Strategy
Part of How to build a promotional merchandise strategy that earns its budget
Promotional merchandise strategy framework: score items by cost per contact
Score promotional merchandise strategy options by cost per contact, with a worked tote and bottle example, take-up rates, waste and a 90-day review.
What to take away
- Rank candidate items on cost per meaningful contact rather than unit price, because take-up rates differ sharply between products.
- Add printing and artwork to the item cost, as the budget guide does, and keep delivery on its own line.
- Treat take-up as a stated assumption, then test it against the real result.
- Record the waste rate, because unopened items can explain a poor result.
- Review at 90 days against the baseline you set at the start, and keep the numbers for the next order.
Why unit price misleads
Unit price is the least useful number on a quotation. What matters is the cost of reaching a person who acts. A cheap item few people pick up has a low price and a high cost per contact.
Cost per contact divides the whole spend by the people the item actually reaches. The whole spend means the items plus any printing or artwork charge. The result is one figure you can compare across totes, bottles or any other product on the shortlist.
A product list answers one question, what can we buy. A framework adds who we want to move, what action we want and how we will judge the result.
A worked example: 400 totes against 150 bottles
The totes win on cost per contact; the bottles win on perceived value and shelf life. A conference team has an illustrative £2,000 for a two-day event. Both options cost £1,800 once printing or artwork is added, and the remaining £200 covers delivery.
| Option one: cotton totes | Option two: insulated bottles | |
|---|---|---|
| Quantity | 400 | 150 |
| Unit price | £4.20 | £11.50 |
| Items | £1,680 | £1,725 |
| Printing or artwork | £120 | £75 |
| Total | £1,800 | £1,800 |
| Assumed take-up | 60% | 90% |
| Contacts | 240 | 135 |
| Cost per contact | £7.50 | £13.33 |
Both options cost the same, yet the totes reach 240 people against 135 for the bottles. Take-up is an assumption in this example, not a measured rate, so rerun the sums with your own estimate. If reach is the aim, buy the totes and spend the difference on follow-up.
The Green Book is UK government guidance on appraisal. Putting options on one common measure before you order is the same habit at a small scale, and it keeps the shortlist honest when a favourite item looks good on the table.
Set the per-contact ceiling before quotes arrive
Set a total and a per-contact ceiling, then convert them: an illustrative £4,000 across 500 people is £8.00 a head before delivery. A quote above the ceiling is out before anyone looks at colours. Five inputs feed that ceiling, in this order.
Framework Steps Before Choosing Items
- Write one measurable behaviour sentence
- Split list into groups, count each
- Decide who hands over and when
- Work backwards from event date
- Set total and per-contact ceiling
- Write one sentence naming the behaviour you want. "Get 200 existing clients to book a review call" is workable; "raise awareness" cannot be measured.
- Split your list into groups that would receive different items, then count each group.
- Decide who hands the item over and when.
- Work backwards from the event date, allowing for artwork approval, stock checks and delivery.
- Set the total and the per-contact ceiling.
Quantity follows the audience, not the supplier's price breaks. A parcel arriving after the meeting has a different job from a gift placed on a chair beforehand, so fix the handover before artwork is approved. Reach, waste and follow-up all depend on it.
What a wrong take-up guess does to the ranking
The totes lead only while their take-up assumption holds. If far fewer recipients pick them up, the cost per contact rises and the gap to the bottles closes. Test the guess against the real result before you repeat the order.
Write the corrected rate into the next brief so the second ranking starts from evidence rather than hope.
Record the waste rate as well. Items left on tables or returned unopened are a cost that often explains a poor result from a cheaper product. Shortlisting is where budgets leak, and the recurring errors are collected in promotional merchandise strategy mistakes.
Measure the 90-day result against a baseline
Set the baseline first: what the same audience did before the campaign. Without it, a count of replies has nothing to be compared with, and any rise looks like success.
HM Treasury's Magenta Book gives guidance on what to consider when designing an evaluation. Read it before you fix the baseline and the measures, so the 90-day review answers a question you asked at the start.
Give every item a route to a reply: a QR code, a printed code or a named landing page. Report cost per contact beside cost per response. The first measures efficiency, the second measures whether the item worked.
Review at 90 days with the people who set the objectives, then carry the winning item and its cost per contact into the next round.
Common questions
Which take-up rate should I assume?
Use the rate you expect for that item and label it an assumption. The example uses 60% for totes and 90% for bottles for illustration only. Replace both with your own estimates, then compare them with the 90-day result.
Does the lowest cost per contact always win?
No. The totes win on cost per contact; the bottles win on perceived value and shelf life. The objective decides which of the two matters more.
How many items should the framework allow?
Two or three at most. More options slow approval and split the budget, which reduces the impact of each item.
