Years ago — when they were a much smaller company — digital marketing agency Directive found themselves with a dilemma. They were nearing the end of contract with their gifting platform, but hadn’t used all of their account credits. They had thousands of dollars worth of gift cards to use within a week with no possibility of rolling over.
As enticing as the idea of a giant order of office candy and new laptops for the whole team was, a team member proposed a solution that would serve clients instead. She said, “What if we offered a gift card to prospects as a motivation to take an intro call with us?”
Fast forward 18 months, and Directive had held intro calls to 68% of 10,000 targeted accounts and generated 15 million dollars of revenue. The play? They simply offered prospects the promise of a $100 gift card in exchange for thirty minutes of their time.
Within 18 months, the gift card incentive had generated 15 million dollars of revenue.
The tactic was such a phenomenal success that Directive began to use it in their client's strategies. Clients loved it so much that Directive launched a specialized LinkedIn-only agency, Abe (hey that’s us!) Now we’re here to tell you how you can use gift cards as a way to unlock LinkedIn as a revenue channel.
What are incentives in marketing?
In marketing, an incentive is used to encourage a behavior that wouldn’t have been done otherwise. They’re not a new phenomenon, though their application in LinkedIn advertising is. By 1995, the Harvard Business Review was reporting that customer rewards in marketing had already been around for “at least a decade” and cited airline frequent flyer programs as an example.
Most marketers are familiar with incentives as a way of building customer loyalty in a traditional business model (think hotel room reward collection programs or collecting points on a fast food chain app), but are less familiar with how they apply to the B2B world. And that makes sense.
When you’re selling to representatives at companies instead of to individuals, getting ROI on traditional marketing tactics like incentives gets complicated to the point where it almost seems not worth it. But unlocking digital is imperative for B2B marketers who want to grow in their careers. And gift card campaigns are your fastest way to unlock LinkedIn as a channel specifically. B2B customers are not making a personal purchase, but if you play your cards (get it?) right, you can use a personal incentive to get yourself in front of somebody with buying power within your target companies.
Unlocking digital is imperative for B2B marketers who want to grow in their careers. Gift card incentives are the fastest way to do that.
The psychology behind incentives
Humans are governed by incentives, where they are found to be especially effective in western, individualistic cultures. In general incentives come in two flavors:
- Intrinsic incentives, where somebody is motivated to act a certain way for their own personal satisfaction without any kind of external reward. An example of this could be a singer who is practicing for hours to sound better for their own enjoyment (and possibly unintentionally for their neighbor’s).
- Extrinsic incentives, where somebody is motivated to act a certain way because of external rewards or pressures. This could look like ruminative (financial) rewards, verbal praise, or moral recognition.|
Arguments against marketing incentives
The first is that, when somebody is offered too many extrinsic rewards, their intrinsic motivation decreases. In order to maintain momentum, constant incentives have to be provided. This can lead to overjustification or a transactional mindset with prospects who will expect a direct reward.
We’d counterpoint this by saying gift card incentives uniquely well-positioned for B2B marketing, as you have an opportunity to build off of extrinsic incentives (gift card) and intrinsic incentives (if your prospects brings on a great software or service, they will get a better performance review).
The second is that gift card incentives cheapen a company’s brand image and can come off as bribery.
Your gift card is not your value prop. Your value prop is what you do, who you do it for, and the outcomes you accomplish.The gift card is simply a way of manufacturing intent. In order to win, you still need to have a stellar product and/or service.
Your gift card is not your value prop. Your value prop is what you do, who you do it for, and the outcomes you accomplish.
Also, when you promptly deliver the gift card after the meeting, it’s a great way of building trust with your customers. You said you were going to do something and you did it.
How to use incentives in LinkedIn advertising
1. Build your TAM
Before launching your campaign, especially if you want to move upmarket, you need to understand your ideal customers. And we don’t mean in an abstract, marketing persona kind of way. We mean you need to understand the literal names, job titles, and company names of your ideal customers.
To build your Total Addressable Market (TAM), you can use a tool like ChatGPT to run a regression analysis to identify the firmographic criteria of your most successful customers. A list as small as 100 customers can show statistical significance. You can build your Total Addressable Market by pulling a list of companies that match this profile from ZoomInfo.
2. Set up lead routing
To set yourself up for a successful, no-hassle campaign, you will need to make sure your inbound flow is well-organized and that lead routing is properly set up. Make sure LinkedIn is connected to both a calendar booking technology (like Calendly or Chilipiper) and to your CRM.
At this point, you should also decide who on your sales team will handle these leads. Larger orgs might have a choice between SDRs and AEs, in which case we highly recommend the leads get routed to AEs. Incentivized leads usually perform better when handled by experienced sales pros (more on that in a bit).
3. Choose a gifting platform
Though you can buy gift cards yourself and have your sales team send them out manually, many clients will prefer to set up an automated gift card flow with an incentives platform that will also integrate with your CRM and other marketing tools. Whatever you do, sort this out before launching your campaign.
4. Train your sales team
There is a learning curve when selling to incentivized prospects. We recommend that sales team treat incentivized leads like outbound prospects. Even if they filled out the form it doesn’t necessarily mean they were looking for a solution.
This means the first call should focus on discovery, not pitch. Reps should aim to qualify the lead using frameworks like BANT and understand the problem before presenting a solution. The job of the sales rep is to make the interaction valuable beyond just the gift card.
Equip your AEs with a shared call deck, and train them to ask impactful questions like, “What made you feel like this was important enough to take time out of your day?” Review calls across reps to find what works and replicate those approaches. Always end by scheduling the next step.
5. Choose your ad type
We mostly run gift card incentives through conversation ads, which function like automated outbound SDR messages. But sponsored content is also a great investment, especially if your brand awareness is low or you want to warm up an audience. Using both in tandem will get you the most bang for your buck.
6. Choose (and test!) your offer
Different incentives will work on different audiences. You know your audience best. Scroll down to the common offer type section of this article to see which offers we've tested.
7. Adjust ad spend
When adjusting your ad spend, it’s important to understand how Convo Ads differ across platforms. On Google Ads, you're competing with other advertisers targeting the same keywords. However, on LinkedIn, competition is based on audience targeting (i.e., anyone advertising to the same audience is in the auction).
Although recommended bids for Convo Ads on LinkedIn are often just cents, investing more can help you secure a top spot in the auction. To maximize results, aim to balance your spend between Convo Ads and Sponsored Content, ensuring broad reach while maintaining competitive placement.
8. Monitor performance
We do this for our clients on a daily basis, but if you're running this solo you'll want to make sure you have some kind of communication channel with your teammates. Looker Studio works well for many teams.
9. Set up sequences
Not everyone will book a call immediately after receiving an incentive. You can give them more chances to convert by sending follow-up emails. On CRMs like Hubspot these can be automated as "sequences". You can include promotional materials — like hype videos of case studies — in your follow-ups to add legitimacy to your brand.
Examples of LinkedIn incentives
We talk a lot about our LinkedIn “gift card incentive”, but gift cards aren’t the only incentive that you can use. Gift cards just make good incentives because of their versatility and universal appeal. You know your audience best. Different ICPs might be drawn to different incentives. We’ve also experimented with:
Airpods
Airpods out-perform gift cards for some ICPs. Prospects haven’t outwardly verbalized it, but we would guess that this is because airpods are fundamentally useful even if the prospect already owns a pair, as they’re commonly lost or getting worn out.
Airtags
Airtags are useful, but they’re not exactly fun to shop for. They aren’t cheap, either. Some ICPs will be drawn towards a practical, nice-to-have incentive like Airtags, since that will be one less thing on their list to buy.
Bespoke services
Depending on your business, you might have luck offering a free template, report, or audit. Just make sure you include an honest assessment of the value of the service.
Charitable donations
Charitable donations tend to appeal to more mission-aligned or impact-driven ICPs. These work best when the donation is meaningful in amount and aligned with a cause that resonates with your audience. Be specific about the charity and the contribution amount to make the gesture feel real and personal.
Free trials
SaaS companies might have some luck offering a free trial as an incentive, but it has to be an abnormal offer (i.e., customers can’t always have the option to have a free trial on your website at any time). A limited-time extended trial or a “VIP” version of the trial can help it feel more like a real gift and less like a default.
Product discounts
Nothing wrong with trying out a classic discount or percentage-off code. The key is to frame it as a limited-time or exclusive offer, rather than a perpetual sale. Discounts tend to work better when they’re paired with a clear CTA or bundled into a broader incentive strategy.
LinkedIn gift card incentive: frequently asked questions
Is there an industry that the gift cards won't work in?
In short….no.
When we do marketing, everything we ask for from our prospects is an exchange of value. When you give someone the option to use their email in a form, they are assuming that you are going to offer them something of value in exchange for them giving you this.
Gift cards lower the psychological friction that a prospect feels when booking a call with you.
Different ICPs may respond better to different types of incentives, so do some testing. Some industries, like healthcare and cybersecurity, might have regulations around accepting rewards and gifts from vendors, so look into that before you run an ad. But that’s the only industry-related limitation that we’ve come across.
How much should my gift card value be?
In our real-world application, we haven’t seen much luck with gift cards under $100, and we see the sweet spot to especially be between $105 and $130. Anecdotally, we’ve heard some founders have luck with smaller quantities around $50. Your prospects might need a larger amount to feel incentivized.
What job titles should I target for the gift card incentive?
In our tests, we've seen the most luck with director, VP, and C-Suite titles. We find manager titles underperform.
What makes LinkedIn a good platform for running gift card incentives?
LinkedIn is a strong platform for running gift card incentives because it offers precise firmographic targeting—something that search-based digital ads lack. While search ads allow you to capture intent, they don’t give you control over critical attributes like job title, industry, or company size. LinkedIn does.
How do I write good copy for my incentive campaign?
We recommend copy that's conversational. We've seen better success with an empty subject line than any subject line. Mention the incentive in your hook, and again in the call to action. We generally use charm timing and charm pricing (like 29 min vs 30 and $105 vs $100).
Can I run a LinkedIn incentive campaign towards a cold audience?
You can and you should! Ideally, your audience will be aware of your brand in passing, but they don't have to be deeply familiar. We recommend running Sponsored Ads in conjunction with your incentive ads to build that brand familiarity.
