Large business conferences are rarely fun experiences. But what's worst is the outward marketing within them.
Aside from the forced networking and stale background noise, these events are overflowing with free, heavily branded "swag," gift bags and tchotchskies. This gear tends to be cheaply made, largely useless, random items like coffee mugs and pens or t-shirts that sport a company's brand.
The longtime belief behind corporate gift bags has been that they can leave an impact, something worth remembering, so that a new contact will be more willing to engage in a business relationship post-conference. But nothing in this transaction is based upon data; there is no business intelligence surrounding branded trinkets, so it's all essentially done blindly.
Ultimately, in a truly digital age, it may be fair to suggest that corporate gift bags are simply becoming obsolete. And that's why marketers are now also turning to software to finally rid the world of lame corporate gift bags.
Enter: Rybbon, a McLean, Va.-based b2b startup that has developed a data analytics platform to help coordinate gift selection, delivery and the monitoring of the actual impact of said "digital gift." These gifts can include things like online coupons, a virtual Visa, Hulu subscription and/or digital Starbucks gift cards, for example, that are sent via email, social or directly via an app. Importantly, Rybbon is able to integrate into leading CRM's like Salesforce, Hubspot and Marketo, adding another dimension to a marketer or sales professional's toolbox.
The man behind 8-person Rybbon, an early stage venture that has been bootstrapped since opening shop in October, is CEO Jignesh Shah. Shah was previously the chief marketing officer for Metalogix Software, a D.C.-based enterprise content management (ECM) system provider which was acquired by Permira in 2014.
"When I was the CMO at Metalogix, we found that adding small digital gifts like Amazon or Starbucks gave our campaigns a big lift. They helped us cut through the noise and motivated many more customers to register for our webinars or take our surveys. It also got these customers to warm up to follow-up conversations and offers," Shah told DC Inno.
Back in the day, Metalogix was purchasing individual gift card codes directly from Starbucks and sending them to prospective clients as thank you notes and to informally entice a referral. The process, while surprisingly effective, was intensely manual and those emailed codes came standard with Starbucks' brand everywhere. Before long, the concept began to spread throughout Metalogix; even software developers were finding a use-case for sending gift card codes to their contacts.
Rybbon was co-founded by Shah and friend Rajeev Veettil, a veteran software developer. The local firm currently services about 30 customers, Shah told DC Inno, ranging in size and industry, who use the platform as an auxiliary marketing tool. Shah told DC Inno that he is in the early stages of pitching venture capitalist on a potential private financing.
What's interesting about Rybbon is that it can notify a user when their gift recipient opens their package—thereby tracking how a person reacts to this gift via a notification system. If, for example, a recipient opens their gift on Thursday then a push notification will tell a sales pro to reach out within 24 hours (while their name/company is top of mind).
Shah explained, "every marketer today is faced with the challenge of gaining their customers’ attention and motivating them to take action. And old fashioned tactics of using swag or wining and dining don’t work because marketing now happens over digital channels like email, social and mobile. What marketers needs is digital gifting that works with digital marketing campaigns."
Rybbon's platform, Shah claims, effectively lowers the bar for marketers to use gifting as a tactic.
The company's customers can set up campaigns complete with a customizable email and/or webpage within minutes, which are then used to present the gift. At the moment, the software is being used to boost referrals, webinar attendance, survey completion and invitations to sales meetings.
Shah declined to discuss revenue figures for his still young company but noted that Rybbon is on track for "200 percent growth in 2016." He added, "key to this growth is our support for marketing platforms like HubSpot and SurveyMonkey and global rewards like the virtual Visa prepaid card delivered by email."
