By the end of a three-day conference, Kassandra Mendes’ scavenger hunt-style activation had clocked over 16k visitors, 500+ check-ins, and a 90% positive experience rating. Oh yeah, and a two-thousand percent increase in new members of The Spot, HubSpot’s professional networking community for the global majority.
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While I can’t promise you any 2000% increases, I can share with you the tactics that Mendes and her team used to build an event so successful that they brought in 1,600 new community members. You can also download the scavenger hunt activities to use as inspo for your own activation.
The Ultimate Event Planning Checklist
A step-by-step event checklist taking you through:
- Pre-Event Planning
- Event Logistics
- Event Program and Content
- Post-Event Follow-up
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Swag Quest
Mendes is a principal marketing manager at HubSpot and a community manager at The Spot, and she’s no stranger to a successful event — she’s worked conference activations for eight years running, and this is the third INBOUND activation she’s designed. (If you’re not familiar with INBOUND, it’s huge: 200+ sessions and 12k+ attendees.)
Based on past participation numbers, Mendes ordered 500+ units each of stickers, T-shirts, hats, socks, and tote bags for the September 2024 conference. The Spot’s booth was centrally located to attract maximum foot traffic, and anybody and everybody was invited to participate.
Participants picked up scavenger hunt-style checklists packed with prompts to break the ice and get them moving through the space. A tiered rewards system meant that you could earn a sticker by completing as few as three activities — you could even pick freebies like “Snap a selfie at the All Black Collective AfroFuturist Photo Wall” or “Go to a Main Stage Spotlight session.”
Download the Swag Quest Scavenger Hunt Checklist [Free PDF]
Six completed actions earned a tote bag; 10 earned socks; 15, a T-shirt; and 18, a hat.
But if you want the whole swag pack, you gotta play to win. And that’s what nearly everybody did.
Completing the full scavenger hunt took a little more verve (and time) — playing a board game with somebody new, finding someone with a birthday close to yours, or asking someone what inspired them to attend the conference.
Step 1: Build on a solid foundation.
The strength of The Spot as an engaged community was essential to a successful INBOUND event. (And I think we can all agree that a four-figure increase is pretty darn successful.)
Its roots go all the way back to 2016, when Black@INBOUND began as a community meetup for Black professionals. In 2021, Mendes organized its first activation for INBOUND.
But Black@INBOUND was more than a yearly touchpoint — it was a year-round community.
So in May 2024, it relaunched as the All Black Collective, hosting events that “really focused on helping Black professionals gain the social capital that they need to grow their careers and accelerate their businesses,” Mendes tells me.
The All Black Collective was a success by every measure — Mendes says that “we’d reached a thousand members, we had high NPS numbers, folks were finding mentors and getting jobs.”
Just a few months before INBOUND ’24, it expanded its networking platform as The Spot and welcomed Conexión, a new group for Latine professionals. The Spot is open to the global majority — BIPOC professionals around the world — and Mendes and her team are actively working on adding more communities under its umbrella.
All of this meant that newbies were met with a vibrant, thriving community that could provide them real value. The scavenger hunt prompts were designed to connect them with community members who could share their successes, a nifty bit of organic marketing.
The Ultimate Event Planning Checklist
A step-by-step event checklist taking you through:
- Pre-Event Planning
- Event Logistics
- Event Program and Content
- Post-Event Follow-up
Download Free
All fields are required.
Step 2: Develop a spectacular swag strategy.
All this swag wasn’t exactly free for conference attendees. There wasn’t a warm-up act shooting a T-shirt cannon into the crowd.
“We’re using the swag as an incentive to network,” Mendes says.
Basha Coleman, a principal marketing manager for blog audience development, worked all three days of Swag Quest at this year’s INBOUND. She handed out print-outs of the scavenger hunt checklist and gave participants a wristband to track attendance.
By the end of the first day, Coleman estimates that they’d gone through about 60% of the swag. “Most people wanted all the swag,” she laughs.
Participants were so excited about the swag because Mendes has taken pains to invest in high-quality pieces. The hats in particular “have become a collector’s item,” she says. They redesign it every year, and “people love to display their hats and ask us what next year’s designs will be.”
She also recommends working with a supplier that’s meaningful to your community. For the past two years, Mendes partnered with Congo Clothing Co., which donates proceeds to job training for survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Step 3: Write thoughtful, strategic prompts.
To brainstorm activities for the scavenger hunt, Mendes and her team thought about their main CTA: Joining The Spot community. “That’s always an action item for any of our swag redemptions,” Mendes says.
“We make sure that all the action steps we want participants to complete are included in swag redemption,” she says. “So if we want them to check in, we make sure that’s an action item they have to complete to get swag.” The Spot’s conference space had interactive elements like a photo booth and recording studio, so those activities also made it on the scavenger hunt.
To fulfill the networking component that’s key to The Spot’s success, Mendes says that they “made sure that people are able to have culturally relevant conversations,” like talking about a favorite book or podcast. And “we try to make sure that they‘re fun and different from year after year so people don’t feel like they're following the same kinds of prompts,” Mendes says.
The scavenger hunt also encourages people to seek out differences. For example, many participants are in the same industry, so the scavenger hunt asked them to find somebody in a different industry.
Because the Conexión community has many native Spanish and Portuguese speakers, Mendes wanted to create a welcoming and inclusive space. To get people talking, one of the prompts was to find somebody who speaks a second or third language.
Step 4: Measure, measure, measure.
As soon as people stepped into The Spot’s INBOUND space, volunteers checked them in and asked them to sign up for the newsletter.
Based on previous conferences, Mendes allocated a certain percentage of swag for each day. Since most of the action happens on day one, she allocated 60% for the first day of the conference. She designated 30% for day two and 10% for the final day, when attendees often leave early.
I already mentioned the 2000% increase in new community members, but that’s just one of a long list of impressive achievements:
- 83.25% increase in unique visits to The Spot’s landing page
- 140% increase in page views
- 256% increase in users who are active in the community’s online platform
- INBOUND swag contributed to over 2,088 days of job skills training for survivors of sexual violence in the DRC
The Ultimate Event Planning Checklist
A step-by-step event checklist taking you through:
- Pre-Event Planning
- Event Logistics
- Event Program and Content
- Post-Event Follow-up
Download Free
All fields are required.
Takeaways
- Invest in size-inclusive, well-designed, high-quality gear. Your event won’t be successful if nobody wants your swag. If your swag includes T-shirts or other apparel, have a range of sizes.
- Design a thoughtful activity that fulfills your CTA. For instance, the final Swag Quest challenge was to bring another person to SQ HQ, driving the activation’s organic growth. And since The Spot is a networking community, most prompts were designed to meet new people.
- Consider what participants should get out of the event (besides swag). Swag is the instant gratification, but there should also be a longer-term benefit — for the participants, not just for the brand. That 2000% increase in memberships was undoubtedly good for The Spot, but it’s even more valuable to new members, who will be able to find or provide mentorships, attend exclusive monthly events, and share job postings.
- Build on your successes. Make the event more desirable for return attendees by changing it up each year. 2023’s swag bingo was a bona fide success, but instead of replicating the event this year, Mendes went the scav hunt route. (Next year’s activity is, as of this publication, top secret.)
Design Your Own Swag Quest
Coleman says that while working the activation, she heard a lot of “I want to do this at my company” and “I’m keeping this scavenger hunt checklist so I can show my team.”
Ask and ye shall receive. Here’s a few high-level steps to recreating your very own swag quest:
Plan swag logistics from pre- to post-event.
Know what your timeline is for ordering swag and getting it to the event, and have a plan to securely store swag at the event. To avoid leftovers, set targets for daily distribution — and don’t forget to set some swag aside for VIPs and volunteers.
Partner with meaningful, high-quality suppliers.
This cannot be overstated: If you want your swag to become collectors’ items, it’s gotta be good. And partnering with a supplier whose mission resonates with your community builds goodwill all around.
Design strategic prompts.
When brainstorming activities for your scavenger hunt, use your primary CTAs as your guide, but also incorporate icebreaker-style questions that reflect the interests and priorities of your audience.
Swag Quest organizers printed the scavenger hunt as a paper handout, but you could also use a QR code to offer a digital version to participants. (You can download a PDF of the Swag Quest checklist for ideas.)
Mendes says that the activity needs to be proportionate to the amount of swag — if you only have stickers and hats, for instance, you’ll want a shorter activity.
Set your KPIs.
The wristband system at the 2024 Swag Quest tracked the number of participants, and analytics on The Spot’s online platform measured the increase in unique page views, active users, new leads, and new members.
Close the loop.
Coleman says this was key to the activation’s success. The final item in the scavenger hunt was to bring somebody new into The Spot, closing the loop on Participant A and opening it for Participant B. “Having that flywheel built into it made it do its own work,” she says.
The Ultimate Event Planning Checklist
A step-by-step event checklist taking you through:
- Pre-Event Planning
- Event Logistics
- Event Program and Content
- Post-Event Follow-up
Download Free
All fields are required.
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