Not sure if this is creative but surely it is complicated one. We recently completed a Referral Marketing Program for one of our customers. Here's what we created:

We recently completed a Referral Marketing Program for one of our customers. Here's what we created:

• A landing page which allows a user to give us referrals. If A is a referrer, he can give multiple referrals like B, C, D, E....
• On form submit, using the API, we would check if B or C already exist. If they do not, we create new records in Marketo with corresponding Lead Source. If they already existed, we would update their Lead Source Most Recent.
• Depending on the status for B or C, we would trigger emails for A. So, if B already existed, we would send an email to A saying we already know your friend. If B was a new record, we would send an email to A thanking him for the referral.
• We were also checking any matching accounts. So, if A referred C which did not exist in our database but more the account existed for C's company, we would send an email to A that we are already talking to  C's company.
• In a similar way, when B registers for Trial, we would send an email to A, telling him his friend registered for trial. A similar email will go out to A, when C registers for Trial.
• If B does not use the trial withing 14 days after registering, we would send an email to A telling him that his friends did not register.
• If B starts using the trial, we would send the referral reward using Rybbon to A. So, A would receive a gift card in an email, telling him that B has started using the trial.
• Likewise, when B makes a purchase or his opportunity is lost, we would send an email to A telling him his friend made a purchase or his friend decided not to purchase.
• The Sales Reps were given a option to validate a referred lead, and only after validation, the gift card would go out to the referrer.

My most creative marketing campaign was when I was able to create an advanced nurture campaign that was based on segmentations with persona rules. We had three streams based on where people were in the buyer's journey and we got our sales team also on-board so that when a lead took two or more CTAs they were then send to inside sales. This initiative was able to increase our engagement numbers and give more warm leads to our inside sales team.

I don't know how novel this is, but at my last company we tested sending out the second invitation to a webinar to look like it was being forwarded from their Sales Rep and checking to see if they got it. That way, people who were unable to attend were more likely to respond to the email directly, which opened up a conversation with sales.

We mailed out empty ipad boxes to select contacts and asked them to rsvp and join us at the tradeshow for a personal tour to receive the ipad.  Success pretty much guaranteed.

A few months ago my leadership team decided to cut our inside sales team. I had a few weeks to pull together an automated system that "replaced" all the work Inside Sales used to handle. Since implementation, we've gotten feedback from all regions that they are now seeing more qualified leads than ever before. We have also managed to shrink our opportunity open to close time significantly (still running the numbers on this).

We got three MQLs last quarter from a Closed Lost Survey with an Amazon Gift Card reward. The survey comes via email "from" our CEO and has a personalized message about the reason for losing, as reported by the sales rep. We originally launched it to get better product intelligence, but it's getting us deals!

Hands down: LeadMD Monsters of Funnel

Take a look, experience it and soak it in - we set out to position the top thought-leaders in as a rotating lineup supergroup. This is the 2nd MOF campaign - 1 per year where the "greatest band in B2B takes on the #ABM technology stack" in a way that we've had a lot of fun with and stands out from the droves of "content" that sucks.

This campaign involved me wearing a ton of makeup, allowed 8 companies to collaborate, amplified our social presence in a major way all for zero cost other than my sunk costs for employee wages. Current lifetime ROI is over 250K in sourced and over 600K in attributed influence.

Justin

Using Gifs of our product in use within emails. Registration for our webinar went through the roof!

We have recently done a nurture campaign for our clients independent retailers (their customers) based around a Retailer Reward Club.

• There are 15 streams in the nurture campaign. Retailers progress through the streams based on cumulative spend against personal targets and the rewards points reached.
• There are 3 classes of retailers (segments)
• Each retailer starts with a Welcome to Rewards Club.
• Via a series of emails in each stream (easy to replicate from a template) they receive tailored and segmented emails designed to get them to place orders with the manufacturer (our client) showing them the points they have (token), what they have already earned as a reward (snippets based on type of retailer and stream and different each time) and what reward they can look forward to next (snippets based on type of retailer and stream) if they only place an order of £x (token).
• Emails are both information based and also take the form of a teaser campaign to tempt them into placing an order.

The results have been amazing.

• Engagement is the highest of any campaign operated with this group in 2 years.
• In only 3 months, over 60% of the retailers have increased their spend by over 20% ABOVE the stretch forecast spend that the client wanted them to achieve.
• Retailers engaged with the campaign are showing a 40% higher growth in spend with our client than those that are not engaged.
• The campaign has made a real and directly measurable contribution to the bottom line.

The campaign that has been effective and creative for us is putting our CEO's vision of our news alerts (7 types) as free content for lead generation, and as an entry point to upgrading to our other related products to a reality.  Some of the content mixed into the alerts include original stories written by our editors which are locked to non paid subscribers.  If they want to access the locked story, they either pay for it, or do a trial subscription. But based on the leads activities such as specific web page visits, and news alert options, they are added to one of the 5 nurture programs.  The goal of the nurture programs is to convert the leads to trial subscribers and ultimately to paid subscribers and cross-sell. 

The results are:

We converted some leads to paid subscribers out of the locked stories. 

We converted the trial subscribers who came from the nurture programs who had the high behavior scores to paid subscribers.

Some of the leads became prospects for one of our sales director in her audience development for a couple of niche events. 

Our Advertising salesperson sold some banner ads on the news alert emails.

Because I have fun with the "Whose story got read the most" which I post monthly on chatter at work, we created a monthly digest of the top 10 stories from the alerts and is now another source for banner advertising and email sponsorship, and it's also a second chance consumption of our content.