In the B2B world, the holidays can be a difficult time to engage customers.
During the most wonderful time of the year, customers are busy buying last-minute gifts and spending time with their families. They don’t want to think about work.
However, Bomgar, the leader in enterprise remote support solutions, wanted to engage their advocates over the holidays.
“Our main goal was to get more of our customers, fans and evangelists talking about us on social media,” says Liz Shulof, VP of Marketing Communications at Bomgar.
In December 2014, Bomgar ran a holiday-themed campaign called “The 5 Days of Bomgar.” During each day of the campaign, Bomgar posted an activity – or challenge – for its customers to complete. This year’s challenges included:
Participants had the opportunity to win daily prizes, such as Bomgar swag and Amazon gift cards, and were entered to win the grand prize: an iPad Air 2, Apple TV and a Sony 48-inch Smart LED TV.
Advocates boosted participation in Bomgar’s annual holiday campaign by 331%
Bomgar used its advocate marketing program – The Bomgar Insider – to boost engagement during the 2014 holiday campaign. In years past, Bomgar relied solely on social media and traditional customer communication channels, such as its customer newsletter, to promote the contest. Leveraging their advocate program resulted in a 331% participation increase from the year prior.
During “The 5 Days of Bomgar,” 282 advocates completed 4,164 activities. This resulted in:
- 191 new Bomgar Insiders
- 75 new members in Bomgar’s new online Community – a 15% increase
- 11 new leads
- 12 new video testimonials
- 50 referrals for Bomgar customers who are not Insiders
- 75 new Facebook followers, 120 new Twitter followers, 82 new LinkedIn followers, 32 new Google+ followers and 44 new Instagram followers
Here’s what some of Bomgar’s customers had to say about “The 5 Days of Bomgar” campaign:
“Great initiative and dive to keep customers loyal.”
“I really liked this challenge. This opened my eyes to more of the capabilities that Bomgar has to offer. Reading the threads made me realize that you listen to your customers on product enhancements. From my experience, not all [companies] realize this, but you do! I’ve definitely become a bigger fan.”
“Awesome, awesome, AWESOME!!!”
3 keys to a successful customer advocacy campaign
Not only did the Bomgar team meet their goal of raising awareness on social media, but they also generated a rush of leads and referrals. Here are three reasons why “The 5 Days of Bomgar” worked:
- Interactive challenges. Advocates had to do more than simply tweet a link to a blog post or like something on Facebook. They got more involved by uploading photos, leaving comments and making videos.
- Strong advocate relationships. Bomgar’s advocate marketing team spent the entire year building relationships with advocates. Then, when Bomgar asked, their advocates were ready to respond.
Plus, the insights that the Bomgar team gained will help with their 2015 marketing initiatives. For example, the “IT resolution” challenge gave them insights into their customers’ top priorities for the year. This will help them craft relevant content throughout the year.
“Influitive is one of the most effective marketing programs we have rolled out in the past two years,” says Shulof. “It has allowed us to mobilize our advocates and boost engagement even during the busiest season of the year.”
Contact Influitive today to learn how to mobilize your advocates to supercharge your sales and marketing results.