B2B Marketing: How New Relic married the physical and digital to connect its brand with customers

“How do you excite both current and potential customers at a crowded event?” was the question Baxter Denney, Vice President, Growth Marketing, New Relic, and his team were facing leading up to an event they attend yearly.

They decided to expand a brand-defining “Data Nerd” campaign by launching a photo booth, a move they hoped would engage customers in the brand’s community.
 

CAMPAIGN

With the idea of a "photo booth" that a creative team would staff, they decided to take high-quality photos and then edit them in real time into a "We are all data nerds" billboard image. Each billboard was unique as the attendees filled in the "Data helps me _____" phrase, which was added to the billboard image.

The team then used the billboards as a digital asset to get customers engaged socially online as well as to act as an extension of the conference itself, to live on after it was over.
 

Create a word-of-mouth atmosphere

"I think one of the things that was really cool about this campaign is, because we were able to share it on social media and people retweeted it and so forth, it had this word-of-mouth feel where people were seeing these billboards being tweeted out and were curious about it," Denney said.
 

 

People at the event would see the picture billboards on social media, and ask others how they could get one. They would also tweet at New Relic and be directed to the booth.

Because the team had promoted during the first day, and participants had also tweeted and told others about the effort, people were able to see the result and wanted to be involved.

New Relic is constantly engaged with customers on social media, he added, especially Twitter, which increases during campaigns and events.

 

 

 

Don’t stop with the curtain call — Extend the campaign post-event

After the event, Denney said, "You want to be the one that they go to every year. For us, it’s just a way for us to build that deep relationship with our customers and extend that campaign post-event.”

Since customers who had participated in the event were some of the most engaged and active, the team wanted to prolong the social aspect of the campaign, even after the event concluded. Denney and a teammate had the idea to take the images, print them and send the framed "tiny billboards" to customers as a keepsake for their desks.

 

 

 

 

 

After the event, the team also made sure they had customers’ permission to put the photos on physical billboard placements in targeted cities. This effort was also put into a New Relic blog post.

New Relic has recently launched the next wave of this brand campaign in Las Vegas for Amazon’s AWS re:Invent event, Denney said, and is featuring real tweets from users about their experiences with the product.

 

 

 

RESULTS

"Thinking about those natural extensions and how you [can] do something a little more customer-focused … that’s what makes it interesting," Denney said.

From this effort, New Relic achieved:

 

 

• 164 virtual billboards created during the event


• Over 200 retweets


• Over 400 favorites


• A 14% participation rate among attendees


• 400 virtual billboards created to-date


• Over 100 tiny billboards shipped to customers

“Think about ways that you can do something just a little bit extra, a little bit different for the customer. Something they wouldn’t be expecting,” he said.

 

 

 

Related Resources

MarketingSherpa Summit 2017 | Aria Las Vegas | April 10-13

How New Relic Married the Physical and Digital to Connect Its Brand With Customers

Inbound Marketing: 14% event attendee participation from New Relic's social media campaign

Email Marketing: 5 actionable tips and tactics from your peers at MarketingSherpa Summit 2016