Ben and Jerry’s, headquartered in Vermont, is the best among their competitors at integrating their social marketing into the fiber of their operations. It’s not a bolt on to the marketing department but at the core of their strategy and embedded into their operational and CRM software. The secret ingredient – they have a well thought out editorial calendar and experienced community managers creating and curating their digital content.
Key Points
- Creative new flavor announcements
- Tie offline with online
- Amplify their message
- Interactive community
Quick-serve restaurant chain, Dairy Queen, wanted to increase sales for the month of July by launching a targeted campaign to their existing Blizzard Fan Club members. The primary goals were to increase in-restaurant sales while growing their online fan base by 300,000 using social sharing tactics. They crushed the member sign-up goal by 700,000.
Secret Ingredients
Dairy Queen currently has a 4.1 million member fan club they’ve built over the years on their in-house platform. The secret to their success are the people behind it. They have highly skilled content curators who study what members like and dislike to give them what they want, not what a marketing agency or department thinks will work. Another ingredient to that success is that corporate believes in the club and backs their beliefs with an adequate budget. The curators are given great coupon offers for all members, they do frequent member stories (they feature a member’s family, not just that person), let them vote on new menu ideas, provide members only breaking news, and more.
The Campaign
They sent out targeted emails to select members encouraging them to post a buy-one-get-one-free coupon on their Facebook wall using a Share-to-Social tool. The tool tracked how many friends of the person who posted the coupon signed up as new members. To help the campaign go viral they made a competition out of it by offering free ice-cream for a year to the winner along with other smaller incentives.
The Children’s Place, a trendy children’s clothing chain, had an online party hosted by Denise Richards and other celebrities to celebrate their one millionth fan on Facebook. Their goal – to increase the lifetime value of thousands of their customers using social media.
.
To promote the party their primary expense was in the famous talent they hired to host the party. Most all other promotion was done through teaser posts to their existing 975,000 Facebook fans the week leading up to the party. They attribute most of the success to the gifts and discounts offered to entice people to signup to attend.
Results From Campaign
The campaign lasted one week and culminated in a one hour chat party to celebrate breaking the one million mark.
- 72,473 clicked to register to win one of 375 gifts and get a 20% coupon
- 48,245 people finished the registration process
- During the week prior to the party they got 21,116 new fans
- 10,000 unique authors contributed during the one hour chat
Read the case study on SlideShare and see their Facebook page.
Route 66 Harley Davidson, a dealership in Tulsa, OK created a 12 day themed texting/SMS campaign featuring a 20% discount on a different product from their retail department each of the 12 days. From $500 helmets to T-shirts. They increased walk-in traffic, retail sales, and high-dollar item sales as a result. The “12 Days of Christmas” was used as their theme and ran from Dec 12 – 24, 2011.
Notable Results
- T-shirt sales up 250%
- Motorcycle sales up – no conclusive data
- Helmet one day sales matched previous week’s 7 day total
- 16% increase in leather jacket sales
- Walk-in traffic up – inconclusive as to actual #
>Read full Harley Davidson case study here.
Yahoo! Movies, a division of Yahoo! wanted to get a bigger piece of the multi-billion dollar movie going pie by the summer of 2012 through their Facebook page. Their goal is to become the source for movie goers who love to research, be in the “know,” get VIP passes to early showings, and communicate with other movie aficionados.
They get 24 million visitors on their main website but lack that kind of traffic on Facebook where they see untapped potential to grow their brand.
Joint Venture
Their campaign strategy was a joint effort with their offline partner, Regal Cinemas, who put up banners in theaters promoting the Yahoo! brand along with a QR code pointing to an offer most movie goers couldn’t refuse – free popcorn. People who did a social check-in via their Smart phones and liked the page got the popcorn. Offer applied online also. They would just redeem the popcorn when they arrived at the theater.
The Results From Campaign
- 1.2 million new Likes on their Facebook page
- 200,000 Check-ins
- 1.4 Million minutes spent on Yahoo! Movies Website
- $1,000,000 of popcorn given away
Let’s Test Their Million Dollar Spend
They say their long-term goal is not about the “liking” it’s about building an audience of repeat visitors who will engage and make Yahoo! Movies their online source.
The great part about case studies like this is that you and I can take a peek behind the curtain and see if this is hype or really working. Below are the objectives/goals they hope to achieve now since the campaign began a few months ago. I encourage you to go to their Facebook page and see if the goals below are being lived out.
How Yahoo! Measured Success
- Target a Season – focus on summer movie season
- Hit Fans From All Angles – Reach fans online and offline
- Relevant – Reward movie goers and capture “Likes” in return for continued activity on their Facebook page
- Connect More – Interact with more movie fans via their website and Facebook page
- Become The Movie Source – provide great content to keep fans coming back to their page regularly
My Take
I would question their last two goals – connecting and becoming the source. Out of the 2.15 million fans, they are not averaging the comments and interaction I would expect to consider this successful. It’s about amazing content and some of their biggest days of activity are based on movie blockbuster debuts or contests/giveaways they may be doing in a certain month. Their ratio of commenting back to people is very low and not that of a Sage archetype or the “in the know” type of a person I would expect running the page.
To view the full case study on SlideShare - go here. What do your think? Was it successful?
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is betting the kitchen on their biggest product launch in years, the Chunky Chicken Pot Pie. In support of the multi-million dollar TV, billboard, and print ad campaign, they started a lower cost social campaign with interactive mobile ads inside the popular Pandora iPhone app. Their target – 16-28 yr olds.
The Campaign
KFC is running mobile banner and audio ads within Pandora’s iPhone app. While you’re listening to your custom Pandora radio station, you are bound to get hungry and as a KFC ad pops up you’ll see the Pot Pie, get a discount coupon, check nutritional facts if you’d like, and then find a location so you can buy some pies.
Read rest of case study here. It includes links to other KFC social media campaigns.
Image via Wikipedia
When Levi’s decided to launch their “Ready to Work” campaign in 2010 that featured their new lineup of outdoor clothing, the company focused on the residents of Braddock, Pennsylvania since the area residents were trying to revive the local steel mills. They took these resident’s rugged image and featured it in several Facebook ads that were targeted at the 18-34 year old demographic. Levi’s also tested Facebook-only 40% off discounts during this campaign to have a measurable conversion rate among the viewers.
- Campaign designed to introduce new line of denim clothing
- Featured a rugged, All-American steel town
- Targeted the 18-34 demographic
Within 15 minutes of the campaign launch, Levi’s saw the traffic to their website double as consumers cashed in on the 40% off incentive. Traffic to the Levi’s Facebook page saw 1500% more interactions, with their total amount of fans increasing by 35% over the course of the campaign. A spokesperson for Levi’s stated that the Facebook campaign was a very cost effective way to drive in new business and they will definitely use similar approaches in the future. To view the actual study, click here.
Image via Wikipedia
Clorox had been advertising their Green Works brand of environmentally-friendly products for several months on Facebook without a noticeable boost in awareness or revenue. A new Facebook campaign was started in 2010 that aimed to raise community awareness with several different initiatives ranging from a $3 off coupon to helping the company decide where to send charitable donations. Another goal was to have fans register at their Green Works homepage on the web.
- Campaign designed to increase awareness of Green Works
- Various incentives offered for visiting Facebook page
- Target audience was females aged 25-54
Clorox almost immediately discovered that the $3 off coupon was by far more effective than any campaign they had implemented to date. A .11% engagement rate was record setting for the company, which was later connected to a 12% increase in brand awareness in a Nielsen study. More than 20,000 fans voted and submitted comments for the charitable drives as well. Over 33% of Clorox’s Facebook visitors for the 2010 year can be directly linked to this advertising. To view the actual study, click here.
