Research studies have shown the outstanding effectiveness of promotional products, especially in a tough economy, in the following:

Keep Customers Coming Back With Promotional Products —

Customers come back more frequently when you use direct mail programs using promotional products.

Generate Customer Referrals Using Promotional Products —

Promotional products help encourage to provide you with the names of friends and associates whom you can contact in the future. A 1998 study by Baylor University found that customers who receive promotional products are more willing to provide these leads than customers who don't receive promotional products. Studies show that sales reps who give promotional products to their clients receive 22% MORE REFERRALS than those reps who do not use promotional products.

Build Customer Goodwill With Promotional Products —

Promotional products foster customer goodwill (positive attitudes and feelings) toward a company and its salespeople.

Improve Trade Show Traffic With Promotional Products —

Promotional products can increase traffic to an exhibitor's trade show booth. A 1997 study by Exhibit Survey Inc. found that using promotional products can give you an advantage over other exhibitors for buyer attention.

As the promotional products medium increasingly becomes a standard weapon in the arsenal available to marketers and other communicators, users will just as frequently need to ensure their clients and/or upper management that this tool can meet goals and deliver results.

Fortunately, a variety of research is available which offers scientific evidence that promotional products programs can respond to a host of sales and marketing challenges.

Promotional products are useful for decorative articles of merchandise imprinted with a company's name, logo or message and used in marketing/communications programs.

To illustrate, here's a summary of several major research efforts:

• A study by Baylor University found that the use of promotional products as "dimensional mailers" can significantly improve response rates over direct mail alone. The research focused on 3,000 school administrators, divided into three groups. One group received an envelope with a sales letter, sales collateral and business reply card; the second, an envelope with similar contents plus a promotional product; the third, all of these delivered in a box with a die-cut slot.
  
  Those who received a promotional product in the dimensional package responded at a rate 57 percent higher than those who received the same promotional product in an envelope. Response rates for the dimensional package recipients were a whopping 75 percent higher than for the group that only received the sales letter.
  
  
• Southern Methodist University (SMU) explored quite a different topic — the role promotional products can play in gaining repeat business. Two separate studies were conducted and, with each, the SMU research team found that customers who receive promotional products, on average, return sooner and more frequently, and spend more money, than customers who receive dollars-off coupons.
  
  
• A study by Exhibit Survey, Inc. revealed that promotional products programs can provide exhibitors an edge when vying for buyer attention at trade shows. Five different communications packages were sent to registrants for an upcoming trade show.
  
  Findings showed that, for instance, booth traffic was significantly higher from the groups that received an invitation to receive a gift at the show than for those groups that did not. And, the response rate was highest for the one group that received a gift set: a coaster mailed before the show and a matching coffee mug at the show.
  
  Other studies have focused on the impact promotional products bring to employee incentive campaigns, customer goodwill, customer referrals and business gift programs. In 1998, research is planned on the medium's role in generating sales. The advertising community may have its Nielsen ratings and Starch reports. However, the university and marketing studies discussed here provide powerful and meaningful prove-up of the benefits of promotional products.