Employee Awards and Incentives
1,500 people were asked for their opinions regarding employee awards and incentives. Survey recipients were asked to rate how most employees felt about awards and incentives. The survey found that employees like awards and incentives, and are more likely to be motivated and work harder to win awards.

Incentive programs are both highly effective as well as cost efficient.
A survey was sent to 4,000 executives in a cross section of American Companies. Respondents were current users of merchandise and travel items for motivation/incentive applications. The study revealed that American businesses spend $23 billion annually on merchandise and travel for motivational use. They reported that customers who receive promotional products are more willing to provide leads than customers who don’t receive promotional products.

Twenty Mary Kay consultants participated in a study where half of them distributed promotional gifts to customers and the other ten offered no promotional items to their customers. Both groups then asked customers (200 in all) to refer names of acquaintances. Customers who received a promotional product were 14% more likely to provide leads than those who did not. Sales people who gave promotional gifts to their customers received 22% more referrals than sales people who did not use promotional products.

40% of the salespeople who used gifts commented on how well the gifts were received by their customers.

Build Customer Goodwill with Promotional Products
Promotional products foster customer goodwill toward a company and its salespeople. A study by Baylor University, involved a textbook publisher sending 4000 educators either: 1) a pocket calculator plus a letter, 2) a lower priced highlighter pen plus a letter or 3) a letter only. The use of promotional products in this study resulted in an increase in a more positive attitude among those who received the calculator than for those who received the less expensive highlighter pen. On questions relating to the customers’ personal feelings toward the company and its sales representatives, customers who received the calculator scored 52% higher than the letter only group.

Dimensional Mailings
The packaging of promotional products can evoke curiosity as well as an increase in direct mail response rates. A 1993 Baylor University study revealed that the use of dimensional mailers can significantly improve response rates over direct mail alone. For this study 3000 school administrators were divided into three groups and received either: 1) sales letter and sales literature, 2) sales letter, literature and a promotional product, 3) the sales letter, sales literature and promotional product but delivered in a box with a die-cut slot. The latter provided the best response.

Conclusion
The value of Promotional Products is in their ability to carry a message to a well-defined audience. Because the products are useful to and appreciated by the recipients, they are retained and used, repeating the imprinted message many times without added cost to the advertiser.

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