As first reported in BtoB Magazine, online marketing company ValueClick turned a spur-of-the-moment investment of $784 worth of cupcakes into hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional business. The cupcakes were part of ValueClick's 10-year anniversary celebration.
Tony Winders, ValueClick's vice president of marketing, says the company decided to celebrate its decade of business with emails to 30,000 clients and a print ad in April featuring a photo of a cupcake and a single lit candle under the heading "ValueClick turns 10."
Winders' sales teams originally planned to hand out cupcakes at the April ad:tech conference in San Francisco, but the company soon realized that idea wasn't workable within its budget. But the concept stuck with the San Francisco sales team, which, along with its cohorts in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, struck out into their territories on the Monday preceding ad:tech to hand-deliver the baked goods -- topped with a single candle -- to key clients. (The cost of employee hours and transportation isn't included in the $784 number.)
Winders hadn't initially planned to track whether the cupcakes would lead to any deals, but on a whim, he created a "cupcake" field in Salesforce to see what popped up. He says he was surprised to realize the cupcakes led to eight deals totaling $214,250. His conclusion: "It was the thoughtfulness of being in somebody's office with food that prompted a conversation."
Winders also struck green with the branded digital picture frames ValueClick distributed to approximately 200 clients as holiday gifts in December. That gift generated 12 deals totaling $251,222, or an ROI of well over 300 percent. But Winders says he doesn't think of gifts in terms of ROI. The main focus, he says, is on being creative and impressing his clients.