The hard part isn't the content, it's getting people to turn up. A few small incentives, a prize draw for attendees or a gift card for showing up, fill the room, and a quick thank you to whoever presented and organised keeps the sessions coming. All without turning into its own project.
Tip: A monthly gift card prize draw for attendees costs less than you'd think, and it fills seats.
Lunch & Learns, brown bags, knowledge shares, whatever your team calls them, rarely fail on content. They quietly fizzle out when fewer and fewer people show up. Getting take-up right is the whole game, and it comes down to two levers: give people a real reason to attend, a genuinely useful session plus the odd small perk or prize draw, and look after the people who present and organise so the sessions keep coming. A gift card prize draw does the first job; a group card the attendees sign, with a gift card added, does the second. Both are quick, cheap, and easy to repeat every session.
Take-up comes down to two things: attendees who feel it's worth the diary slot, and hosts who feel it's worth running again.
People protect a lunch break unless there's a clear pull, a topic they actually want, plus the odd perk for turning up: a prize draw, a coffee on us, a treat for the first to join. Small nudges, delivered as digital gift cards so remote attendees aren't left out, are what turn a "maybe" into a full room.
Every session exists because someone prepared and presented, and often someone else booked the slot and chased the reminders, usually on top of the day job. A card everyone who attended signs, with a gift card added, tells whoever presented and organised that it landed, and it's the quiet reason they, and the next volunteer, say yes again.
Award-winning, too: ExpressWithACard was named Digital Greetings Card Platform of the Year 2026/27 by the Prestige Awards.
Attendance is mostly won with small, low-cost nudges. These all run on digital gift cards, so remote and hybrid attendees get theirs at the very same moment as the room.
Enter everyone who attends into a draw for a gift card, picked live at the end. It costs little, works for a full room or three people, and gives fence-sitters a concrete reason to actually join.
Send a food or coffee gift card so remote and hybrid attendees eat too, not just the people in the room. It turns "lunch" from an office perk into one everyone actually gets.
A small gift card for the sharpest question, or for the person who volunteers to present next, keeps the room engaged and quietly feeds your future speaker line-up.
A token for the first few to join rewards the people who show up on time and sets the tone that attendance gets noticed, not just tolerated.
Reward the people who make several sessions in a row. It turns one-off curiosity into a habit, and a handful of regulars into a reliable core audience.
Reward attendees who bring someone new along. Word of mouth fills more seats than any calendar invite, and it widens the audience past the usual faces.
Perks fill a single session; a few steady habits keep attendance up week after week.
Ask the team what they'd turn up for and publicise it early. The best incentive is still a session worth an hour of someone's day.
A standing perk for attendees, a prize draw or a small gift card, gives people a reason to keep the slot in the diary rather than quietly drop it.
Set a card up in a couple of minutes and thank the presenter and organiser after every session, not just the headline ones. Recognised hosts keep volunteering.
Build the card ahead of time, and set reminders for the recurring slot plus a nudge the day before so attendance never slips through the cracks.
Related ways teams say thanks and mark the moments around it.
Trusted by teams at leading organisations
Select a design that feels encouraging, uplifting, or light‑hearted.
Share a simple link so friends, family, or the whole team can leave messages, photos, videos, GIFs, and memories. No account needed for sign‑ups
Send instantly or schedule delivery. The recipient gets an email with the card, available to view and download as a PDF.
Fuel your prize draws and perks
Coffee shops, retailers and food delivery, redeemable at 200+ UK brands. Perfect for a prize draw, an early-bird treat, or thanking whoever ran the session. No subscription, just send it when it's earned.
Frequently asked
A Lunch & Learn is an informal session, usually over lunch, where someone presents on a topic to colleagues, sharing a skill, an idea or something they know well. They're also called brown bags or knowledge shares, and they run on volunteers giving up their time to present and organise.
Take-up comes down to two levers. First, give people a reason to show up: pick topics they actually want, publicise it well in advance, send a reminder the day before, and add the occasional perk for turning up, such as a prize draw or a small gift card. Second, look after the people who run it, because a well-attended series depends on presenters and organisers who keep saying yes. Thank them after every session and volunteers keep coming forward.
Low-cost, repeatable ones work best: a gift card prize draw for everyone who attends, lunch or coffee genuinely on us, a treat for the first few to join, a reward for the best question or the next volunteer presenter, and the odd bring-a-colleague bonus. Delivered as digital gift cards, they reach remote and hybrid attendees at the same moment as the room, so nobody's left out.
Treat the presenter and organiser together as the hosts of the session. The simplest, best-received way is a group card that everyone who attended signs, ideally with a specific line about what they took from it, paired with a small gift card as a token. It's proportionate to an informal session, quick enough to do every time, and it's the quiet reason people keep volunteering to run the next one.
Most series fizzle out rather than fail outright, and it's almost always attendance that slips first. Rewarding turnout keeps the room full, thanking the hosts keeps volunteers coming forward, and scheduling the card plus setting reminders for the recurring slot stops it slipping when everyone gets busy.
Yes. Everyone signs from the same shared link whether they were in the room or joined remotely, and any gift card, whether it's a perk or a thank-you, is delivered by email, so remote attendees are never left out of the incentive or the thanks.
No. Single cards start from £2.00 as a one-off with no subscription, and a prize draw need only be a single gift card, so it's easy to repeat after every session without a formal budget request each time. See our pricing page for current rates.
Yes. Anyone with the link can add their own message, so the card reflects what people actually got out of the session rather than a generic thank you.
Yes. Add a Group Gift Collection alongside the card and attendees can chip in whatever they like, with the total delivered as a smart eGift card, whether it's a thank-you for the hosts or a bigger prize for the room.
