[caseyschorr]

NewRelic integrated a free t-shirt offer into their signup process, driving leads through the funnel by offering a free shirt if the new trial customer installs the NewRelic monitoring agent. Here's a case study we did on them, 30% increase in leads by integrating t-shirts + marketo + salesforce together using the Printfection platform: http://www.printfection.com/resources/case-study-new-relic/

T-shirts work. Especially for all of these SaaS platforms and tech companies where all of the marketing is virtual. Everyone is doing email and inbound marketing. However, sending out t-shirts in the mail, that's different. People remember the (one or two) companies that have sent them swag in the mail.

There's nothing like a t-shirt giveaway via Twitter, or a random VIP thank-you gift that arrives in the mail. It shows you care, because sending a shirt costs a lot more in time + money than sending an email.