Gifting and promotional marketing are incredible tools for boosting sales and employee retention. But it’s not as simple as sending out products and waiting for the benefits to flow in. There are many different factors on your plate such as budgeting for quality products, sourcing said products, mastering the complicated art of logistics, managing ongoing programs or online stores, and reconciling the results of your hard work. Needless to say, companies of all sizes have partnered with third parties that specialize in the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Three popular partners in this category are Imprint Engine, Sendoso, and Reachdesk. Each of them share the goal of streamlining your brand experiences, but which is best for your business?
Sendoso vs. Reachdesk vs. Imprint Engine: Key Takeaways
- Use cases
- Plan structures
- Customer service
- Global operations
Use Cases
Imprint Engine, Sendoso, and Reachdesk offer B2B direct mailing and CRM platforms that simplify your brand experience journey. Through these platforms, companies can more efficiently implement and manage projects. Since these companies focus primarily on gifting, their use cases are similar: Custom merchandising, lead generation, event production, enhanced customer experiences, employee retention and appreciation, and support in driving revenue.
Imprint Engine
While Imprint Engine has similar use cases as its competitors, we offer services on a more personalized scale. For example, with custom merch design, we give customers boundless product and design options rather than limiting customization features or offering only a finite selection of products. Each customer is given a team of real, creative people who are located around the globe so that those working on your brand experience truly feel like an extension of your team.
Our designers are eager to transform your ideas into tangible, unique, and desirable products and experiences with endless creative possibilities. Our global logistics experts are dedicated to minimizing inventory and fulfillment costs regardless of where recipients live with insights on the backend such as detailed tracking. Additionally, our developers provide tech that works at your speed. Whether that means complex company stores for a global enterprise or integrations that enhance your current workflows. Unlike other platforms, our technology is not one-size-fits-all. We prescribe it based on your unique management needs.
With our IEX platform, every use case is tackled all in one place. We’ll stream real-time inventory from our warehouses around the world and send you product reports to analyze trends and determine when to re-order. You’re also notified of the number of gifts shipped or redeemed each day. Within the platform, you can easily select and ship anything in your inventory to 180+ countries, more than our competitors. Every integration and online store is designed by our in-house developers to meet your needs, with advanced user permissions and team viewing controls so that you have as many seats as you need to make your brand experience a success.
Sendoso
With similar use cases as Imprint Engine and Reachdesk, Sendoso has its own strengths to attract customers. Like Imprint Engine, Sendoso offers analytics and insights such as the number of gifts redeemed and sent with advanced tracking information to let you know when gifts are received. Unlike Reachdesk, Sendoso gives the option of creating a bundle of 2-4 egifts from a specific category, giving recipients the freedom to choose what they receive, similarly to Imprint Engine.
Aside from gifting use cases, customers can use Sendoso’s platform to implement ecommerce stores to sell their merchandise. Company stores built through Sendoso feature capabilities to store, pack and ship merchandise with dispersed warehouses that follow shipping guidelines for every region. Unlike Reachdesk, Sendoso uses a wide range of shipping carriers. Like Imprint Engine, Sendoso enhances virtual experiences by allowing customers to send branded merchandise kits directly to attendees’ homes.
Reachdesk
Like Imprint Engine and Sendoso, Reachdesk offers insights into how many gifts are redeemed, sent, and received. Reachdesk puts its focus on budget-related insights so companies know in-depth where their money is going. Reachdesk also provides the option for personalized, automated emails. Unlike Sendoso, Reachdesk does not add any margin to gifts and offers gifts in the form of currency from 50 different countries. Additionally, unlike Sendoso, Reachdesk only charges for the gifts customers redeem. If the gift remains unopened or unused, customers don’t have to pay.
Like Imprint Engine and Sendoso, company stores built through Reachdesk feature capabilities to store, pack and ship merchandise with dispersed warehouses that follow shipping guidelines for every region. Reachdesk’s platform also features an automatic ROI calculator and direct Amazon gift sending.
Plan Structure
Each of the three platforms has its own pricing model. Plan structures vary between the three companies, but Imprint Engine and Sendoso share a tiered system that allows customers to only pay for the level of service they need.
Imprint Engine
Imprint Engine offers four plans for our IEX platform: Free, Express, Pro and Enterprise with Basic or Advanced company stores as an add-on option. This gives customers the ability to build a plan that best fits their needs and is tailored to the size of their organization. As plans grow more advanced, customers gain access to more seats and full portal access so that greater collaboration is possible.
Our IEX platform is available for free for one-off projects where customers still have access to our product design team, ideation concierge, global customer support teams, global shipment tracking and management, and global customs support. Unlike our competitors, we offer a 2% product rebate to customers signed up for the Pro and Enterprise plans.
“Imprint Engine has been instrumental in helping maintain brand integrity as we’ve scaled. Their ability to integrate with our procurement system, turn projects around quickly, and coordinate between multiple stakeholders is unmatched.”
— Janel Higgs, Uber
Read more about our IEX platform plans.
Sendoso
Sendoso and Imprint Engine have similar plan structures. Like Imprint Engine, Sendoso offers several options for small teams, large companies, and global enterprises. Customers can choose from its Essential, Plus, Pro, Enterprise, and Express plans. Plans tailored for multiple or larger teams offer more features and customization while the Express plan is free and available for pay-as-you-go one-off projects. Learn more about Sendoso’s plans.
Reachdesk
Reachdesk has no set plans, so opting for its platform includes all its features and services in one go. This can be a perk for customers who don’t need all of the bonus features included in Reachdesk’s competitors’ plans. Reachdesk also offers excellent budget and spending control options with its platform. Learn more about Reachdesk.
Customer Service
Customer service is a key feature to consider when comparing brand experience platforms. Each company connects with brands and customers with a different approach, some lead with the human element, others with the convenience factor. Each play a role in your overall customer experience.
Imprint Engine
The core of what we do is help elevate community and culture within our customers’ organizations. Every member of Imprint Engine acts as an extension of our customers’ teams. Ultimately, our clients are more than just our clients. They’re our business partners. And we want them to utilize us that way. We’ve established teams of experts in every sector of our business so that we hardly ever have to outsource (but if we must outsource, we have a strong network of exclusive vendors for that, too).
We follow four simple steps of service:
- We discover how we can help by learning everything we can about your brand, your needs, and your long-term goals. We strive to know your brand as well as we know our own so that we can recommend the right experiences to elevate your culture and community.
- We put systems in place to design and deliver. Our creative team takes all of the information we’ve learned to design the best approach and program and create a fully custom product experience. Customers have unlimited access to our creative team so they can opt to collaborate or hand us the reigns to create something amazing.
- We build exactly what you’re looking for. Once you’ve given us the go-ahead, our in-house production, decoration, and web development teams work together to guarantee quality. Whether you’re printing shirts for an event or building out a complex company ecommerce site, our in-house talent makes it happen.
- We deploy anywhere in the world. Our warehouse and inventory teams make sure your goods are picked and packed correctly, then shipped wherever it needs to go across the globe. Our global fulfillment and logistics teams manage our warehouse centers around the world to ensure products arrive without issues and our dedicated customer support team stands by to troubleshoot anything that may come up. Finally, we provide reporting and analytics to track the project’s overall performance.
“The best part about working with Imprint Engine is their customer service and their speed to deliver on projects. Working with a large global team, we have a variety of different needs that come through that IE has always been able to deliver on. They are always willing to hop on a last minute call or Zoom and gladly deliver on short lead projects!”
— Anna Meindersee, DocuSign
“Imprint Engine has the most INCREDIBLE customer service and selection of products! I have been working with them for almost a year now and I have never experienced this level of accuracy and attention to detail including the outstanding overall service I get with them. Even with our numerous orders and multiple changes, the finished product is always exactly what we ordered! Having Imprint Engine as a partner has made my job in ordering workplace and conference swag a breeze!”
— Michelle Layone, Alloy
Learn more about how we work.
Sendoso
Sendoso aims to help clients build a broader, stronger customer base through its gifting solutions. Its gift ideation, curation, and customer support helps clients save money and increase their ROI. And if global clients need services, Sendoso’s global logistics team and network manage inventory from its global distribution centers.
Sendoso believes in building authentic relationships through intelligent corporate gifting and does so through its “advanced, all-in-one solution.” Like Imprint Engine, it offers global customer support teams that are dedicated to ensuring project success.
Read more about how Sendoso works.
Reachdesk
Reachdesk makes it easy to engage with prospects and clients through brand experiences. While its focus is less on becoming part of customers’ teams, it still offers a one-stop-shop approach to storing, shipping, and reconciling products on a global scale.
Reachdesk aims to help companies connect with customers and prospects that are hard to reach by delivering “moments that matter.”
Read more about how Reachdesk works.
Global Operations
Many companies’ clients and employees are located all around the world. That’s why having a brand experience partner with global operations is key to a successful campaign or brand experience. For some brand partners, global operations entail only warehousing in multiple countries. For others, global operations means not only global warehousing, but boots on the ground around the world so that no matter where the end consumer lives, you have a local presence.
Imprint Engine
With teams in North America, Europe and APAC, we are positioned to produce, store and fulfill brand experiences throughout the entire world. We have Imprint Engine warehouses established in the United States, Ireland, India, the UK and the Netherlands so that storing and fulfilling orders abroad is as easy as it is stateside. Along with warehousing, we have leadership teams, brand managers and customer success teams dispersed around the world as well.
Navigating global logistics is hard. There’s a huge learning curve with maintaining quality control internationally and understanding cultural sensitivities and regional trends. Luckily we’ve got it down. With dedicated teams established globally, we’ve managed to forge strong partnerships with regional vendors so that we’re in the loop on quality control and can cut down on shipping costs and taxes that often accompany centralized distribution.
Unlike our competitors, we ship to more than 180 of the 195 countries in the world. Our IEX platform allows even the biggest enterprises in the world to reach people and make an impact from anywhere.
Read more about Imprint Engine’s global capabilities.
Sendoso
Sendoso offers worldwide fulfillment and inventory management and ships to over 165 countries with preferred shipping rates. It employs both US- and EU-based buyers to curate egift and physical selections that are unique to each market. Sendoso has also established fulfillment centers in the US, Canada, UK, EU, and APAC.
Read more about Sendoso’s global capabilities.
Reachdesk
Reachdesk delivers brand experiences at scale without hassle. It ships to about 170 countries and offers customers a global network of warehouses. Reachdesk also has team members located in three different countries to provide a localized approach to clients around the world.
Read more about Reachdesk’s global capabilities.
Build Your Brand With Imprint Engine
Each platform offers excellent features and services. While Reachdesk offers a budget-friendly, all-in-one approach, Sendoso and Imprint Engine provide platform models customized to your organization’s size and needs. Imprint Engine provides a brand concierge approach, giving you full access to our specialized teams as extensions of your own. We believe great products come and go, but great experiences live on. That’s why we keep the element of human-to-human connection at the forefront of everything we do.