Do you ever feel that most of your customers are ignoring you? Take heart. You are not alone. As modern marketers, we are all challenged by how to get more customers to respond to our offers. Only a small percentage of customers pay attention to the content we put out. Many fail to show up at the webinars and events we work hard to produce. And even satisfied customers are too busy to recommend us to friends and colleagues.
So exactly what is keeping so many of your buyers from taking the key actions you desire for them to take? To start with, there is too much competing for your buyer’s time and attention. Every marketing channel is crowded. In other cases, buyers feel no urgency to pay attention to your offer and engage with you.
Messaging tweaks and conversion optimization do not work on preoccupied or distracted buyers. You must first figure out how to get more buyers to pay attention.
Messaging tweaks and conversion optimization do not work on preoccupied or distracted buyers. You must first figure out how to get more buyers to pay attention.
Allow me to share with you 5 proven strategies that use instant incentives to cut through the noise and create engaged leads. These strategies are based on the reality that every significant buyer action requires a kindling of motivation. Smart use of incentives can provide the initial spark needed to get your buyer’s attention and convert it to a response. Why? Because no one like to be sold to, but everyone likes to be appreciated.
Incentives give your programs a boost in three distinct ways. The first is the conversion bonanza you get from the immediate lift in response to your offer. The benefits continue when you present the gift in an memorable manner and imprint your brand in the buyer’s mind. And with the right timing, you see high conversion rates on follow up offers because of the engagement you gained.
Smart use of incentives takes advantage of all three benefits.
Here are five proven ways to use the power of gifting to attract and win more customers:
Word-of-mouth is still the best form of marketing. Referral programs reward existing customers for recommending your product to prospective customers. You can also use referral programs to drive attendance to key events. Marketo’s attendee referral program for Marketo Nation Online is a good example. Marketo rewarded every attendee who got their friends to register for this event with $10 Amazon gift card.
Instant incentives also work great with buyer surveys and pre-sales assessments. Incentives can dramatically boost response rates for such tactics. And timely follow up creates the opportunity to put educational content in front of an attentive audience. This is one of the best ways to increase engagement at the top of the funnel.
Many marketing programs use webinars and workshops as key programs around the middle of the funnel. But webinars and workshops are demanding of the buyer’s time and attention. Thanking attendees with a small gift encourages them to make the time to attend your event. You can move these buyers even further down the funnel by attaching evaluation oriented offers to the gifting experience.
Further along the buyers journey, many pipelines get stuck due to buyer procrastination. The trail grows cold as buyers hold off on registering for your service, or on signing up for a trial or on taking a consultation meeting. You can use instant incentives to target such buyers and motivate them to take the necessary step forward.
Now is a great time to think about how your company will engage buyers this holiday season. Every holiday season, banal emails flood everyone’s inbox and are duly ignored. To stand out, include a small gift in your holiday email campaign. A little gratitude will go a long way in stimulating holiday purchases and nurturing engagement into the new year.
Traditionally, incentive-based campaigns have been difficult to execute. A fair amount of effort is needed to buy rewards, track recipients, arrange reward delivery and measure results. Effort that is expensive and a major distraction from focusing on marketing programs.
Digital gifting services like Rybbon make it easy for Marketo customers to use the power of gifting. With Rybbon, you can now send gifts from your Marketo campaigns, wrapped in your own branding and messaging. Campaigns can be automated with gifts delivered instantly and hands-free.
The game-changer is that you can now own the gifting experience. You can gain greater engagement by sending gifts in your own Marketo emails and by customizing the gifting experience. Using Marketo also allows you to time your next move and capitalize on the engagement you have gained. Use it to tee up the next marketing offer or a call from the sales team.
The game-changer is that you can now own the gifting experience.
If you are already using incentives, consider how you are taking advantage of your buyer’s undivided attention when presenting the gift. Don’t let a stranger – a 3rd party – deliver your gifts. You lose some of the greatest benefits of using incentives when a stranger delivers the gift instead of you. It’s like buying a ring and sending the jeweler to propose to your fiance! You lose a golden opportunity for creating engagement (pun intended!).
Using Marketo to send gifts allows you to own the gifting experience and use it to your advantage.
You don’t have to settle for poor response rates and lack of engagement. Use instant incentives with Marketo to give your campaigns a conversion lift. Using Marketo to automate gifting is the smart way to execute such campaigns. There is no need to spend your teams’ precious bandwidth on procuring, managing and delivering gifts. It all happens hands-free. Importantly, you get to own the moment of gifting so that you can take customer engagement to the next level.
Jignesh Shah is the CEO of Rybbon, a digital gifting platform that helps marketers use incentives, rewards, and donations in their campaigns. Jignesh has been building and marketing products for over 18 years at start-ups and enterprises and was previously the CMO at Metalogix and Vice President at Software AG/webMethods.
The post The Power of Gifting + Marketo first appeared on Revenue Engine Insider.
Brenda has over 20 years of experience building, selling and marketing products for F100 and start-ups.
Brenda has over 20 years of experience building, selling and marketing products for F100 and start-ups.
