let's load up a CSV or let's trigger it off of a a campaign list.
00:21:09
Speaker
ah But there's like, you know, immense amount of effort. um So I'd see a future where it's just kind of running like your other systems are running and it's just booking meetings or helping demo show rates or converting webinar attendees. Wherever that leaky bucket lies is where it's just going to be running for you. So I think that's probably the the coolest thing.
00:21:28
Speaker
um There's a lot that goes into that because you need to know the you know the right GIF, the right message and all those things. um The other thing I think that we're seeing some interest in too is the creative side of AI. it's It's incredible to see like Google's like Gemini or Nano Banana creating images or some of like some of the the the copy it can create. So I think we'll see AI-ified creative packaging, printed collateral, all you know boxes, you know designs, everything becoming so much cooler because of AI too, which I'm really excited for.
00:22:06
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense. i just I just want to note to all our listeners that AIified was heard here first. Yeah. really And another first for the B2B marketing point. We coined it. 2026. There we go. Webster's Dictionary.
00:22:20
Speaker
Word of the year or whatever that contest is. Exactly. Let's go for it. Chris already mentioned shipping golf balls. So I think it's appropriate to ask, have you ever shipped an Ottawa Senators golf ball?
00:22:32
Speaker
Not yet, but that is cool. Yeah, my my camera doesn't agree, but that's an Ottawa Senators golf ball. One of the many themes on B2B Marketing Pike, Chris, is Brendan and I share an Ottawa Senators hockey problem.
00:22:45
Speaker
And you're now part of that family. ah for the future for AI, you just triggered a thought for me for the sending. Cause you're absolutely right. When the groups and teams I've been involved with who do these kinds of sends do it, it's like, Hey, I've got an idea. We should push people over the top and do this big manual effort. I'll get the spreadsheet. You get the duct tape.
00:23:06
Speaker
yeah And just like you describe, it's like this big manual thing. This is not an automated piece of anything, but when you described it, That's where it's going to go, right? leads so If I've already got lead scoring, if I've already got HubSpot and I know that I want to call or do a demo or push somebody who's scored 80, let's say on my scale, well, why can't I trigger a gift delivery at 80 automatically? And then I don't even need to bother calling them until I get the open receipt. Is that was that where you're headed? 100%. Yeah. And we already see our savviest, most mature customers doing these automations, triggering things through HubSpot, using smart delivery to use AI for their mailing addresses, you know crafting the message with our smart messaging. So I think we're there for the you know the early adopters, I would say. But, you know, probably many listeners here are like, you know, going back to that white elephant, like direct mail. I've heard of that, but we don't do it yet. And so there's still like a lot of opportunity and lots of different markets to use ah direct mail to, you know, low hanging fruit for pipeline and and deal closing.
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah, I just feel it from a human perspective when you're every digital channel is just beating you over the head and all you want is turn them and some your doorbell rings instead. Yeah. I feel good. That feels human. exactly Yeah, it's almost this. I think ah the feeling human is exactly one of the psychological feelings too that gifting kind of draws people into. and I always say like people buy from people or relationships drive revenue. And I think ah you know, if you would ask to be maybe like, you know, five, 10 years ago, i felt a bit more inclined to reply to every email in my inbox, but now it feels almost like a banner ad where it's like, I'm never clicking that thing.
00:24:57
Speaker
Um, or I'm only clicking it if I've seen it enough or it's relevant or it's personalized or, you know, I got a, you know, a mailer one day a cold. So I think if, uh, you know, for those listening and trying to prospect into me, you know, make sure you're, you're multi-channel multi-threading, ah So.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah. We already gave him a spoiler. Golf balls and beer is what I heard. Exactly. Golf balls and beer. They go well together. Brendan, we cooked up challenging warehouse conversation for Chris. Do you want that or shall I go for it? Yeah, go for it.
00:25:29
Speaker
Go for it. I'll wrap it up. You you asked the challenging question. Oh, good.
Logistics and Scaling Challenges: Sendoso vs. Microbreweries
00:25:34
Speaker
So Chris, in our and little discovery chat with you to find out if you were crazy enough to come on this podcast or not, and we had all know the answer now, you mentioned a challenge in your industry with regards to scaling warehouse space. And that ah spawned an idea for me, which ties in nicely with B2B Marketing Point, because over the years, I've heard that microbreweries face what I believe to be a similar challenge. You're going to tell me if this is true or not.
00:26:01
Speaker
What I hear happens to a microbrewery is they bootstrap, they scrape together some space, they get their gear, and they make a great beer, and they start trying to sell it. And then one magical day, probably because of some great marketing by people like Brendan or Brian, ah one magical day it goes pop and everybody wants that beer and then that microbrewery is officially screwed because they have a limited amount of space a limited amount of equipment they can't make 10x beer overnight and they can't take advantage of their success does this sound familiar to you with your scaling warehouse problem what what's up about how do you scale a warehouse
00:26:38
Speaker
Yes, yes. yeah That reminisces of the early years, but you're correct in that there is a physical space constraint for warehousing. So we've moved and expanded warehouses almost a dozen times. you know Our first warehouse was the size of a conference room.
00:26:55
Speaker
um And now our largest of many is over 200,000 square feet. It's the size of like multiple Costco's. um And so that scale of physical space comes ah with costs, comes with a lot of effort.
00:27:10
Speaker
um We have been able to hedge ah that with a global marketplace of dropshipping. was going to say, are you dropshipping, Chris? Everybody on the who's list is going, dropship.
00:27:21
Speaker
drop The problem dropshipping is you know you end up not being able to kit multiple items together, which sometimes is necessary. Certain dropshippers won't have the same attention to detail that we can do, or they might not be able to add a handwritten note in, or there might be a custom box that that that wants to be added in. And so we do do dropshipping for a lot of perishable items, and we vet this vendors, and we have tens of thousands of vendors around the world. so You know, for us at any given time, there might be a customer that one day wants to send some cookies, but the next day they want to send some swag in a custom box. The next day they want to send 10,000 postcards. The next day they want to send a Starbucks e-gift and the next day a box of golf balls with their logo on it. And all those are coming from different suppliers, maybe from different locations. And so it becomes a huge supply chain issue too, which ah you know besides building the the beautiful SaaS software that our teams built, that our customers see and use and love, We also have like order management software behind the scenes, inventory management software, warehouse management software that no one really sees, but it's just kind of the magic secret sauce. And so, ah you know, above and beyond just the physical warehouse constraints, you also have to think about all of the the software built to move everything from A to B, to track it effectively too, because marketers, you know, want to see as soon as it's delivered, they want to have a follow-up or they want to track the...
00:28:46
Speaker
pricing and costs so that they can do ah ROI reporting in our platform. So um yeah, long story short, it's why we you know raised ah over 150 million in funding and to just help us scale this globally.
00:28:59
Speaker
So I'm taking from that that dropshipping is not a panacea. You need a space of your own somewhere. Correct. Yes. It's a, it's definitely a compliment to the strategy, but because of the demands and the unique and ah sending behavior that gifting and direct mail has, you know, having your own logistics ah warehouses around the world is greatly beneficial to, you know, the the demands of these large enterprises and what they want.
00:29:27
Speaker
Amazing. Well, then before Brendan tries to wrap this up, if I show up in your warehouse, can I drive one of the forklifts? Are you forklift certified? Maybe. I drive a tractor.
00:29:38
Speaker
I grew up on a farm. I drive a tractor. Does that help? um Yeah, I think we can maybe make something happen. Okay, You heard it. Everybody write that down. We're recording.
00:29:48
Speaker
We're recording the beauty of the podcast. Remote location at the warehouse with me on a forklift. Yeah. um And I think another thing I just learned, Brian, is that we should stick to podcasting and let Chris deal with all this other stuff. He seemed to really knock that question out of the park. I didn't really, I was trying to make it, make him sweat and he kind of owned me on that one. Yeah. well I've lived and breathed it for the last decade. So I've got lots of scars and war stories from it.
00:30:13
Speaker
Fair enough. We'll cook up something worse next time. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is definitely a very cool topic, Chris, and one we have not covered and in any of our previous episodes. So really appreciate you joining us, but I would be remiss if I didn't leave with the,
00:30:29
Speaker
sign off B2B marketing pint question for you. So, you know, what is the biggest myth about direct mail gifting that just drives you nuts? Here's your chance. The floor is yours.
00:30:43
Speaker
give us to give us the look Give us the lowdown and set everyone straight. Yeah. The thing that I hear that I just drives me crazy is just flat out people saying direct mail gifting is expensive. And I know we kindly briefly talked about this earlier just a little bit, but to go into more depth, one example I like to use is like, you know, you send somebody $50 gift, oh, wow, you're spending 50 bucks versus a $0 email. What if you grab that prospect's attention and you book the meeting two months sooner than if you were to just to have a dripped email campaign go out?
00:31:13
Speaker
um And you close the deal too much two months sooner. What does that revenue look like? And I think people are very short-sighted when they say, oh, a $50 gift's too expensive. ah Or they just think gifting is expensive in general. But like we have clients that have sent like a fake ah like aspirin pills container with you know some messaging around, does like your current solution give you a headache?
00:31:34
Speaker
And that was like a sub $10 send. Or we saw someone send ah empty pizza boxes. with like messaging around hungry for a new solution. I mean, those are just cardboard.
00:31:44
Speaker
And so I think the, you know, it's not the expensive the effort. It's more really more the creativity that can come into play here to offset those costs. But um again, on my soapbox, I think when people just generalize that gifting is expensive, they're wrong when they don't realize the opportunity cost foregone or, you know, comparing dollar for dollar pipeline generation.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yeah. And I think at the start of the, uh, start of the podcast you made, I don't remember the numbers you use now. Cause it was so long ago, Chris, it was like a whole 30 minutes ago. um you know, just the comparison was like, yeah, it may cost X, but I generated four X of pipeline rather than 1.5 or 0.5 or whatever the other stats may be. So just the ah ROI component, um,
00:32:33
Speaker
I think is very important as as you highlighted out at the start. I can dive in on that. Did I miss anything? Are we going to let Chris go finish his beer?
00:32:44
Speaker
ah I'll riff on that for one second because back in the day, back when clicks were cheap, I think I would have been all over you, Chris, but like, no way is there ah ROI on your 20, 30, 40, $50 gift plus shipping compared to my super cheap clicks. But anybody who's been in an ad platform recently and is looking at their average cost per click multiplied by all the clicks, ah there's a much better argument for what you're saying right now, Chris. It makes a lot of sense.
00:33:13
Speaker
100%. Yeah. And again, you got to pay for clicks, got to pay for direct mail, got to pay for emails. It's all across the board. I'm not a i'm a believer in multi-channel, multi-threading. um But you're right. it's like chi These platforms have been getting more expensive over time and people have been so reliant on it that now they're scrambling for that new playbook to drive pipeline in 2026. And that's where you know we see people saying, oh, direct mail and gifting, that's something new that I haven't done and it's working for others. So I'm doing it.
00:33:44
Speaker
Well, when we did it years ago, we described it as, ah it wasn't that long ago, it's so old it's new again for digital markets. It's the new kid on the plot. Awesome. well ah Do we have to stop now, Brendan?
00:33:56
Speaker
I think we might need to wrap this up. I know you and I could keep going all day, but I have a gut feeling Chris has a warehouse to build or something. Not he's gone through that whole stein. He's not building that. Yeah, he also has the stein to finish too. But yeah, i think we should...
00:34:11
Speaker
maybe end it there. Chris, really, really appreciate that your time today. Great to meet you. So happy. yeah So happy you reached out and joined us for a an episode of the B2B Marketing Pint and definitely going to think longer and harder about direct mail and gifting now for for future campaigns. So it' it's definitely not always at the top of the list, but maybe it should be.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, i appreciate you having me on. i Always love connecting with listeners. So follow me on LinkedIn. Shoot me an email. It's Chris, K-R-I-S at Sendoso.com. Love networking. Love helping marketers out.
00:34:46
Speaker
And he owes me a forklift ride. Yeah. One forklift ride. We have it recorded, Brian. Don't worry. I love it. All right. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, everyone.
00:34:58
Speaker
Hey folks, if you liked that episode, you won't believe the next one. So don't forget to subscribe on your favorite platform and you won't miss out. Or if you've got an idea we haven't thought of yet, hit us up in the comments. We'll cover that too.