A good self-promo gets the word out about your company and builds goodwill with clients and prospects. But a great self-promo plants an idea in the recipient’s mind – a seed that can be nurtured and cultivated into future sales.

PromoShop (asi/300446) sent out this Earth Day-focused self-promo that includes a wooden slingshot and seed balls.

That was the thought behind a recent Earth Day-focused direct mail campaign sent out by Top 40 distributor PromoShop (asi/300446), according to Kris Robinson, the Boise-based executive vice president, partner and chief sustainability officer and member of ASI Media’s Promo for the Planet advisory board.

Back in February, Robinson attended the New York Gift Show and saw a Seed Slinger Wilderness Restoration Kit from Modern Sprout, a brand that partnered with Top 40 supplier Gemline (asi/56070) in 2020. The kit includes a wooden slingshot and seven seed balls containing a blend of wildflowers, grasses and ground cover seeds. The kit also includes a “Wilderness Warrior Merit Badge” to display proudly after slinging the seed balls. (Modern Sprout’s website recommends distributing the seed balls to developed areas that don’t have any plants, like medians, under power lines or in new developments.) In addition, the kit has instructions on how to create new seed balls at home. For each kit purchased, Modern Sprout promises to devote 1% of its sales toward supporting conservation organization American Forests.

Robinson was thrilled with the whimsy and sustainability message of the seed slinger kit. “They only had 250 of them, and we bought them out of stock,” he adds. PromoShop also bought 200 seed bomb packages from Modern Sprout. Robinson and the rest of the PromoShop sales team sent the mailers to clients and promotional product industry influencers.

Included in the direct mail pieces PromoShop sent were cards – printed on recycled paper – proclaiming that the recipient was “the bomb.” The mailers also contained an insert explaining the fundraiser PromoShop is doing through PromoCares: Water4Good. The distributor is donating 25 cents from each water bottle sold until June 30 to a campaign to build water towers in Mexico. The distributor has a goal of raising $20,000, enough to build one tower.

As an added splash of sustainability, the poly mailers PromoShop used to send out each self-promo are made from recycled trash bags, another product Robinson says he found at the New York Gift Show.

“We made it the most eco-friendly type of mailer we could, not only promoting Earth Day, but also touting our Water4Good philanthropy that we’re doing,” Robinson says.

Robinson notes that it’s still too early to truly measure the ROI on the campaign, but noted that his team is already getting orders for the recycled poly mailers the self-promo was sent out in. He adds, however, that he looks at these types of mailers as “idea generators.”

“You’ve got to constantly think outside the box in order to create stamina and get more business,” Robinson notes.

Promo for the Planet is your destination for the latest news, biggest trends and best ideas to help build a more sustainable and socially-responsible industry.