Thanks for the hunt Eric and heya hunters!
I'm the CEO of Alyce and will be around with my team all day to answer your questions, so fire away.
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TL;DR
- Alyce is an A.I. that tells you the perfect corporate gifts to give using personal social data;
- Handles ordering, shipping and reporting for 1 or 10,000 gifts;
- Recipient can keep, exchange their gift or donate to a charity of their choice;
- Is 100% free.
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The inspiration for Alyce: I'm a super health nut and every holiday at my previous agency I would get tons (think dozens of baskets) of chocolates, brownies, moose munch, you name it from our partners and clients - most of which I knew their kid’s names. And most of it would end up in the garbage.
The main points we are targeting with Alyce:
1. It’s all about the utilization of the gift --- Would *you* really want that branded fanny pack you are about to send? If the gift isn’t going to be used then it becomes a burden (now you have to donate it, trash it or store it in your bottom drawer), hence killing the thought behind it. For the same $100 gift basket you are about to send, you can gift a 1-hour golf lesson with a PGA tour pro through Alyce.
2. Researching each person and handling fulfillment is super time consuming --- So Alyce and magical technology and A.I. to the rescue. We do have human checks on each gift (training the data) which is why it isn’t instantaneous.
3. We believe in the power of choice --- When a recipient receives an Alyce gift, they have the option of keeping it, exchanging it for anything else on the Alyce marketplace or donating it to one of 300 charities. We have a curated catalog of experiences, subscription products, services and badass physical products. Gifts range between $30-5,000.
4. A gift doesn’t have to be physical --- Think of the golf lesson above.
5. Branding the delivery of a gift is great, branding the actual gift is sacrilege --- With Alyce, you can send the gift via email, branded handwritten card or branded box (new option). An unbranded product will be used far more.
6. Corporate gifts are sent to instill action - close a prospect, resign a contract/decrease churn, retain your employees, etc --- Sending the right gift at the right time drives these actions. i.e. We have customers decreasing their churn by 5-10% by sending an Alyce 3 months before a contract renewal. $50 gift to save a $20,000 contract. It works.
We have deep integrations with many of the big CRMs in beta where we are using similar A.I. to help tell you the most impactful time to send a gift to accomplish an action. Salesforce is first, being released publicly coming in January. Happy to add you to the list!
Corporate gifting can be fun, enjoyable and strategic and we want to lead the charge. Let us know what you think!
Greg.
P.S. Alyce is only available for recipients in the U.S., but we are expanding into the UK and Canada in Q1 2017.
Alyce