Case Study | Solutions
Customer Acquisition – CEO Event

Objective/Problem
Chief Executive Magazine’s annual CEO thought leadership summit was running behind schedule on both content planning and acquiring paid attendees.  Online and offline direct marketing campaigns relied heavily on business celebrity speakers and thought-provoking panel and roundtable topics to generate interest and paid attendance.  Could direct marketing get underway while the speaker roster and discussion topics were incomplete?

Strategy

  • Generate event date and theme awareness among target CEOs through a targeted, strategic use of Chief Executive list, online and print assets
  • Use a teaser approach to expose committed celebrity speakers and content on a micro-site and in direct marketing materials
  • Develop flexible templates which accommodate new detailed content and new speakers as they are finalized
  • Generate traffic to the website and event micro-site
  • Convert visitors to paid attendees through time-sensitive offers

Solution Tactics

  • Created a branded, high impact online teaser campaign for the CEO2CEO Leadership Summit
  • Targeted distribution of teaser campaign to selected issues of the Chief Executive Email newsletter, Chief Executive webinars and strategic partner sites
  • Developed joint offer and joint marketing campaign with an association and CEO membership organization
  • Used a direct mail approach that integrated with the online creative theme and allowed simple copy insertion of added content and speaker detail as it became available, in black plate production stage
  • Leveraged the Chief Executive Magazine paid subscription list for targeted direct mail and email

Results

  • Achieved record paid attendance to CEO2CEO Summit by launching direct marketing with digital awareness building campaign, followed up by emails, and direct mail with increasing amounts of conference detail.
  • Use of strategic partnerships and their online and offline assets to deliver the message and offer created a pseudo-advocacy for the event and helped jumpstart acquisition of paid attendees.
  • Paid attendance increased by over 5% versus previous year with the use of integrated direct mail, email, digital marketing and association marketing campaigns.