Last year my CRO, Diana Ross, spent $50,000 on a Taylor Swift box.
She then spent 3 hours manually building a prospect list, and ABM’d 100 highly personalized emails to female CMOs… and we got ZERO responses back.
WHAT?!?!? She was devastated.
What CMO wouldn’t want to go to see the Taylor Swift Era’s concert.
In a box, with free champagne, a custom Taylor Swift cocktail, and some free Swiftie Eras swag?
It didn’t make any sense.
The LinkedIn Pivot
But then she reached out to this same group of “Dream 100” CEO’s on LinkedIn.
And she got a VERY different response.
All of a sudden, she was getting “YES” from CMO’s of massive ecommerce brands.
She asked them why they didn’t respond to the email.
It turns out ALL of them received the email, and they all read it.
But they didn’t write back because the event sounded too good to be true!
The show was a hit, and we’re now in conversations with a handful of CMOs that we wouldn’t have even DREAMED of pursuing 12 months ago.
Conclusion
What’s the lesson here? I think it’s two parts.
- Create events that are so good that people don’t believe they’re real, because in 2025, that’s what it takes to break through the noise.
- Make sure they know you’re a human and that you’re for real.
LinkedIn is the best place for this.
Who’s in for the next Taylor Swift box with the Retention.com team?
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