Coffee and a Webinar

[Anonymous]

So, I just saw that Marketo is running a webinar where they entice you to join by offering you a 5$ gift card to Starbucks.  Has anyone ever run a campaign like this.  Is there anything I should know about a campaign like this?  What do i need to know??  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Anonymous]

Hi Erin,

I've done something like this before. Not a whole lot you need to know. Many vendors like Starbucks are good about managing corporate e-gifts these days. There's no reason to make it any more complicated than it should be, so you can just download your registrant list right before the event, once every week, or as often as you'd want. Then go to your vendor's e-gift site (like Starbucks' here), write your message, add your logo, choose your amount, upload your recipients, and fire away.

[Anonymous]

Erin,

Two things I'd like to add. First, any offer that rewards with gift cards can be the target of fraud, so put some safety measures in place. Make sure you have some sort of validation step for those receiving gift cards, whether it's a manual validation, a second email that requires a click through, or a wait step (if you are rewarding a purchase). I've seen people create multiple fake email accounts to receive extra gift cards, or order something to get a gift card and then return the product or cancel the service.

Second, you can automate the whole process with a webhook to a vendor like Giftango (InComm). You can create an account with InComm and set up a smart campaign that either calls a webhook that goes and fetches an electronic gift card that you can insert into an email, or calls a webhook that triggers InComm to fulfill a plastic card via snail mail.

Hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

Is it a good idea to have some kind of "rules" to get the free coffee, like a min amount of time they have to spend on the call?

[Anonymous]

It probably wouldn't hurt, Erin, but I suppose it depends on how many registrations you expect to drive. I've also done something similar where I've encouraged registrants to share with their networks and reward them at the event if they show up and they shared. It's been a good way to drive attendance as well as create amplification around our promotion efforts.