Upcycling content with eGifts sets demand generation records

Old content lurking on your website might be more valuable than you think. Just ask the demand generation team at PerformLine. They’re turning evergreen content into a demo booking machine with a strategic marketing campaign that incorporates corporate gifting to incentivize engagement.  

“It’s been our most successful Sendoso campaign in terms of generating demo requests,” explained Gianna Barrere, content marketing manager at PeformLine.

Barrere created the Summer Reading Program campaign, which leveraged existing digital content to generate six inbound demos. It’s a 100% increase in demo requests from content, quarter over quarter.

Companies typically create content, use it for a week or two, and move on to the next project. The cycle leaves expensive, valuable content to be forgotten.

It’s a pain point recognized by the PerformLine team, especially in the summer, when employees are on vacation. Generating new content can be hard for companies.

As the leading provider of compliance technology, PerformLine targets consumer finance and highly regulated organizations and often sees engagement dip in the summer as prospects also enjoy their vacations.

So rather than reinventing the content wheel, Barrere decided to upcycle her evergreen digital content. 

“It was a shot in the dark where either it works, and we get demos from it, or it doesn’t work, and no big deal.”

Barrere’s shot in the dark worked. It translated to 87× ROI in opportunity value for annual recurring revenue (ARR) and a 33% conversion rate from demos to opportunities.

The program was positioned as a fun way to brush up on best practices during the slower summer months. The digital play used blog posts, reports, guides, and more to engage accounts using email marketing. 

Starting in June, PerformLine sent a weekly email that featured existing content. Recipients were prompted to read it and take a short quiz.

Anyone who completed the summer reading assignment received a $5 eGift card of their choice. Barrere used the Sendoso Choice option to let recipients pick from one of four gifts. Each week, the gift card options changed to keep prospects engaged.

Week 1 Theme: A Little Something

• Gift card options: Amazon, CVS, Walmart, Target

Week 2: Something Sweet

• Cold Stone, Carvel, Pinkberry

Week 3: A Little Pick-Me-Up

• Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Panera

Week 4: For the (Home) Office

• Office Depot, Staples, Lowe’s, Home Depot

Week 5: One for All

• Visa Prepaid

Week 6: Charitable Donations

• Donation to charity (offered all charity options)

Recipients who completed all six weeks were entered to win the grand prize – a Yeti cooler.

Each cycle started with an email sent via HubSpot. After recipients read the material, they were directed to involve.me to take the quiz. The results triggered Sendoso Choice and the integration with HubSpot to send the gift cards. It also pushed important metrics to Salesforce which helps measure the impact of marketing activities.

The grand prize would be sent via Sendoso’s Amazon integration after the prospect scheduled a PerformLine product demo. 

It might sound like a complicated process, but Barrere said it was simpler and less time-consuming than previous demand gen campaigns because they didn’t need to build new content.

“It was one of the easiest campaigns we’ve run. There was some setup on the front end. Obviously, building the quiz is set up and the integration, but after that, we just pressed play. Everything was automated from week to week.”

The campaign didn’t just book demos. Barrere is keeping a close eye on content engagement rates and the opportunities it influences.

Within weeks of the campaign closing, the Summer Reading program accounted for 52% of all content engagement in July 2022. It made July the highest month for content engagement in 2022. The target audience breakdown looks like this:

The Summer Reading program wasn’t the first time PerformLine used Sendoso. However, it was the most successful content campaign in PerformLine’s history.

Previous campaigns engaged more unique accounts than the Summer Reading campaign. But none were as impactful as the Summer Reading campaign in terms of demos, opportunities, or ROI.

“Potential customers and clients loved this campaign, and we regularly received positive feedback. We had a lot of individuals eager to take their quizzes and receive their gift cards, and a lot of individuals made it a point to complete all six weeks to be entered to win the grand prize.”

The success already has the demand generation team thinking ahead to next year.

“We will continue the Summer Reading program in the future. We might expand it to eight weeks and switch up the prizes.”

The possibilities have expanded since PerformLine added Sendoso to its tech stack in 2021.

“If the sales team wanted to follow up on a big meeting, sending direct mail was all manual. We had our big closet in the office, we would get the addresses, and we would ship each corporate gift out from the post office.”

Even client holiday gifts were manually processed.

Now Barrere’s using Sendoso’s automated corporate gifting platform to move campaigns along much faster. The demand generation marketer even used Sendoso to incentivize survey responses by sending treats via Sendoso Direct. Even the sales team is using Sendoso now to reconnect with prospects.

“To send corporate gifts in bulk and not have one person on our team sitting there packing all this up and sending it out, it’s been great.”