In a galaxy far far away and almost 3 years ago….
It seems like only yesterday that we nervously clicked ‘Activate’ on our 1st ever Eloqua campaign flow. It was a Corporate newsletter – who’s name I actually cannot mention – and we watched expectantly – waiting to see something. We saw nothing hugely exciting so we raced to Eloqua insight and delighted in the fact that the send stats were rising – but hold on a second:
- Why haven’t all of our customers opened our email immediately?
- What are soft bounces actually?
- ……….and how do these dashboards actually work again?
That was then
Our Eloqua account manager called prior to the 2013 Eloqua Experience (where I was speaking) to ask whether we’d entered any Markies.
‘Urmmm no I mean why would we do that – we’ve only really started recently in Eloqua terms and I mean urmmm – we’re too busy right now’ was along the lines of my response.
I pretty much instantly regretted it.
I would have loved to enter – the Markies are something! I read about them on people’s resumes and CVs and LinkedIn profiles. For the Marketing Automation crowd – Markies are a BIG deal. Plus I am a competitive kinda person – not overly so – but competition is something I greatly enjoy.
This is now
We did take the plunge this year (encouraged by our new and very digitally focused CMO Chris Livesey). We worked together – a team in unison (wow right!) – Micro Focus and Borland marketing operations, programs and the field teams united in nominations.
And you know what? It did us all a lot of good. We took stock, looked back, laughed a lot and took a big gulp of collective pride in our accomplishments. This process actually felt really good. We submitted the campaigns and things we felt proudest of – we ignored the categories we didn’t feel all that strong in (a great goal setting indicator for next years’ personal development plans.) The Markies were being discussed with a buzz and in team calls – but was anything we’d done actually good enough?
The email
Customer Marketing Manager for Oracle Marketing Cloud, MBA, skee-baller, craft beer enthusiast, music fanatic, Austinite (according to Twitter *- ) Ann Davis sent us an amazing email – amazingest bits highlighted as follows:
The Campaign that made the grade
Micro Focus has been building complementary products for IBM platforms for more than three decades. Our current range of application development products enable mainframe owners to efficiently build and deliver core zEnterprise systems so we celebrated the 50th Birthday of the IBM Mainframe is some style. With it’s very own @Mainframe50 twitter account, blog posts, time machines and even a cake or two! We conservatively estimate (using analytics) that by the time our submission had hit the judges desk – we’d more than helped #Mainframe50 on it’s way towards 100,000 impressions on Twitter alone! Because it’s social in nature you can see it all out there – go have fun with google and Twitter and #Mainframe50!
We generated buzz that hit the headlines too:
The Now
Well – it’s hugely rewarding to have made the shortlist for starters! We’re out there as a whole corporate team (sales, development, marketing, field folks, corporate folks etc.) on twitter – follow hashtag #MME14 for proof – we’re all extremely proud.
We can collectively reflect on what made this campaign and execution ‘stand-out’ enough to have made the grade, a real and practical way to improve future campaigns and outreach. As a competitive guy all I can say is good luck to the other finalists and re-iterate the blog title: winning isn’t everything – but wanting to win is! I’ll see you all there and look forward to meeting with you all.
And if you haven’t registered for #MME14 yet follow me on Twitter to find out how you can get a discount on your entrance fee if you still need a ticket! Seeya there.
