PFL Reveals The Inspiration Behind Its Preferred Address Opt-In Campaign

This week, I had the chance to speak with Eva Jackson, Director of Demand Generation Marketing at PFL, to gain insight into the company’s campaign around preferred address collection, which was developed to ease the challenges of event cancellation and social distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sal LoSauro: What was the inspiration for this campaign?

Eva Jackson: In early March, our demand gen team was sitting quietly in a conference room, mentally processing the fact that we had just had five of our 10 trade shows for the year canceled or postponed due to COVID-19.

These three key problems that all marketers are facing were the inspiration for this campaign:

1. Finding unique ways to engage prospects who are suddenly working from home;
2. Activating tactile marketing programs when you don’t have home addresses; and
3. Making up for the deficit in revenue caused by trade shows getting canceled or postponed.

SL: Did you use multiple assets to support the theme? Which ones were the most successful?

EJ: Our strategy was to send our unused trade show swag (a playful pack of marketing meme cards with a tiny display easel) to target prospects. We simply wanted to brighten our prospects’ days and illustrate a way they can keep their goals on track despite trade show cancellations. We used a digital warmup stream with four emails and targeted display advertising to drive our Ideal Client Profile (ICP) accounts to a landing page where they could opt-in to receive the mailer at their home address. The messaging is highly value-driven and clearly states that we will only use their home address one time to send them the meme easel. For more info, check out this webinar with a step-by-step overview on how we crafted this program.

SL: What came out of this campaign? (ROI, pipeline, conversions, etc.)

EJ: Just three days after launching our digital warmup to a list of 3,000 ICP leads, we reported a 25% email open rate and 14% CTR. The form page for collecting preferred addresses has maintained a 40% opt-in rate over two months. We’ve also seen a 5X return on investment in pipeline generated.

SL: Any words of wisdom to others looking to embark on a similar campaign?

EJ: Begin building flexibility into current and future programs. According to research conducted by PFL and Demand Metric, integrated multichannel marketing is the second-highest driver of ROI (after events). With more and more offices offering remote work indefinitely, it’s important that marketers create thoughtful, multichannel experiences that meet their prospects where they are. We are re-engineering most of PFL’s digital programs to drive preferred address opt-in so we can meet the changing work environment.

SL: How did you get involved/started in marketing?

EJ: I started as a copywriter for an Indianapolis startup, and quickly realized my passion is marketing campaign management. I’ve led project teams focused on content marketing, branding and demand generation. I love seeing good ideas come to life!

SL: What’s your favorite band that you’d love to see a “Behind the Music” special on?

EJ: This is a very unpopular opinion, but I don’t listen to a lot of music. Instead, I’m a HUGE podcast nerd. So, I’d rather see a “Behind the Mic” special on either the “My Favorite Murder” podcast (true crime addicts unite!) or an awesome trivia podcast called “Trivial Warfare.”

Have an interesting or cool campaign you'd like to submit for consideration? Shoot me an email at [email protected].