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As we reflect on 2022, we’re proud of the work we did on behalf of our clients. But we also take pride in our own marketing efforts. One of the most memorable, and fun, campaigns we launched this year was our Holiday e-Card Maker. Instead of sending out a cookie-cutter corporate holiday card, we challenged ourselves to deliver a personalized, dynamic holiday experience that demonstrated best practices in email, web, social and digital marketing. Sprinkled with a bit of surprise and delight, of course.
The concept
Holiday cards are lovely gestures, but they’re often designed for a broad audience. At Response Labs, we’re not ones for following cookie-cutter, indiscriminate marketing practices. We like purposeful, meaningful marketing. More importantly, we care about those on the receiving end of our communications—our clients, partners, friends, and everyone else in our network. So we leaned into our digital marketing expertise, technical know-how, and creativity to give people something special, something tailored to their holiday preferences.
We came up with a digital card that allowed people to build by answering a short series of questions about how they’d like to enjoy the holiday season. Each card generated was both personalized and unique to the person. Plus, the e-cards featured different members of Response Labs’ executive leadership delivering holiday greetings.
Receive a prompting email
Everyone on our email newsletter list (if you’re not subscribed, change that here) received two emails encouraging them to customize their Response Labs Holiday card. The most exciting part: recipients could choose which one of our Partners (Andy, Brian, Dan, or Jen) would be the main feature of their e-card.
Not only is this a fun (and certainly amusing) proposition, but it also connects to something we think a lot about at Response Labs, especially in our internal and external campaigns: relationship-building. All of our Partners play some role in overseeing the broader strategies of our client accounts, and some of those relationships go way (decades) back. We had a feeling folks would be excited to see their favorite colleagues in their preferred winter holiday setting.
Create the card via a landing page
After clicking the link in the email, recipients arrive at a landing page that asks for their contact information and four questions to help design their e-card. The form strikes an important balance; enough information is gathered for us to communicate with the recipient, but we don’t overwhelm them with tons of questions, which often makes folks less likely to complete a form.
Receive and share the card
Within a few minutes of clicking “send my card” on the landing page, my fully personalized e-card arrived in my inbox, incorporating the exact messaging and imagery I requested when I filled out the form. Although a pretty straightforward approach to using data/information from customers to personalize marketing collateral, it’s a good reminder that simple touch points can still be effective and meaningful when deployed in the right way and at the right time.
We also know we can implement a similar experience to the goals of our current and future clients. Offer your customers/audience a straightforward and engaging way to tell you what they want, and then deliver it to them in an authentic, thoughtful way at the right time. Another pro-tip: make it something easy to share and/or screenshot (like this mobile responsive e-card.) And to top it all off, use this as an opportunity to (appropriately and thoughtfully) collect data first-hand from your audience. While knowing who someone’s favorite RL Partner is important for bragging rights, this approach can obviously be used for more tactical purposes to collect meaningful data points about members of your key audience.
Our customer-centric approach
When the mindset shifts from a message-driven strategy to a customer-driven strategy, tactics foster a more meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship between both parties. Although we certainly knew we wanted to send some sort of holiday card to our clients and newsletter recipients, we took the time to think about what our audience wanted to hear from us. This customer-centric strategy is truly the foundation of every initiative we take on because it works! And, especially during this time of year, we could all benefit from taking the time to nurture and appreciate all the various relationships we have.
Success with the customer-centric approach
At Response Labs, the Strategy and Data team leads the customer-centric approach for our clients. From implementing quick wins for results today to weaving a consistent thread of strategy across long-term, holistic planning. The combination of strategy and data as one team keeps our other teams connected throughout the customer-centric planning process—Creative, Media, Production, and Client Service. Just like the messaging platforms and content need to be interconnected and in sync, so too, do the teams executing the plan.
