#announcements

would love to be a part of this conversation (to learn, I am only just planning my first as well)!

I'm getting ready to launch my first big one also! It existed previously but as a highlight of our user conference but it's been broken off for this year.

Some things I've decided so far:
• 3 awards with 1 being a pretty broad category. Historically they had 6 categories and some difficulty getting the right winners for the right categories. I'm keeping it simple and keeping a People's Choice in my back pocket if we have more than 3 rock stars.
• 2 months for submissions. AEs can nominate but then must loop me in with their customer to fill in the gaps and gather additional data for the nomination. Builds me a bridge to the customer, keeps them in the loop, and delivers stronger content for later.
• I plan on working through legal/ publication approvals as submissions come in (pro tip I got from @Leslie Barrett's newsletter)
• I found I am THE WORST for trying to pick a design for the physical award. All those crystal dodads look the same to me.

Maybe we could see if @Kevin Lau would have time soon to hop on a Friday call? But if not, I’d love to do an awards call.

This is a repost from CX Pros:
1. We build in a fake deadline to build urgency knowing that without it and honestly with it there will be procrastination. I find one month or a month and a half plenty.
2. So for the CustomerX Impact Awards we made two flows:
a. One for the self nomination (which drops them right into the application process)
b. Another for someone nominating someone which we encourage our AE's and CSM's to use for customers and peers.
c. The thing with having the two flows means there are different touch points. For example "someone getting nominated gets a triggered email letting them know so and so nominated them and asks them to go back into the application process". While those nominating themselves get a "we received your submission" or a "don't forget to fill out the whole application nudge"
3. I for one like using the same categories when I can because doing so helps brand recognition along with building that category's narrative. Plus if you can have second time winners they love showcasing "consecutive years won". That doesn't mean that you have to be stuck in what you choose this year. So let's say you have several categories and one isn't as popular you can definitely change it up. But don't be afraid to feel out your audience on these changes too. You are in the business of relationships. *I swore I had one to change this year and got feedback on interest in that exact category so I decided to keep it.
4. We did 7 for CustomerX Impact Awards. I run some other awards on a larger scale for vendors that are across all 645 categories under one badge. I run another that is three badges at a larger scale too which can get more complicated when done a very large scale. Keep in mind that with more categories there runs the issue of possibly more manual work.
5. Enable your winners! This is my favorite part! Give them all the things they need to socially promote winning. This helps your awards brand recognition and company's branding as well. Last thing is keep it human as much as possible. People love that personal touch so use it when you can!

I agree with @Marie Elliott on the crystal awards. We did modern wooden ones last year that we loved and felt sustainable. We're looking at other ones that use wood, metal, and plexi glass this year but modern fits our award branding.

OOOOH, I have a friend that has a wood laser business, they can do really cool things and personalize pretty much any design.

We've had customer awards for 2 years that were nominated by CSMs and voted on by our customer facing teams. 15 of them. Revamped this year to cut back to 5 awards, self-nominated through community. Releasing the awards nominations next week, for 4 weeks to get nominations, 4 weeks for them to present to the community, and 10 days to vote. All in time for the customer conference in October.

Working on the 4th season of an awards program right now. Happy to join a conversation if one gets scheduled! Have also supported awards programs at multiple companies so can bring a bit of perspective in terms of what other CMAers are out there doing!

To specifically answer one of the questions you've shared, we've actually created and supported an account team/internal nomination process that enables the CMA team to create/collaborate on nominations for customers who may not otherwise get their applications together. This has been a huge win for getting some big names represented in the awards programs. We use a combination of existing customer material (either produced by the customer itself or by the CMA team) and a few well-placed comments/prompts in the draft and get additions and approval all in one go. We're piloting and launching an initiative this awards season to get both a nomination AND a massive amount of content in the pipeline for each top-tier customer. The plan is to use a single recorded interview and atomize, with the awards nomination being one of the assets we produce.

I can give you the whole playbook for what we did at Marketo and adobe moving from 3 award programs, 36 award categories down to one with 15-16 awards. The virtual awards gala is actually end of this month if you want to see how it comes together.

@Kevin Lau that would be magical!

@Kevin Lau keen to check out your playbook as well!

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) we can do a session at some point about awards?

Yes, when can you make it?

After this week