By Sara Kowal, VP of Innovation, ePrize
When Southern retailer Belk, realized it was quickly approaching its 125th year anniversary, it knew it had to do something BIG.
As the nation’s largest family-owned and operated department store, Belk is notoriously known as a beloved brand throughout the South, and it saw its anniversary celebration as the perfect angle to drive customer engagement.
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What could be better on a birthday than gifts? Lots and lots of gifts.
Belk decided that to celebrate its huge milestone, the company would come out with a multichannel campaign called the “125 Days of Prizes” sweepstakes. At ePrize, we work everyday with brands to implement mobile, social, and digital campaigns that help them better engage with their customers. We agreed with Belk that their anniversary was a perfect angle to thank customers for generations of loyalty.
Nuts And Bolts
When working through a campaign strategy and implementation, it is important to consider a multi-channel approach. One of the reasons that the Belk 125 Days campaign thrived to the extent it did, was due to the “triple threat” approach: mobile, social, and digital engagement with consumers.
With Belk, we agreed that we wanted to launch a campaign to leave a lasting mark in the mobile and social space. Creating a 125-day long sweepstakes seemed like the perfect approach for an extended engaging campaign.
The sweepstakes was launched across a microsite, Facebook, and mobile channels, encouraging registrants to participate daily for the chance to win the featured prize of the day. Belk additionally chose monthly themes for consumers to submit photos via social channels and subsequently earn additional entries.
Results Are In: The Belk Customer Wants To Engage
The results of the campaign exceeded both ePrize’s and Belk’s expectations across all channels. Nearly 220,000 consumers registered for the promotion, and 79.6% opted-in to receive updates on future promotions. These numbers alone showed us that the Belk customer wants to stay connected with the brand.
Of the three channels, consumers particularly took to the mobile and social platforms for continued engagement. In the mobile sector, 13.1% opted-in to receive text messages from Belk containing exclusive offers.
From a social standpoint, Belk’s Pinterest page more than doubled its followers, increasing from 7,247 pre-launch to 15,275 post-launch. As for Facebook, the number of Facebook registrations reached 37,775, with a total of 61,695 Facebook posts highlighting the campaign. Lesson learned? Retailers need to make social engagement a priority to allow customers to be brand advocates for their brand.
Consumers Want To Feel One-in-a-Million
One of the most unique aspects of the campaign was the chance at a daily prize. Offering daily chances to win every day for 125 days created a continued sense of excitement and anticipation around the campaign, and, as hoped, kept consumers coming back regularly. There were over two million sweepstakes entries with an average of 9.6 entries per registrant. Consumers also responded positively to Belk’s invitation to submit photos, uploading over 24,000 photos with their favorite Belk memories.
In general, retailers who incorporate instant chances to win and many giveaways into an engagement campaign give customers a strong impetus to return to the site.
Learning From Belk
Belk’s understanding of the importance of mobile and social engagement for brands acted as a primary focus when launching this campaign. Knowing that the retail industry benefits enormously from creating an engaging conversation with their customers via social media is an important proof point to keep top-of-mind.
Retailers, big and small, need to prioritize mobile. Understanding that mobile allows customers to stay up-to-date on retail news anywhere and anytime was integral to this campaign. The 125 Days of Prizes success demonstrates that consumers are willing and eager to create a relationship with their favorite brands online.
The campaign helped Belk generate enthusiasm around its anniversary and set the stage for future promotions. Belk demonstrates a great use case and their loyal customer base only made it easier to increase engagement levels.
