The Many Ways of Feeling Welcomed in a Digital Experience

I, along with many of you, missed out on multiple face-to-face conference experiences in 2020. Although it is inspiring to see how companies have pivoted to create digital experiences for their attendees, there are aspects of face-to-face events that are hard to replicate in a digital landscape. There is a special essence of attending live keynotes with thousands of people - feeling that energy in the room, networking and meeting new colleagues, conference parties, and exploring new cities with teammates. I will never forget, on one of my first international work trips, having to navigate the Bangkok subway system with my new boss at the time - I was so proud of myself for getting us to our final destination. And, who doesn't love conference swag! I know I'm not the only one that loves going to conferences and getting stickers, hats, socks, bags, notebooks - I love it all!

We started brainstorming what we could do for IBM Fast Start 2021 (our annual sales training kick off) attendees last year as soon as our team pivoted to a digital experience. I really wanted to be able to send every attendee a physical welcome box that encompassed some of the key themes we were driving at Fast Start. But, after a few weeks of researching and talking to vendors, I quickly realized it wasn't going to be possible.

Not only did our audience triple from our original estimate, but COVID-19 had created a strain on the supply chain and getting the quantity of swag items (e.g., 30,000 water bottles and t-shirts, etc.) I needed was almost impossible.

On top of the COVID-19 supply chain delays, the holidays were right around the corner. I needed this package to arrive mid-January so we're talking about a huge logistic overtaking - managing the ordering, packing, shipping, and tracking of 30,000 gift boxes around the world in December.

At first this was really disheartening. I genuinely wanted to make this happen. I had imagined all of our sellers receiving this custom package to not only kick off our conference but also the new year - and I wasn't going to be able to pull it off.

So, I pivoted. Pivoting quickly became a theme throughout executing Fast Start as we hit challenge after challenge. You can read more about how our team overcame these challenges in Mary Tafuri, VP or IBM Global Sales - Enablement, 'Behind the scenes of IBM Fast Start 2021' blog series:

• Part 1: Lightning Struck Twice, but We Prevailed
• Part 2: Recreating the Experience
• Part 3: Enriching the Experience and the Results

I knew I wasn't going to be able to ship all the attendees a physical welcome gift, but maybe I could still ship a smaller audience one.

So my workstream split into two parts:

• A virtual welcome experience for the attendees.
• A physical welcome box for the planning team.

Part 1: Designing a Virtual Welcome Experience

Before I had officially given up on the physical gift boxes, I reached out to my partners at BI WORLDWIDE. I have been working with BI WORLDWIDE for years on other IBM projects and I shared with them what I was trying to accomplish and the challenges I was running into to see if they had any advice.

It surprised me when they pitched the concept of a virtual welcome experience. The idea was to design and build a virtual reality (VR) room that all the attendees could move through prior to the conference starting. It was a great idea - and it solved a lot of the challenges I was facing. So we got to work!

Together we designed a custom VR room where we highlighted key components of Fast Start.

The VR room was designed with a space theme, as that was our branding for the conference. The room included:

• Keynote Speaker Bios
• Mindfulness Session Information and Resources
• Kick-off Video for Attendees to Watch
• A Fast Start 2021 Spotify Playlist
• A Gift of 200 BluePoints (BluePoints are internal awards at IBM given for recognition and can be redeemed for all kinds of merchandise)

In the first 2 weeks after launching the VR welcome room, we hit over 80K page views and over 8K unique users. The most impressive statistic was the session duration, which held steady at 2:41 min. To date, we've had over 14.5K unique users, over 134K page views, and maintained the session duration at 2:39 min.

This was a creative way to give all attendees a special welcome experience that they could navigate through, and gave a taste of that face-to-face feeling we all craved. And, by giving attendees 200 BluePoints, they were able to browse through thousands of merchandise items to select something that they would enjoy.

Watch a video walkthrough of the experience here:

Thank you to my partners at BI WORLDWIDE - Mike Haugen, Susan Sinz-udelhoven, Randy Buendorf, Jill Cecala, Christina Fortier, David Ledsinger, and Chip barber who lead the creation of this unique and successful virtual welcome experience.

Part 2: Designing a Physical Welcome Box

We decided to additionally ship a physical welcome box to 300 planning team members across the globe that worked nights, weekends, and holidays to ensure Fast Start's success.

Here are 5 lessons I learned while designing the welcome box for our conference planning team.

1. Focus on how you want your attendees to feel when they receive the gift. The amount of swag items you can customize these days is limitless. As I browsed through vendors catalogues, I was amazed at all of the options, but it is definitely easy to get lost in all the possibilities. I was constantly asking myself "would the attendee be excited to receive this?", "is this item worth the cost?", "how does this item relate back to our event?" We looked at the themes of Fast Start and selected items that best reinforced our mission. With everything that happened in 2020, we want to support our team in every way we can. We picked items that promoted outdoor activity and mindfulness.

(Box included: a custom box, a thank you card, a hammock, a picnic blanket, a hat (with a special new design that hadn't been sold yet), an insulated travel mug, and a Be Equal sticker sheet)

2. Simplify the item selection. Depending on how many recipients you are considering shipping to - try to simplify wherever possible. Consider items that are unisex or won't require your recipient to enter a size. T-shirts seem easy, until you have to organize 100s of t-shirt sizes. The other thing to consider is social and cultural norms. If you are shipping globally, you need to make sure you are sending items that are relevant and appropriate in multiple countries and cultures. Another thing to consider with a global audience is weather. A nice winter hat would be perfect for the United States and Canada in January, but not so much for Australia, where January is the middle of summer.

3. Consider stress points in your process - efficiency is key. A common challenge my team runs into is falling into a process that requires manual work. Whether that be collecting data, crunching numbers, or tracking a project. In the beginning you may think, "I can track that myself". But when you think about the scale - tracking 100s, and sometimes 1000s, of anything becomes someone's full-time job. We researched suppliers and vendor relationships that could create the custom swag, pack the orders, and ship them globally so we could minimize manual tracking on our end. We were able to create a seamless process between our supplier, Staples, and our packing and shipping partner, Ricoh. 

Another process item to think through is PII (personally identifiable information). There are different GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) rules per country and it's criticual to understand them before collecting, storing, and sharing people's private information with vendors, like their home addresses.

Thank you to my partners at Staples Promotional Products: Lizzie Maske, Samantha Peck, and Christine Storie - and my partners at Ricoh: Jay Devereux and Debbie Jacobs.

4. Prepare for hidden and inflating costs. A cost estimation is exactly that - an estimation. There will almost always be something that comes up that costs extra. I was given a total budget for this up front and quickly put a chunk aside to give myself a buffer - always put extra aside. For the projects I work on, I typically try to keep at least a 20% buffer in the budget. Our biggest challenge around cost was shipping. We were not able to get a flat rate since we were shipping all around the world. Our shipping costs varied an incredible amount from country-to-country.

5. Plan out your timeline as detailed as possible. I started this workstream in July, thinking I have all the time in the world - and that was far from the case. By the time I had more realistic headcount quantities mid-September, we were already approaching the holidays. We found ourselves in a mad dash to start ordering because other companies were ordering holiday gifts for their employees at the same time. For example, I wanted this one picnic style blanket, but within 1 day another company was faster than me and scooped them all up. Below is a summary of key milestones in my timeline:

A special thank you to Nelson Nast, Sue Healy, Trent Wogon, and Mary Tafuri for helping with the successful experience of these boxes!

In the end, we were able to deliver a special welcome experience to all attendees and I am very proud of that accomplishment. The process definitely did not go as planned, but I am absolutely more grateful when I receive items like this in the mail... as I now know the thought and brainstorming it took to get it to me!