ROI on T-shirts
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ROI on T-shirts
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#2We did some ROI calculations on purchasing and distributing t-shirts. Do you guys think that we missed anything, or made the wrong assumptions?
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#3Why use Click-Through Rate to calculate return? Cost Per Impression would make a lot more sense to me, since it is closer to how traditional advertising is measured.
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#4I think this is a cool calculation, and the numbers seem pretty reasonable. One benefit from tshirts that isn't taken into account here is simple exposure -- even if someone who sees the shirt doesn't follow up on the company themselves, let alone become a user, they are at least more likely to remember and recall the name. (Coming from MIT, it seems like Palantir and Dropbox had a lot of success getting good word-of-mouth campaigns going because of their stylish shirts).
Also, quality does matter. An extra couple of dollars per shirt can make a disproportionately large increase in the number of times the shirt is worn.
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#5Why use Click-Through Rate to calculate return? Cost Per Impression would make a lot more sense to me, since it is closer to how traditional advertising is measured.
Excellent point. We aren't traditional marketers and some of the terms are still newish to us. I will revisit the terminology of the article and update it.
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#6I think this is a cool calculation, and the numbers seem pretty reasonable. One benefit from tshirts that isn't taken into account here is simple exposure -- even if someone who sees the shirt doesn't follow up on the company themselves, let alone become a user, they are at least more likely to remember and recall the name. (Coming from MIT, it seems like Palantir and Dropbox had a lot of success getting good word-of…
Quality is important. We thought about the "branding" aspect of the shirt and didn't have any idea on how to calculate it. Do you know of any resources to determine how to calculate brand value?
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#7It's an interesting methodology. Some thoughts:
(1) 12 times is way too low for number of wears. I'm probably extreme, but I've got tech shirts that could apply for a drivers license; I've easily worn some of them hundreds of times -- let's say every other week for the last 500+ weeks. (The older shirts are too worn thin/ragged to wear in public any more though.)
(2) I'm not sure CTR is going to be as high as an explicit ad. Clicking a link is a fairly low barrier, and still only gets a 0.14% conversion. CPC is probably the wrong model to apply; you might want to look at it as traditional advertising and apply a CPM. For what it's worth, I'd bet that your conversion rate would be higher than average since the visitor has already qualified themselves somewhat more than just a casual clickthrough.
(3) For all of the times I've worn those tech shirts, I can only recall a couple of times when someone has actually talked to me about one of the shirts. Once (a nice polo shirt with embroidered logo) I was asked if I worked for the company (which was somewhat well known) -- the answer was no. The other time was when a fan of the by-then defunct company mentioned on the shirt remarked that it was too bad the company had imploded.
(4) I've gotten free t-shirts that required very little engagement on my part with the company. E.g. rackspace sent me a shirt several years ago I think just for answering a survey; I've never been a customer. Definitely consider giving shirts to people who can actually talk about you if someone does ask about your company. IOW, the CPM on a "talking billboard" is worth more than on a static billboard.
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#8We did some ROI calculations on purchasing and distributing t-shirts. Do you guys think that we missed anything, or made the wrong assumptions?
It's a really interesting post - I think one market segment you gloss over is college students.
Some products will obviously be better suited to others than this, but a great example I saw recently was Dropbox. Dropbox were sponsoring a CS project fair at my alma matter which I stopped by at. They handed out t-shirts (quite nice ones) to everyone there.
For dropbox, college students represent both their potential customers and their potential talent pool. It can be a bit of a bun-fight to recruit the most talented graduates, and the more you can do to get your brand across the better. And of course, students are going to wear those t-shirts across campus, getting hundreds of eyeballs every day.
Not to stereotype college students, but they if they're anything like I was they like free stuff, hate doing laundry (so an extra t-shirt is appreciated), and spend lectures frequently googling random crap (like the name on the person's t-shirt next to you).
(PS: If anyone from Dropbox is reading this, I am very sad that my less than a year-old Dropbox t-shirt developed a hole in it. Subtle hint!)
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#9We did some ROI calculations on purchasing and distributing t-shirts. Do you guys think that we missed anything, or made the wrong assumptions?
Aside from it not being ROI, I thought it was as good as any guess. What I was hoping for was a clever way of measuring some of the things you assumed.
I think what you calculated is called customer acquisition cost. ROI is how much you made from your investment in a given time, usually as a multiple of the investment -- sometimes it's quoted in time to breakeven.
Re: ROI on T-shirts
#10I think this is a cool calculation, and the numbers seem pretty reasonable. One benefit from tshirts that isn't taken into account here is simple exposure -- even if someone who sees the shirt doesn't follow up on the company themselves, let alone become a user, they are at least more likely to remember and recall the name. (Coming from MIT, it seems like Palantir and Dropbox had a lot of success getting good word-of…
Given we both just posted within two minutes of each other about how great the Dropbox t-shirts are I think we can conclude it was quite the investment for them!