Episode 18: Customer Award Programs Part 1
Part 1: Getting Started
Welcome to the next episode of The CMA Newsletter where 530 marketers get better at building Customer Marketing programs and strengthening relationships with their customers in less than 5 minutes.
See past episodes of the CMA Newsletter here. 🙌
I’m right in the middle of my Award Program at Sendoso. Picture this. It’s the day before you launch. You don’t have your smart list in MKTO completely figured out plus your email isn’t rendering correctly on mobile AND YOUR ONLY MARKETING OPS GUY QUITS THE SAME DAY.
Now, it’s night time and you have just accepted that you will figure it out in the morning. Then you get an email at 9pm from one of your winners that they NEED TO BACK OUT 😳 Everything goes live tomorrow!
Now I typically love the rush of an award program but man are things going all wrong this year. This is my 4th annual Sendie Awards. You’d think I’d be prepared doing this year after year but crazy shit just happens sometimes. 🤷🏻♀️ Like I said in the last episode about case studies, “there is so much we can’t control”. Same goes for an award program.
This will most likely Part 1 of 3. There is a lot to unpack. If I’m going to teach you how to do the planning all the way to the execution, it’s going to take some time. Plus, you will all learn from my blunders this year so silver lining. Also, I learned the structure and bones of award programs from Ari Hoffman. 🤗 Love ya buddy!
I’ll lead off by saying, this is NOT a one women/man show. Again, don’t be like me taking all this on solo. I’m a psychopath for this stuff so I can handle it but it’s way too much for one person.
Let’s begin this course with why award programs are so brilliant. Personally I love:
how deep of a connection you build with award winners
you get the majority of your case studies banged out at once and so many other assets (videos, blogs, social posts)
revenue!!!
You will need a single source of truth and that will be a program brief. It is the place everyone will go for answers. Plus, you may need it to sell this program internally to your C-Suite. The following should get you started 👇
Why an award program?
Benefits for your company
Influence Prospect Conversion/Customer Expansion
Net new leads
Deepen Relationships
Highlight our most successful customers
Create more advocates
Highlight CSM team
Demonstrate the art of what is possible
Benefits for Them
Build their brand
Showcase their hard work to peers and BOSS
Another or first accolade under their belt
Opportunities to network
Speaking opps
Get spoiled and feel special
Objective (Mission Statement)
Create an exceptional experience that exposes what it is to be an “Award Winner” through celebrating the best-of-the best on ‘Stage”, create more advocates, and help prospects better understand the use case success that your customers have attained.
In addition this will:
Showcase a broad set of successful use cases to the audience (customer & Prospects)
Celebrate winners to deepen relationship, create FOMO, demonstrate the value of your platform
Award and celebrate the CSMs who have made innovative, measurable impacts on their business using Sendoso.
Create assets that increase the shelf-life value attributed to these efforts
Goals
Establish your program as a leading industry benchmark
Increase awareness of use cases and success stories
Deepen engagement to support digital opportunities for customer advocacy
Build a resource of customer to be leveraged for other efforts (case studies, videos, events)
Secure attendance of high profile customers and prospects at an event
Metrics
Award Metrics
Number of nominees: 50
Number of awards given: 8
Number of case studies: 20
Number of shareable assets: 12
Event Metrics
Registration numbers
Attendance rate
Net new leads
Deal Acceleration of attendees
Upsell - Primary Campaign Source
Renewal influence
Oh I should say my program is virtual and it always has been. Most companies tie it to their companies annual conference. I hope to be able to do that one day.
When asking for budget, you’ll want to lay out your forecasted spend and results.
Spend:
Actual Award - $300 per award max 12 awards = $3600
Swag for winners - $2400
Registration gift to increase attendees - $20k attempted, $8k actual (based on past redemption rates)
Rewards for CSMs who's accounts won the Sendie = $200 x 12 = $1600
Freelancer to write case studies - $950 x 12 = 11,400
Total = $39,000
Actuals- closer to $27,000 (due to past redemption rates)
Revenue:
Forecasted Closed-Won Net new revenue Influence: 250k
Forecasted Closed-Won Renewal Influence: $100k
Forecasted Closed-Won Upsells (Primary Campaign Source): $50k
Okay you got the money! It’s go time:
Next up, you need to create you award names and their definitions. While you are doing that, I’d start sourcing the trophies. The are expensive and it’s really hard to choose a design. Try to avoid any with nuts or little bolts. THEY WILL FALL OUT in transit and it is very embarrassing. 😳
At the same time, I’d start gathering your judging panel. It’s really rough to make the call alone. Not fun. You can meet once before nominations and come up with some criteria for what the nominees must have. Things like:
Entire account is Green/low risk. (you never know if another user is unhappy and will pull the carpet out from under you)
Has seen success for more than 3 months
Has results with metrics
You can also come up with a “wish list criteria”. Call out what type of company you would love to see nominate themselves. Ex. Enterprise global company with ideal persona, etc. This is NOT so you can rig it! It’s in case of a tie! This year soooo many nominations were awesome that we considered ties in several different categories but because we had criteria/wishlist, it helped.
The wish list is also helpful as you will be enabling the CSM with email templates to get those wishlist accounts to submit a nomination. You can even offer a spiff if they do! You spiff them for case studies so what is the difference?!
Here is my email to the CSMs:
Hi CSMs,
It’s that special time of the year again. Thanks to your amazing ideas and smart sending strategies that enable our customers, the Sendie Awards are back for its fourth year in a row.
The 2022 Sendie Awards call for entries is now open through August 26.
As you already know, sending delivers a great opportunity to make our customers the heroes of their stories while increasing awareness around innovative Sendoso use cases. So let’s get the word out and the nominations rolling.
Here are the Sendie Awards categories for your consideration:
• Best In Show & Strategy
• The Pivoting Pilot
• The Innovator
• Out-of-the-Box Sender
• Always On Demand
• Live & Uncut Experience
• Social Good Award
To learn more about the submission criteria and to encourage your customers to apply, please visit our Sendie Award page. You may also nominate them on their behalf.
Entries must be submitted by August 26 for a chance to win. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me with any questions you may have.
We will be hosting an award ceremony event on Sept. 28 to both customers AND prospects this year! More info on that coming soon.
One last detail I wanted to share with you—if your account wins, you’ll personally receive a $250 eGift of your choice and be on the virtual stage with them at the event.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you and seeing your Sendie Awards submissions.
Your hostess with the mostess,
Leslie
Categories
The last thing I will touch on today is categories. Take a look above at mine 👆
They are soooo specific which I thought was a good thing. Turns out, some nominations this year couldn’t quite fit into the categories I created. They were top notch stories and I had no where to place them. It was so eye-opening. I’d recommend broad award names and at the award ceremony you can go into more detail.
Flip side of that, is to do MANY awards to fit every single use case.
Here is my landing page that went out to customers for nominations. You’ll see the category description for each and you’ll notice I have to pigeon hole customers into these use cases. Wrong move.
Let’s pick this back up next week! ✌️
Love your CMA Soulmate,
Leslie
On a personal note:
Here is my dog Benny. He is a mini goldendoodle and our golden child. Way better behaved than my 3 year old.
