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SUMMARY:
Better serve your customers. If you want one tip for improving your results, that is the most effective one I’ve ever seen for sustainable success – better serve your customers. Easier said than done, of course. So to spark your next great idea, in this article we bring you examples of giving customers more before a content gate, communicating with clear in-product messaging, and shifting from company update LinkedIn posts to people-focused LinkedIn posts. |
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Customer Management Practice (CMP) offers research, online communities, and events like Customer Contact Week (CCW).
CCW has been held every year since 1999. Over time, registration and lead volumes declined year-over-year. By the end of 2023, it was clear that market behavior had shifted.
The team attempted a major shift focused on digital acquisition, with the goal of increasing attendance 94% for the 2024 CCW Las Vegas event. They launched paid campaigns across Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Bing in early 2024.
At the end of 2023, desktop traffic made up 87% of site visits, while mobile barely reached 12%. But thanks to the campaigns, mobile traffic increased 210% period over period in early 2024.
But conversions and lead volume didn’t follow the same trajectory. Despite the traffic surge, the site wasn’t capitalizing on new visitors. This disconnect raised a red flag and led the team to a deeper investigation of the landing page experience.
The website functioned primarily as a lead-generation tool that gated nearly all valuable content behind forms – even agendas, brochures, and speaker lineups. Users were required to submit their personal information just to learn more about the event.
Paid traffic was sent either to a bare-bones registration page focused solely on the purchase journey, or to heavily gated landing pages that offered little context or value before requesting personal information. The website was packed with content, but lacked a central location that clearly presented the key information and guided users through a cohesive path to register.
Creative Sample #1: Original registration page with gated information
The ‘aha’ moment came from reevaluating both the user journey and consumer behavior. In today’s privacy-conscious landscape, the expectation that users would willingly trade data for vague or gated content simply didn’t hold up.
“To create an impactful marketing campaign, you have to put yourselves in the shoes of the customer and understand their journey, what they’re looking for, and what will make them buy,” said Juliana Johnson, growth marketing manager, Customer Contact Week.
The team realized they had to lead with value to build trust and capture interest – no forms and no strings attached.
“We saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between customer curiosity and customer decision,” said Virginia DeFeo, senior marketing manager, Customer Contact Week.
The new landing page was built from the ground up with one goal: reduce friction while still driving meaningful conversions. But that raised an important question – what content should be ungated, and what should remain gated behind a form?
To strike the right balance, the team started by answering a few key questions:
Despite being around for 25+ years, CCW still had room to grow in brand awareness. The team couldn’t assume that new visitors understood what the event offered or who the company behind it was.
Armed with these answers, the team redesigned the landing page with a storytelling-first approach. It opened with a headline explaining what CCW Las Vegas is – ‘Over 25 Years of Strategic Insights Driving Customer Contact Innovation’ – followed by their strongest stats (speaker count, session breakdown, expected attendance) and imagery from previous events.
Just below that, they introduced a CTA to download the full event brochure – ‘View The Brochure ⬇️’ – with no form fill required.
Then came a simplified, scroll-friendly version of the event agenda. This used to be completely gated, but in the new version they shared enough to spark curiosity and establish credibility without overwhelming the user.
At the bottom of the page, they anchored everything with a banner showcasing the most up-to-date ticket pricing promotion – for example, ‘BOGO. buy one get one. Get two passes for the price of one.’ – followed by the registration widget. Whether a visitor was ready to register or just learn more, they had a frictionless path forward.
Creative Sample #2: New educational landing page
Over a one-month period, the team ran an A/B test using evergreen ads (trusted creatives that perform well even in fluctuating market conditions) that sent traffic directly to the generic registration page or to the educational landing page first. The results:
After fully implementing the new approach, the team beat their 94% target with a 131% YoY increase in registrations.
“This initiative has helped us rethink and drive more innovation across our entire marketing strategy,” said Lauren Miller, head of marketing, Customer Management Practice. It changed how the team thought about every aspect of lead generation – respecting user behavior, reducing gating, and focusing on education over extraction.
Creately is a diagramming and visual collaboration platform.
Creately added an AI assistant that could create diagrams with prompts. The team called the feature ‘CreatleyViz.’ They added it to the Templates panel with a unique design to help it stick out.
However, less than six percent of users who loaded the Templates panel clicked that category.
Creative Sample #3: Branded name in Templates panel
"After a brainstorming session that included ideas like adding a background color, reducing category options and more, we decided to start with a simple text change – make it very obvious by adding a common name," said Nishadha Silva, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Creately.
The team decided on ‘AI Templates.’
Creative Sample #4: Clear name in Templates panel
The team ran the new version as an A/B test with a 50/50 split for 32 days using Growthbook.
Even with a plainer, less eye-catching design, the clear name outperformed the branded name:
“Your customers really don't care about your fancy internal name. Just state what it is as plainly as possible,” Silva advised.
Cardiovascular Logistics (CVL) is a national cardiology platform that partners with cardiology practices. CVL is backed by a private equity partner, Lee Equity Partners, but physicians also get ownership in the platform as well as representation on the board.
CVL had a minimal presence on LinkedIn. Its content approach involved occasional company updates, often lacking engaging elements like images, hashtags, or mentions.
For example, in late 2023, CVL shared a press release announcing the addition of four seasoned executives to their leadership team. The post included only a text-based link preview, with no images to draw engagement or tags to increase visibility.
“We once approached LinkedIn as a simple announcement board – sharing updates and hoping they’d gain traction,” said Lauren Page, chief of staff & director of logistics, Cardiovascular Logistics.
As for the company’s brand identity, it had a logo with two primary blue colors and no secondary colors, and no guidelines or consistency around visual elements or imagery.
Creative Sample #5: Original logo
A new team started by setting brand guidelines to create a consistent look and feel on LinkedIn.
The guidelines incorporated a secondary yellow color for contrast. The circles from the logo were used in other visual elements, such as image frames, and examples of imagery consistent with their brand were also included in the guidelines.
Creative Sample #6: Brand guidelines example
The brand audit usage also results in some changes beyond social media. For example, the original logo didn’t look very crisp on apparel. An alternate, simplified version was created that just used ‘CVL’ and the circles form the logo with a heavier weight to show up better.
Creative Sample #7: New logo for apparel
LinkedIn was chosen as the primary social platform because the team did some research and discovered that the majority of healthcare professionals use LinkedIn for networking and professional development.
One of the most successful campaigns was the Leadership Spotlight series, showcasing members of CVL’s executive and physician teams. The posts were designed to feel personal but professional, combining imagery of people on the team with captions that introduced each leader and linked to the full leadership team on the CVL website. Visuals were designed using branded templates in Canva to maintain consistency.
Creative Sample #8: Leadership Spotlight LinkedIn post
To support ongoing content generation, the external team met regularly with CVL team members and partner practices to uncover meaningful stories and insights. "From the beginning, it was clear that CVL’s team wasn’t just doing a job, they were living out a mission. As we spent time with their team and listened to their stories, we saw just how much heart and purpose they put into everything they do,” said Katie Bergmann, Marketing Director, Marketri (CVL’s fractional marketing service).
One example was the 2023-2024 ‘By the Numbers’ infographic. To create this, the external team met with the practices’ marketing teams as well as CVL executive members to align on the most important metrics from CVL’s first two years. Every metric chosen was intentionally tied back to CVL’s mission of providing patients with the highest-quality cardiovascular care available.
Creative Sample #9: Metrics LinkedIn post
The team communicated the company’s value proposition through a series of video interviews with physicians and executives at each of the practices, sharing why they joined CVL and how it allowed them to grow. “We helped our audience see not just what we do, but why we do it,” Page said.
Creative Sample #10: Video LinkedIn post
Hashtags that delivered the strongest results were #Cardiology, #CardiovascularCare, and #HealthcareInnovation.
While the LinkedIn strategy drove strong results overall, not every tactic was equally effective. Posts that just shared blog posts or news with no tags for the subject matter experts (SMEs) who helped make the content did not perform as well as the posts that felt more personal. Also, posts with no clear call-to-action (CTA) got less attention.
This reaffirmed to the team that it was key to make content showcasing CVL’s people and encourage interaction.
Over the course of a year (December 2023–2024), CVL’s LinkedIn company page followers increased by 751% (136 to 1,158), monthly impressions went up by 58% (4,076 to 6,447), and engagement rate nearly doubled (7.54% to 14.3%).
Beyond LinkedIn growth, the content strategy also contributed to broader business outcomes. In the second half of 2024 compared to the first, website traffic from organic social increased by 147% (171 to 422 sessions) and generated three qualified leads, compared to zero in the first half of the year.
“One clear fact stood out – people relate best to people – whether it’s celebrating physicians’ achievements, sharing the stories of partner practices, or highlighting leaders within the organization,” Bergmann said.
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