Employee Onboarding Gifts & Welcome Packs People Actually Want to Keep

There’s a big difference between giving someone a bag of branded products and making them feel genuinely welcome.

Whether it’s a new employee opening their welcome pack on their first morning or a delegate arriving at a conference, the merchandise you give them becomes part of their first impression of your organisation.

And first impressions matter.

The best employee onboarding gifts and branded welcome packs aren’t filled with products for the sake of having your logo everywhere. They’re useful, considered and relevant to the person receiving them.

Because if your beautifully branded notebook, bottle or tech organiser earns a permanent place on someone’s desk, you’ve done a much better job than giving them five things destined for the back of a cupboard.

At M&M, that’s exactly how we approach merchandise.

Hiring this year? Tell us who you’re welcoming, your approximate quantity, budget and deadline, and our Merchandise Magic Makers can start finding ideas for you.

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Why employee onboarding gifts matter

Think about someone’s first day at a new company.

There are new names to remember, systems to learn and probably far too many passwords to create.

Then they find a welcome pack waiting for them.

It’s a relatively small part of the onboarding process, but it can create a brilliant little moment of excitement.

That’s why we like to think of great branded merchandise as creating Mini Moments of Joy.

A carefully considered employee welcome pack can help introduce your company culture, make a new starter feel part of the team and give them useful products that become part of their everyday working life.

The important bit is carefully considered.

Before choosing a single product, think about:

• Who are you welcoming?
• Where will they be working?
• What will they genuinely use?
• What does your company culture feel like?
• What do you want the pack to say about your brand?

Those questions should determine what goes inside the box.

Onboarding merchandise for hybrid teams

Employee onboarding has changed.

Your new starter might be at HQ five days a week. They might work remotely. They might split their week between home, the office, client meetings and the occasional coffee shop.

So your onboarding merchandise needs to work wherever they do.

Instead of automatically ordering the traditional branded pen, mug and notebook combination, think about products that move between environments.

A quality laptop sleeve or tech organiser can travel between home and the office. A reusable bottle becomes part of someone’s daily routine. A well-designed notebook earns desk space. A useful bag travels to meetings, events and the commute.

Even relatively simple merchandise can work brilliantly when the product, branding and packaging have been properly considered.

Not sure what belongs in your onboarding pack?

That’s our bit.

Tell a Merchandise Magic Maker about your team, culture, budget and what you’re trying to achieve. We’ll do the product hunting and come back with ideas that make sense.

Book a Complimentary Merch Magic Session

Make the pack feel like your company, not ours

This is where branded onboarding packs can become really interesting.

Imagine opening two boxes.

One contains five standard promotional products with the same logo printed in the same position on everything.

The other has a coordinated colour palette, considered branding, a personalised welcome message, clever packaging and products selected around how that particular team actually works.

Which company would you remember?

Your welcome pack should feel like an extension of your employer brand.

A creative agency’s onboarding kit might be completely different from one created for a financial services company, college, engineering business or sustainability-focused organisation.

And that is exactly the point.

At M&M, we don’t start with “Which products do you want?”

We want to understand who the products are for and what you want them to achieve.

Don’t underestimate the packaging

Sometimes you don’t need another product at all.

Changing the packaging, artwork or presentation can completely transform an existing idea.

A simple notebook and bottle presented loose on a desk is one thing.

The same products inside a thoughtfully designed welcome box, with tissue paper, a printed message from the team and artwork that tells your company story, can feel completely different.

This is why we look at the complete experience rather than simply filling a box with branded things.

Your budget should be working as hard as possible.

The same rule applies to conference welcome packs

Now take exactly the same thinking and apply it to an event.

You’ve arrived at a conference.

You collect your badge and someone hands you a tote bag stuffed with leaflets, a cheap pen and several promotional products you have absolutely no intention of taking home.

Sound familiar?

Conference welcome packs don’t have to be like that.

For event organisers and marketing managers, there’s a huge opportunity to make your delegate pack part of the experience.

Instead of asking:

“What can we put in the bag?”

Ask:

“What could we give delegates that they’ll still be using after the conference?”

That one change in thinking makes a big difference.

15 conference welcome pack ideas that can earn desk space

Depending on your audience, event and budget, your conference welcome pack or delegate gift could include:

1. A premium reusable water bottle
2. A genuinely good notebook
3. A useful pen
4. A compact power bank
5. A multi-use charging cable
6. A tech organiser
7. A laptop sleeve
8. A reusable coffee cup
9. A quality tote or backpack
10. A useful phone stand
11. A screen-cleaning product
12. Branded snacks or treats
13. A reusable lunch accessory
14. A desk accessory
15. A creative bespoke product connected to your conference theme

But again, you don’t need fifteen products.

Please don’t call us and ask for all fifteen. We’ll need a much bigger box. 😉

The strongest branded conference merchandise is often a carefully chosen selection of two or three products that connects with the event and its audience.

Give delegates a reason to take it home

The conference itself might last one day.

Your merchandise doesn’t have to.

That’s one of the biggest opportunities with a well-planned delegate pack.

• Give someone a useful bottle and it could be sitting on their desk months later.
• Give them a quality tech organiser and it could travel to their next conference.
• Give them a notebook they actually like and your brand could appear in meeting after meeting.

That’s where merchandise becomes more than a giveaway.

It becomes a physical reminder of the experience you created.

Planning a conference?

Tell us about the event, your delegates and your budget. We’ll help you build a welcome pack people actually want to take home.

Start Your Conference Merch Enquiry

Your branded product portal

Our unique branded product portal  is the simple way to sort branded merchandise or staff uniforms. For busy Marketing Departments, the portal saves valuable time and resources – and it’s a great brand guardian too. You have full oversight and control over branding on all products, whilst staff can order what they need when they need it. And without needing to email you every time!

So… what should go in your welcome pack?

Here’s the annoying answer:

It depends.

But that’s also why working with M&M is different from scrolling through hundreds of promotional products online.

There isn’t one perfect employee onboarding kit.

There isn’t one perfect conference delegate pack.

The right merchandise depends on your people, your brand, your objective, your budget and what happens after the product is handed over.

You don’t need to spend hours looking through product catalogues to figure that out.

That’s what our Merchandise Magic Makers are here for.

Tell us:

• Who is it for?
• How many people are you buying for?
• What’s your approximate budget?
• When do you need everything?
• And what would you love the pack to achieve?

We’ll take it from there.

Ready to create a welcome pack people actually want?

Whether you’re hiring new employees, refreshing your onboarding merchandise, welcoming a hybrid team or planning your next conference, we’d love to help you turn the idea into something people are genuinely excited to receive.

No shopping list required.

Just tell us what you’re trying to achieve and we’ll do the product hunting for you.

Make a Quick Enquiry

Or fancy talking it through?

Book a complimentary Merch Magic Session with one of our Merchandise Magic Makers. We can chat through your ideas, show you products and help you work out what deserves a place in the pack.

Book a Complimentary Merch Magic Session

Because anyone can fill a box with branded products.

The magic is choosing the things people don’t want to leave behind.