Share Your Marketing Flair! Call for Nominations - 2015 Markie Awards

It’s about that time again, to strut your marketing stuff and vie for a Markie Award! We are honoring excellence in modern marketing across 20 categories. The Awards ceremony will take place at Modern Marketing Experience, April 1, 2015 in Las Vegas. We are accepting submissions for the 2015 Markie Awards NOW through January 15, 2015. Check out highlights from last year’s ceremony, and view this year’s updated categories. Go for it! 

For more highlights on how to make your submission shine, join us for a webinar, "Anatomy of a Markie Winner: What it Takes to Win a Markie", Thurs., Dec. 18 at 12 p.m. ET/9 am. PT. 

Best Audience Creation – Are you targeting, segmenting, and engaging an ideal audience for a specific business initiative? Have you successfully created that newly defined audience based on metrics which demonstrate a higher conversion rate or proven nurturing path? Did you accelerate the process of identifying true prospects in a pool of suspects by capturing information along the customer journey, mapping digital touch points, and developing triggers? Do you deliver a custom experience for this audience across email, mobile, and in-store channels? If so, this could be your category. Download entry form

Best Cross-Channel Marketing Program – Are you creating personalized experiences with messages and promotions across web, social, mobile, email, display, or other digital channels? Are you attracting or retaining your ideal customers? If they’re fiercely loyal, become brand advocates, or are simply driving revenue then you know you’ve got a winner. Share your program details and your metrics with us. Download entry form

Best Data Activation (formerly Best Data Orchestration)- Every modern marketer knows that inaccurate, inconsistent, or old data decreases marketing effectiveness. But data hygiene is just the start. Then you need to instrument a process and activate the data. This award recognizes organizations that have made data activation a strategic priority and have seen that investment pay off with faster conversion rates, increased revenue, and higher ROI. Download entry form

Best Digital Marketing Ecosystem (formerly Integration Innovation) - Have you taken advantage of digital marketing integration to enhance processes or improve analytics? Tell us how you’ve created an integrated ecosystem with CRM, third-party cloud apps, or other applications to automate, streamline, and enhance your marketing efforts. Get extra points for how you’ve used APIs in interesting ways. Your results of time or money saved, increased response rates, improved productivity, or better targeting will help you win this Markie. Download entry form

Best Integrated Ad Campaign – Advertising has come a long way since Mad Men. In today’s world of fragmented media, an integrated cross-channel customer experience with connections to content, social, and data is necessary. It’s more relevant and personalized with an increase in targeted display ads and nurturing campaigns instead of just mass media commercials, print ads, and billboards. If your organization has taken advantage of this brave new world, tell us how you’ve integrated your cross-channel ad campaigns to produce results. Download entry form

Best International Campaign – Impress us with a campaign you’ve run outside the United States. It may have been in multiple countries in multiple languages, a modification of program originally created in the US and re-launched in another country, or any variation in between. Measurable results – especially in comparison to non-localized campaigns – will be critical in demonstrating success. Download entry form

Best IT – Marketing Collaboration – Have your IT, marketing, and sales teams overcome organizational silos and cultural hurdles to collaboratively spark the creation of something completely new:  A stunning approach that goes beyond basic CRM and marketing automation integrations, where data management or business intelligence insights bring about new levels of customer insight, real-time decision making capabilities, improved marketing and sales efficiencies, or a better customer experience? Finalists in this category think beyond the norm and consider how they can work with IT to leverage tech investments far beyond marketing automation to positively impact the business and revenue. Download entry form

Best Lead Nurturing Program – Do you have a sophisticated lead nurturing program that delivered measurable results? Does your program make decisions that matter and result in actions that are compelling? Do you have creative workflows or interesting segmentation? Tell us about it and you might take home the Markie. Download entry form

Best Social Campaign – Has your brand or company effectively used social marketing as a strategy to build brand awareness or turn customers and prospects into advocates? Has your brand used social media in new and interesting ways or as the centerpiece of a successful new program? Have you seized social media opportunities and generated proven results? If so, this is the category for you. Download entry form

Brand Experience of the Year – Brand preference is the summit of the marketing mountain. It’s where you create ideal customers who are fiercely loyal, buy repeatedly, and become social and personal advocates of your brand. That’s a tall order to fill. But some organizations have reached this goal by combining cross-channel, content, and social marketing with data management and activation to personalize customer experience and deliver a one-to-one relationship where customers don’t want to just interact with the brand, they want to be the brand. If that’s your story, then this is your category. Download entry form

Content is King – Drawing in prospects with engaging content is an important piece of modern marketing. If you’ve aligned your target personas and the buyer’s journey to your content strategy, this Markie is for you. Tell us how your content converts prospects, sustains customers, and impacts revenue to take home the statue. Winners of this Markie will have a holistic, team-wide approach to content marketing that sets them apart from their competitors. Download entry form

Customer Centricity – Every company says they are customer focused. But few actually deliver. Do you recognize and communicate with every customer as an individual? Engage customers intelligently with content in context to create a rich, 1:1 experience? Have you gone from persona to personal by combining Digital Body Language with look-alike models? Are you successfully transforming your customers into brand advocates who share their experiences on social networks?  If so, then congratulations! You’re well on the way to making customers the center of your life. Tell us how you shifted your culture from consumer transactions to customer relationships and the Markie could be yours. Download entry form

CMO’s Marketing Team of the Year – Here’s an opportunity for a CMO to recognize their team for excellence in Modern Marketing. Has your team achieved exceptional things with marketing, adopted modern technologies, helped to position the organization as a leader in digital marketing, created an outstanding customer experience, impacted the culture of the organization, and driven amazing results? If so, this Markie could be theirs. (Note: this is a “fast form” to be filled out only by a CMO.) Download entry form

Extraordinary Email – Yes, email can be extraordinary. In fact, there are some email communications that are so well written, so masterfully designed, that it’s only a question of when people will respond, not if. Achieving extraordinary response rates isn’t luck. It’s the result of great targeting, content, personalization, and timing. Show us your best performing email—whether it’s fancy HTML or simple text—and the response it drove to compete for this Markie. Download entry form

Going Mobile – You’ve got web, email, social, and display. But have you created personalized experiences with messages and promotions optimized for mobile? Is mobile the platform of choice for a majority of your ideal customers? If they’re reading emails, making mobile transactions, sharing through social, or simply using smartphones and tablets to connect with you all day and every day, then you know you’ve got a winner. Share your program details and your metrics with us. Download entry form

Metrics That Matter – This award recognizes an organization that has moved beyond reporting on simple clicks and conversions and can now make strategic business decisions based on the metrics they measure. Explain how you quantified to justify, reported on ROI, or demonstrated marketing’s impact on the business to be recognized for your performance. Download entry form

Modern Marketing Leader of the Year – Just as great people are the foundation for successful businesses, innovators are often the driving force behind exceptional marketing. You know who they are—the passionate senior people that push their teams to succeed, lead change, set the vision for the entire marketing organization, and deliver results. Tell us about their achievements to secure their own personal Markie statue! (Please note that this award will be given to an individual [VP or CMO], not an organization.) Download entry form

Most Creative Marketing Campaign – Sometimes all of the pieces align to create a fantastic marketing campaign—the perfect idea, the right target, the memorable artwork, the personalized follow-up, and of course, the measurable results. Inspire us by sharing your creativity in screenshots or links. Download entry form

Revenue Growth – Has your marketing team cracked the code on driving revenue growth? Share your formula for success to earn a Markie for this prestigious award. Nominations must demonstrate a specific quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year revenue growth rate driven in large part by integrated and repeatable marketing campaigns and processes. Download entry form

Rookie of the Year – This award is open to those who have successfully implemented any Oracle Marketing Cloud cross-channel marketing, content marketing, social marketing, or data management and activation technology in the past year. Enabling a high performance marketing culture isn’t always easy. For most organizations, it can take time to master the intricate blend of messaging, segmentation, data orchestration, organizational alignment and other disciplines. So how do some businesses make it look easy in their first year? The Rookie of the Year award honors fast starters for their superb planning, execution, and results. Download entry form

Interested in getting in on the fun this year? Visit the 2015 Markie Awards page for submission details and information on previous winners. Get your campaign results out! The call for nominations will close January 16, 2015.