Ask HN: Boost marketing and customer service efforts with a swag service + API?
A swag fulfillment operation for companies of any size (startups, Fortune 500's) that want to outsource the physical mailing of swag and promotional items. The cool part? Having an API or web service to help automate the process!
3 Quick Examples:
- Customers with open tickets that haven't been resolved in 7 days? Automatically send them an iTunes gift card with a note.
- Heading to a conference in Boston and don't have to time/energy to bring 3 dozen t-shirts with you? Log in, request, we'll ship them to your hotel room.
- Automatically send users thank-you cards after 1 year of having a paid account or send branded fly swatters to users who've submitted bug reports
Here's How:
You ship in your promotional items (or have that order of t-shirts shipped right to us) and we would inventory it, give it an ID, securely store it and warn you when things run low.
You don't have to worry about storage, boxes, scales, labels, inventory, stamps, running to the Post Office or fumbling with a label printer and CSV file just to mail 25 survey responders their thank-you card and reward. You're running a startup, time is precious, but you know it's important to "wow" the customer (and we all know that something as simple as a gift card or branded styrofoam football is enough to give users the warm fuzzies)
Pricing could be done a few ways, but there are many variables to consider with packaging and shipping costs.
I've been thinking about this idea for a few days. Unlike most of my ideas that I let stew and eventually convince myself it's a poor idea, I thought I would bounce it off the HN for some healthy perspective.
What do you think?