How I led our agency team to deliver a record-breaking demand generation campaign (and won a Platinum Marcom Award, aw shucks).
BACKSTORY Grammarly came to us two weeks before American Thanksgiving with the spark for an end-of-year campaign they wanted to launch the second week in December. The campaign goals were layered, but at the top level, the goal was to drive more web traffic and grow awareness for their enterprise product, Grammarly Business. KPIs were scoped for driving impressions and web traffic during the winter holiday season, and they wanted a hopeful campaign that could turn the corner in a buzzworthy way following 2021’s year of “languishing.”
Enter the 2022 Business Word of the Year campaign.
And for all you agency peeps, bear in mind this was a crucial time for our account health: our success would open up lots of new budget for us in the year ahead. Meanwhile, I was just onboarding and hiring new team members while scaling our PMO resources to accommodate crazy fast growth.
INSIGHTS Both heritage and emerging brands really benefit from breaking their own rules about what content “should” sound like, look like, and do to capture leads. Especially B2B brands. Especially at key moments in the calendar year or amidst #trending moments. With thoughtful strategy behind playful creative content and design, you can take risks that surprise and delight — and convert.
Campaign landing page
Explore the Word of the Year creative and our simple, but effective landing page capturing emails and qualifying previous visitors
4-email touches
We designed a four-touch email campaign to help drive traffic to the landing page and blog posts. We turned to scarcity (last chance to vote is today), cuteness (Vote Meow for “Fur Bomb” and abundance tacitcs (see which word won).
“Our customers LOVED this content. Your team is a true partner— even when time is tight and the stakes are high. Thank you for all you do. ”
Meet the Contenders for the 2021 Business Word of the Year
CONTRIBUTIONS AND DELIVERABLES
I led a team of seven (7), simultaneously onboarding new team members while delivering account management, project management, creative strategy, and creative execution. I also served as an individual contributor because “All hands on deck.” (We’d only recently hired up to fill out the creative bench and our Account and PMO teams were in transition.)
Organic social content helped bring free premium users into the enterprise product funnel. Scan the full case study or check out the conversion blog post.
Demand generation strategy, campaign concepts, campaign messaging
Content strategy and customer journey design
Copywriting, copyediting, art direction
Paid acquisition, organic social media
Conversion landing page and blog post
Multi-touch demand gen, lifecycle, referral, and sales outreach email campaigns
2 direct mail postcards, swag
Creative partners: Elaina Ilminen, Paul Nocchi, Sara Gates (copy, strategy); Abby Hoffman, Jin Yoon (design)
RESULTS
While the client only scoped the brief to drive brand awareness, my team saw an opportunity to pump up MQLS with a robust list ready to hear about the next year’s new webinar program. Our “Word of the Year” campaign accomplished these exciting results:
We broke all the company’s campaign records (and secured the trust we needed to play in bigger budgets for 2022).
Our awareness campaign actually converted 67% above the MQL goal.
Our email program performed a 32% CTOR above all other demand generation campaigns.
We created momentum momentum for the next quarter’s new webinar program (which we built out as a playbook after designing and executing the program so that industry-adjacent thought leaders could elevate the brand and product with their own clout and implied endorsements).
We won a Platinum MarCom award. …It’s always nice to be recognized by the industry.