Let’s talk about lead generation for a minute. And by a minute, I mean for this entire blog post.
Marketers are always trying their absolute hardest to grab the attention of their prospects… But now audiences are feeling over-marketed. We all know that stat of how many ads a person sees in a day (6,000-10,000 ads, according to PPC Protect)
Like all things in life, marketing and sales have come full circle and we’re re-entering the Relationship Era; one that prioritizes rapport building and one-to-one relationships, and people are more likely to work with those they know, like, and trust.
Customer-centric vendors now have more influence with their buyers and their customers are 4x more likely to say their reps were very effective.
The antidote to over-marketing, as Dave Thornton, Company Director, Thornton & Lowe describes it, looks like this:
A balance of marketing automation, followed by very specific and personal/ lead by lead contact is what I think will make a difference, which is, of course, time-consuming but will vastly increase ROI.
Dave isn’t wrong. Marketing automation followed by lead by lead contact is powerful but time-consuming if you don’t already have a solution that enables you to scale that reach thoughtfully.
Enter Alyce. Specifically, Alyce Activate. Alyce Activate gives marketers the ability to increase engagement and drive more action with key accounts through digital gifting campaigns at scale. An experience that leaves audiences feeling really personally connected to a campaign that was executed at a few clicks of a button.
Now, it’s one thing to say how life-changing Activate is for the marketers out there, but it’s another to show and tell you how to create the perfect antidote to over-marketing in your own strategies.
This is a “teach a person to fish” situation.
5 Digital Gifting Campaigns That Will Actually Convert.
Event Registration, Attendance, and Sponsorship
It’s no secret that we’re all running more digital events these days, as the majority (63%) of organizations are moving to digital conferences or events.
Which makes the digital world feel even more saturated. Your event needs to be able to stand out, appeal to the right audience, and attract registrants who will actually attend.
Leveraging a personal gift to VIP registrants and attendees can help incentivize attendance through your virtual events platform. Consider a promotional hook on your event strategy, such as the first xx to register or attend will get a gift emailed to them.
Whether you’re hosting the event or sponsoring a session at a virtual event, gifts can be a great incentive to drive registration and attendance the next time you take the main stage.
Pro Tip: Sending all of your attendees a piece of swag or an event themed specific gift and enticing them to wear it on the day of your event is a great group activation and can help increase awareness for your event during and after the fact.
Encourage Content Engagement
Content is king, especially in the buying cycle to educate your target prospects on why your solution is the best, solves all of their problems, and is positioned as a leader in your space.
Enticing your target buyers to read your content is a challenge for any marketer.
Research shows that different job levels consume content at different paces as shown in the graph below.
This temporary knowledge gap between different members of any buying committee can slow down deals while everyone gets on the same page
They say time kills all deals but if a deal is sped up because the stakeholders at your target companies have actually taken the time to read your content in a personal way, you can really show the value of marketing lead gifting in your sales process.
Consider using Alyce Activate to reward people who download or view your content.
Tracking the time it takes to consume content, and enticing content engagement through sending a gift with Alyce Activate and using a Post-Gift CTA to the content to be consumed is a great way to make a VIP experience out of a generally colloquial activity.
Source User Generated Content For Marketing Campaigns
User generated content (UGC) is a valuable channel a lot of B2B marketers WANT to tap into for the benefits. And for good reason; UGC campaigns are 20% more influential when it comes to purchase decisions and are 35% more memorable than other types of media.
But activating your customers to participate in a UGC campaign can be tough, especially if you haven’t yet built up a huge community of raving fans.
So why not send a gift? Send your customers a polaroid camera or a specific piece of company-branded swag, and use a Post-Gift CTA to entice your customers to use their gift and submit it to your company for the campaign!
Not only is this a way for your customers to get closer to your brand, but it’s also a great way to make your brand more personal by showing real customers telling their real stories in a way that doesn’t feel forced.
Spice Up Your Nurture
Pick a nurture stream, any nurture stream. No matter who you’re emailing, 54% of email marketers say increasing engagement rate is their number one priority.
What better way to drive engagement than with a personal gift?!
Like our good friends at Marketo say, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all lead nurturing strategy.
Adding gifting to your nurture streams shouldn’t just incentivize booking a meeting or turning an MQL into an SQL.
You could offer swag in your customer nurture to incentivize retention and advocacy or award your online community in your newsletter with a gift based on how long they’ve been subscribed.
You could also leverage gifting in referral programs and award members in your referral program with a gift once they’ve reached a milestone or influenced a certain amount of revenue for your business.
With Alyce Activate, you can amplify any existing nurture strategy.
For the MarTech Enthusiast
If you’re like me, your marketing team has a bunch of tools that integrate together and you’re just dying to come up with new ways to connect them.
We used Drift, Marketo, and Alyce Activate to accomplish this digital gifting campaigns where 50% of our program responses were ICP accounts.
Here’s how it worked:
We sponsored a podcast with Samantha Stone and gave her a password to give to her listeners for them to claim a free gift from us.
We set up a custom bot with a custom URL Samantha could share with her listeners and within the bot, we set up keyword recognition to accept the password Samantha gave her listeners.
Once the password was given, we asked the user for their email address so we could enroll them in our Activate campaign and used the Drift and Marketo integration to push leads from Drift to our specific Samantha Stone Activate Program in Marketo.
From there, it was as easy as sending off the email with the Activate Gift Link embedded.
Digital Gifting Campaigns Really Can Drive Sales
It’s not on the sales team to send personal gifts to prospects; marketers can get in on the fun before prospects are qualified to talk to sales, too.
Marketers are traditionally known for coming up with creative ideas to engage their audiences and making them come true, and Alyce Activate is the perfect tool to help you make those ideas come to life.
Remember, gifting campaigns don’t have to book meetings. Gifting is a great way to stay top of mind, build brand loyalty, and keep your VIP prospects engaged with your marketing efforts right up until they’re ready to talk to sales.
When you’re trying to find the antidote to over-marketing to your prospects, a tool that allows you to be personal at scale is a superpower to have in your back pocket.
