Welcome to the next episode of The CMA Newsletter where 576 marketers get better at building Customer Marketing programs and strengthening relationships with their customers in less than 5 minutes.
Busy week! I’m not exactly sure why I launched my new course and had the Sendie Awards the same week but hey like I said, I’m a crazy for this stuff.
If you haven’t gotten your 30% off link, here it is. Be sure to use it by the end of the October.
Okay the Sendie Awards are moving right along! If you haven’t read Part 1 and Part 2, check them out!
I had yet another slip up this week…
So we sent the first 100 registrants a cocktail kit of our signature drink “The Sendito”.
Inside we put a notecard telling the how to make the drink and that we will see them on OCTOBER 13TH! Nooooo, It’s the 27th!!!
Which means I will have to send an email explaining or just hope these busy marketers won’t notice and just appreciate the gift. 🤷🏻♀️
Lesson here is if you change your dates make sure you change them on every single asset. Staying organized with a program brief should help that.
We left off with notifying the winners and waiting a little bit to see if anyone backs out. Once you are in the clear you submit everything to the design team and they get busy creating all the assets for the launch and the announcement of the Award show.
Next, it’s a great time to get everyones testimonial on video as well as tie up any outstanding questions for the written case study.
While you have them, ask them if they would like to be a part of the advocacy program, be a reference, are they interested in speaking opportunities. Not in a pushy way, more in a “what else can I do for you Mr. award winner” type of way. The time is now, you got em at this point. Wheeze the juice!
Now you have more awesomeness to report on like X number of video testimonials, X amount of new advocates, X new references. ← also applies to the nominees.
*Tip* - If you have a slack community it is amazing to create a channel for the winners for quick updates. You will be contacting them for
Case study approvals
Headshots
Social post agenda
Event Slides and Agenda
Addresses for Trophies
so its nice to have quick access to them via slack.
Launch & Promotions
I like to announce the winners by just teasing the award winning campaign and make the CTA to register for the event to hear all about their strategy and results.
Last year, I had it so all the case studies were ready on launch day. Here is the LP.
I literally gave away EVERYTHING! Why would anyone join the event when they could just read the case study?
This year, my LP just has the company that won and a small teaser. See it here.
For promotion, I enabled all the customer/prospect facing teams with email templates in Groove or Outreach.
*Tip* - I’d meet directly with the Sales team to teach them how to tell the story of each winner. In episode 15, I list the ways I enable the Sales team to be story tellers. 8+ case studies is a lot at one time. Walking them through each one helps them absorb each use case.
Also and you know I say this all the time, PROMOTE hard core internally. Be annoying.
For the customer base I set up signature banners, in-app pop ups, promotion in my community, 1 email a week over 4 weeks.
Speaking of emails, the email I love the most and get a ton of responses is when I fake a forward style email in MKTO so it looks like the VP of CS is actually following up and forwarding the invitation to them. 👇
Same type of email goes to prospects. I have the MKTO code if you are interested in doing emails like this. Reply to this episode and I’ll send it over.
Here is an example of a social card I made for Linkedin. We are doing 2 winners a week for 4 weeks. Encourage your winners to post on their own. The LinkedIn algorithm does not favor reposts. 👍
Don’t forget any UTMs on registration links for all these promotional assets so you can see which one performed the best and double down on that for next year or other events. You will also see impression and engagement numbers from LI to report on.
Also, most companies will post from their Linkedin Pages only expanding your reach.
If your company is big enough to do a press release around the awards, then it builds organic SEO.
Have your winner post it in their slack channels or company all hands in order to gain visibility for expansion opportunities. Then, when your Account Manager reaches out its not a cold email. Now the are familiar with you because their co-worker is doing some awesome stuff with your platform.
Last year I created badges for the winners Linkedin but no one used them. You may have better luck. Here is one as an example in turquoise 👇 :
The Award Show
I will be hosting the award show on a platform called Welcome. I highly don’t recommend them. The platform is rough and needs a lot of updates. However, it is a great option for an award show because of its “on stage” feel and all the cool lay overs you can do. We are currently looking into Goldcast for its slick UI and other capabilities.
So something annoying about me that everyone who works with me hates is that I want to make something even better and I throw things out there at the last minute and hope that everyone can just make it happen.
So one year, I wanted to incorporate their bosses into the mix. I pinged them on Linkedin and had them make a video for them that we would surprise them with at the award ceremony. Shockingly it went smooth. My design team was a little irritated that they had to edit the videos.
The great thing about incorporating Sr. leaders is that it expands your reach and validates the value of your company. You will also get GREAT quotes for your website. Then guess what YOU HAVE ANOTHER SOFT METRIC to report on.
*Lesson Learned*- when you are asking someone to record a video for you, you have to say exactly what you need. Ex. if on phone-record in landscape, speak slowly, mention X, Go to a quiet space. This year I had the CEO of Gainsight do it in an AIRPORT. 😳 Thats all I’ll say about that 🤣
Depending on how many awards you have and if you are trying to do a 60 minute virtual award show, one slide per winner is all you need. It will consist of
Role and company
Challenge before using your platform
Strategy
Results
Who they want to thank (CSM, your advocacy program 😜, etc)
Gotta keep it movin!
Something you may not know about me is I HATE speaking opps, you’ll never catch me on stage. I do virtual but I’m sick as hell the night and morning of. I push myself to do them bc that’s how you grow… I guess 🤷🏻♀️ IDK.
So this year, I pre-recorded the Sendies. I did it this past Thursday and I had so much fun. I was cracking up, messing up, re-recording. Here I am:
Highly recommend pre-recording. I was the host and my co-founder joined me on “stage” because you can do some fun banter with another person. Last year, I was just cracking jokes to myself and it was awkward.
Things went well surprisingly. We will see how the quality of the video is. 😬
Now until October 27th, I can focus on registration numbers, personal outreach, reminders to the sales team, social posts, and of course the other programs I’m running. 😅
I will create an episode on the results of the program in 3 months. Can’t wait! I already have 80 MQLs coming in from this so I’m pumped to see the net news leads, Closed won deals, expansion opps, etc. In Part 1 of this series I go into all my metrics.
I also will report on how many published case studies and digital assets came out of the program. I will work with the writer on a recap blog of the Award Program and the runner ups/nominees.
In January, I will do one final push of the winners, like a “Let’s hear it one more time for our 2022 Sendie Winners”.
That wraps up the series! Hope you enjoyed it. As always you can reply to this email and it goes directly to my inbox. Let me know if you have any questions.
Love your CMA Soulmate,
Leslie
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