Communication campaigns are a powerful tool to engage and motivate your attendees on the lead up, during and post incentive. But it can be challenging to know where to start when it comes to creating a campaign that gives the desired results. In this article, we'll take you through the process of how to set up your 2024 incentive communications campaign, to help ensure you hit your overarching objectives.
The first step to a successful incentive communication campaign is understanding your audience. What motivates them? What are their challenges? What’s their age, location, seniority or interests? This information will guide you in developing effective messaging throughout the campaign. You can gather this data through surveys, focus groups, or by analysing past campaign feedback data. As incentives are predominantly about rewarding and motivating attendees. If you don’t know what feels rewarding or motivating to your audience, then you’ll struggle to resonate with your audience. Map out the personas and keep referring back to your findings throughout the campaign.
Before you launch your campaign, always define what you want to achieve. Is it to increase sales by motivating your sales team? Improve productivity? Boost employee retention? Whatever your objective, make sure it's specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Defining your goals will help you determine the metrics to measure success and identify the messaging and incentives that will drive action.
When setting goals, consider the below points…
Have you defined your overarching incentive goals? i.e.
- Increased sales
- Increased productivity
- Improved customer service
- Lower employee turnover and absenteeism
- Do the goals of the incentive support the overarching business goals?
- Will the incentive reward or motivate the behaviour you are looking for?
- Has the benchmark data for the goals been captured?
- Is there a plan in place to capture post campaign data to assess incentive ROI?
- Can you accurately track performance against your goals?
Your campaign messaging is critical to the success of the comms campaign. Your messaging should be clear, concise, in line with the company TOV and the audience. Remember that your messaging might slightly adapt throughout dependent on what you’re trying to communicate at the time. For example a teaser campaign might be designed to create intrigue and motivate, whereas a travel itinerary will be set out to be super clear to avoid any errors.
Top considerations when crafting your incentive messaging
Is it the correct tone of voice?
Is it clearly set out to be readable, i.e. with paragraphs and headings
Are you communicating the right content at the right time?
Is the message best served as text, visuals or video?
Is the message easily understandable for if English isn’t the attendees first language
Does the messaging need to be repeated at various points in the attendee journey?
Choosing the communication channel for your comms campaign is key as this will determine how the campaign resonates with your audience. Options might include email, social media, print media, push notifications and video marketing. The right channel will depend on your audience, message, and budget. For instance, if your audience is tech savvy, you may want to invest in an app, whilst an older audience may prefer printed materials (on sustainable paper).
A great way to ensure your communications campaign runs smoothly is to develop a timeline. A timeline outlines the key milestones, deadlines, and activities you need to complete in the lead-up to the event. This will help you stay organised, delegate tasks, and avoid any last-minute surprises.
Don't underestimate the value of technology when setting up your incentive communications campaign. You can use website landing pages, email automation software, and mobile apps to make your campaign resonate with your audience. Use analytics and data to track progress towards goals, identify participant patterns, and refine your campaign accordingly.
When done right, incentive communication campaigns can boost engagement, motivate your audience and drive results. If you’d like support with your 2024 incentive, then we have a talented team of specialists who’d love to help. Just drop us a line patrick.ockendon@bcdme.com