Planning a successful virtual or hybrid event comes with a lot of planning. One key metric of success is stakeholder engagement, do people come away from your event feeling connected, engaged and inspired? It might feel a daunting goal to reach for, but today we want to outline how the humble swag bag, reimagined for the digital age, is a great tool to utilise.
A swag bag is a familiar give-away from all kinds of in-person events. Standing for Something We All Get, the swag contained is usually branded freebies from event owners and sponsors, aiming to keep their organisation in delegates minds, even after the event day buzz has worn off.
A digital swag bag takes the same concept but instead of a branded tote bag, a digital platform serves as the bag, which is loaded with digital items to giveaway. Your digital Swag bag can be filled with whatever content you choose, discounts, downloads, competitions, e-learning resources or even physical swag order forms, are just some examples of great digital swag.
There are so many reasons to upgrade your swag bag offering from physical to digital!
With a physical swag bag, you need to physically attend to collect your freebies. This means that virtual audience members are totally missed out. A bad deal for virtual attendees and a missed opportunity for marketeers. With a virtual swag bag, you can access the great content wherever you are in the world, creating a greater sense of event community.
What’s more using a digital goodie bag platform that has been rigorously tested to ensure digital accessibility (check out swagablebag.com as a great example) means you are being fully inclusive in your offering. The UC Berkely definition of digital accessibility is that “websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them”. Given that the World Health Organization estimates that in 2024, 16% of the worlds population have a disability, offering an access anywhere, digitally accessible Swag bag is a simple but hugely effective way to boost interactions with your event swag.
Replace single-use items that are destined to be thrown away (think branded notepads, bags and pens) with an online booking link, access to keynote or speaker resources, a coupon for a discounted service or even a free coffee (to name but a few) and take a big step toward making your event a more sustainable one.
The reduction in shipping and storage by removing (or even just reducing) physical swag offerings will also reduce the overall carbon production of your event, and lower costs.
Businesses in all sectors are being increasingly driven by consumer behaviour towards greater consideration of the environmental impact of their activity. Within the events space, this shift has led to many well-known multinationals enacting a no-swag policy for their events. A virtual Swag bag can offer an effective work around for this, providing all the benefits of a swag bag but with far less waste.
With a customisable swag bag service (such as a Swagable bag) you can take greater control of how you utilise the marketing and engagement potential of your giveaways, and you can track your success to finesse future offerings.
Before the event: Rather than just on event day, why not offer your virtual swag bag to delegates from registration and then use the space to build momentum for the event, get people involved with quizzes and competitions and even provide resources ahead of time.
During the event: On the event date your Swag bag could be a place to network and book in meetings or referrals with exhibitors or other hybrid delegates. You can also drive traffic toward specific sessions with giveaways offered via the virtual swag bag and offer speaker notes when the presentations have been delivered.
A virtual swag bag also has unique potential to foster a sense of event community with a hybrid or fully virtual audience. Why not consider offering delegates a chance to order a branded item (hoody or coffee cup for example) to use during the event itself. Or provide a voucher for everyone to grab a coffee from their local retailer, to share together at online event breakouts.
After the event: Once the event is complete, your virtual Swag bag can be used by sponsors for those all important giveaways and referrals. In built within the Swag bag, data capture means trackable return on investment for everyone who contributes Swag. Via your virtual Swag bag you can even offer access to the digital release of a new ap or online course at a later date, keeping interest in the bag going for longer and offering greater value to your contributors. A digital swag bag can also work as a great repository for best-practice and feedback sharing post event.
Having looked at the benefits for event planners, delegates, sponsors and even the environment of the virtual swag bag, we would love for you to take a look in more detail and find out how a customised Swag bag will boost your next event. Head over to Swagable.com (a Chati partner) now and you can book a free individual demonstration to get you started.
In the last few years, the event landscape has undergone huge shift. Where once almost all events required in-person attendance, we are now seeing a high number of purely online (virtual) or hybrid (with both in-person and online audiences) events taking place. We think this a really positive step! When delivered using the right online event platform, with accessible technology in place, online events can be more inclusive, more flexible and with less impact on the environment.
For event organisers and sponsors ensuring that people are excited to attend their event, are engaging with the content delivered and are inspired by their event experience remain the top priorities, whether the event taking place in-person, online or with a mixture of both (hybrid).
According to research from Markletic, half (49%) of marketers say that audience engagement is the biggest contributing factor to having a successful event. However, only 30% of event organisers send their attendees giveaways and only one in three (34%) send virtual gift bags to their attendees. That’s a huge, missed opportunity.
One fantastic fix to this problem is to use a digital Swag bag, because with a digital bag, you don’t need to be there in person to collect your Swag. Instead, you simply need to log-in to your Swag bag providers platform and then interact with the content and enjoy the Swag items you select, however suits you.
In this article we will look into the virtual Swag bag concept in a little more depth, to give you the confidence to harness the power of a virtual Swag bag for your next event.
If you have attended an event in the past, chances are you have received a Swag bag. SWAG stands for Something We All Get and traditionally a swag or goodie bag is packed with free gifts from event exhibitors and sponsors, to give delegates some take-away promotional items. Examples of physical traditional Swag items are branded coffee cups, pens, stress balls etc, all featuring company logos.
Digital (or virtual Swag as it is sometimes called) is simply freebies delivered online instead, bypassing the physical bag. Event stakeholders can offer which ever promotional items they choose, with their logo on the items and bag, and all in one handy place just the same. The only difference is that the ‘bag’ is an online platform.
With a digital Swag bag, the possibilities of what you fill it with a vast! To bring the concept to life we have provided a few examples of typical Swag items you might want to include:
Voucher or discount codes
Offering a discount code for brand partners and sponsors products gives your attendees access to an exclusive benefit via their Swag bag and drives traffic to partner sites too.
Downloads
Why not provide a range of relevant how-to guides, e-books, online training etc, all in one place for your delegates to access and learn from. This is a great way to share valuable knowledge and further promote your events theme.
Physical items
Virtual Swag bags don’t mean the end of physical event giveaways such as branded hoodies or coffee cups. In fact, we believe that if provided to delegates ahead of event day, they can help build a sense of community between your in-person and online audiences. To make sure that these are items people want and can make use of (correct size etc) however, why not provide items to order, and minimise waste.
Other examples of virtual Swag bag contents might be competition giveaways, virtual experiences, eco-friendly options such as tree-planting or event specific information materials. There are so many options with a digital Swag bag.
It's vital to make sure you use the right digital Swag bag platform to deliver the virtual Swag which will engage your hybrid audience. The platform needs to be:
The Swagable bag was set-up by an inclusive events agency, having identified that virtual Swag bags using accessible technology weren’t readily available. Using their knowledge of the event world, they built an easy-to-use platform that delivers a sustainable, accessible and trackable Swag every time.
Using the Swagable platform is a lot like using filling your online shopping basket at your favourite retailer. We believe that this is something more and more customers are confident to do in everyday life, and the research confirm this, “more money was spent online in the U.S. in April and May (2023) than the last 12 Cyber Mondays combined; in the month of May, U.S. e-commerce spending grew by 93 percent year-over-year. —Source: Mastercard SpendingPulse™.
Rest assured though, at Swagable we also offered tiered support services so, if you do need any further assistance at any point in time, the team are available to make sure your Swag bag is a success.
You can visit the Swagable website or book a demo here if you would like to find out more.
Now more than ever, we all know how important it is to consider the environmental impact of our actions, be that investment, promotion or individual spending choices. A virtual Swag bag, such as a Swagable bag, is the more planet-friendly option to boost your events audience engagement for a number of reasons. We have highlighted a few:
When it comes to choosing digital event offerings including a digital Swag bag, the research speaks for itself. “According to MeetGreen “A standard in-person event can use up to 36,000 pieces of paper, most of which are not recycled accordingly. By choosing to offer virtual swag – and choose to run your event in a digital format – you eliminate up to 170kg of CO2 emissions”.
We really hope that this article has helped you to feel as excited about digital Swag bags as we are! It’s time to revolutionise your next event and go digital! So go ahead and book a demo to find out how Swagable can work for you today.
