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SUMMARY: We
all want the shortcut. The
tricks. The marketing hacks. But
sometimes when we go down this all-too-tempting path, we wind up at a dead
end. Just because it worked for someone else’s customers does not mean it
will work for yours. To
give you ideas for challenging the status quo, today we bring you examples from
NASCAR, a nonprofit organization, and an ecommerce mattress website. |
April 14, 2021 by Daniel Burstein, Senior
Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute
This article was originally published in
the MarketingSherpa
email newsletter.
“Regrets, I've had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way”
Paul Anka’s words come to mind when I think of the case studies we
publish here at MarketingSherpa. There are 1,668 case studies in the MarketingSherpa
library according to the latest count (along with 7,037
how-tos, charts, videos, and other information to help you improve your
marketing).
But these case studies are not meant to be followed verbatim. We
publish these case studies from your peers to inspire your next
great idea, not dictate your marketing strategy. To inspire your ideas when you
do it your way.
As Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS Institute
has said, “best practices on the internet are often just pooled ignorance”
(from the video Best Practices Are Often Just Pooled Ignorance: How to avoid
this mistake by mapping your customer’s thought sequence).
In other words…never let your curiosity and creativity take a back
seat to what some other marketer at some other brand (or worse – vendor) says
will work. Seek to understand your unique audience and customer base, and then
work hard to constantly challenge the status quo to find the most effective way
to serve them.
To inspire your next great idea, here are four quick case studies
from your peers.
Quick Case Study #1: Nonprofit organization
spends less than 5 cents per person reached using influencer marketing for
nation branding
The State of Israel has been embroiled in a long-lasting conflict
with its neighbors with no end in sight. For decades, the Israeli government
and pro-Israel advocacy organizations have focused their efforts on explaining
and justifying Israel’s policies, leaving little space for other focuses.
Recognizing that Israel is in a unique and challenging situation, Vibe Israel –
a nonprofit organization that essentially functions as Israel’s marketing and
branding agency – set out to brand Israel as a country, not a conflict.
Vibe Israel commissioned research that showed once people around
the world connect with Israel and experience the country firsthand – whether
through business, culture, or an in-person visit – they are more likely to form
positive perceptions of Israel.
With this in mind, Vibe Israel formed the Vibe Tours program with
the goal of connecting online influencers to Israel so that they could share
their experiences with their followers. Vibe Tours takes international
influencers on a weeklong, all-expenses-paid personalized experience of Israel.
Each tour has a subject theme, such as art, food, photography or environment,
and tours only have four to six participants to create a more individualized
and exclusive experience.
The team reached out to influencers through a direct message or
email. “With time we have made a name for ourselves in the influencer market
and we get a lot of our new participants through their influencer friends that
already [participated in] our tours. The tours we offer are unique in this field
since they are made specifically for the group of influencers joining and
targeted to their specific field of interest, making this opportunity more
valuable to them than others and making our recruiting process much easier,”
said Joanna Landau, Founder & CEO, Vibe Israel.
What makes Vibe Israel’s tours different from other like-minded
trips is the uniqueness of the nonprofit’s branding initiatives through niche
marketing and people-to-people strategies.
Because Israeli culture is so multi-faceted, a single tour cannot
adequately cover all of its aspects. Rather than giving a surface level
explanation of all dimensions of Israeli culture, Vibe Israel focuses its tours
on a specific subject area and seeks out influencers most interested in these
topics, creating a seamless connection between the influencer and Israel that
is then portrayed to their followers.
“Even though Vibe Israel’s objective is to market Israel, Vibe
Tours focuses on connecting people, not showcasing a place. By connecting
influencers with Israelis who share the same areas of interest, these tours
help to foster long-term connections and friendships,” Landau said.
Creative Sample #1: Instagram post by influencer who went on a
Vibe Israel tour
Survey results from participants both before and after tours show
a vast improvement in positive perceptions of Israel post-tour. The feedback
about the tour experience from participants is also extremely positive.
For example, in a sustainability focused post-trip survey, there
was a 36% increase from the pre-tour survey in the participants’ perceptions of
Israelis as warm and caring, a 59% increase in the perceptions of Israelis
having a can-do spirit participants’ admire, and a 185% increase in
participants’ beliefs that Israelis are accepting of all religions,
sexualities, and many other lifestyles.
The team tracks the viral effect of our tours using online
software to measure social media impressions and has found that tours reach
around 10 million people a year through the influencer’s content. Recently, the
team has also started using tracking software to calculate the industry value
of the influencer posts published and has found that each of the tours has a
value price point of over three million dollars if they were to pay for each
post.
Dividing costs into the overall potential reach of over 10 million
followers, Vibe Israel spends less than $0.05 per person reached.
In addition, in the follow-up to these tours, participants have
been offered various business opportunities – brand ambassadorships for Israeli
products, speaking engagements at conferences and festivals, etc. – stemming
from the connections they formed in Israel.
Landau offered this advice for other marketers based on the case
study:
·
Believe
in your product
Letting go of control when working with influencers is a basic
requirement – if you truly believe you have a great product, it will speak for
itself, don’t put words into their mouth. It’s their voice, let them celebrate
it.
·
It’s
not about what you want to say but what your audience wants to hear
Sometimes we have something to say and are convinced that’s what
our audiences wants to hear. More often than not, we’re too busy talking to
actually listen. Take a moment to assess what your audience cares about, is
drawn to and wants to engage with. If necessary, do research to find it out.
And then adapt what you wanted to say to what they want to hear.
·
The
more specific the topic, the better
When we started our tours, one of the topics we focused on was
food. Then we decided to delve deeper and do tours such as vegan-focused trips
and a just-pastries experience. And when we do food tours, we sometimes will
choose only sophisticated recipe creators vs. easy home cooking. There are
hundreds of thousands of people who care about the same, very specific, topic.
The secret is not in how many people you reach, but how engaged they are. The
more specific the content, the more engagement you’ll get.
Quick Case Study #2: Click-to-reveal email
increases CTR 19.2% for NASCAR
“When it comes to showing a subscriber that you are thinking about
them, sending a birthday message or any other loyalty message goes a long way,
especially as we all experience this pandemic together. Personalized messages
‘just because’ show that you care. Yes, you want to give them a nice little
promo offer, but you are also building a connection with them and your brand.
We need to thank those subscribers for sticking with us during this nutty year
and tell them how much they are appreciated within the brand’s community. In
return, they will continue to show you their love of your brand. Brand loyalty
needs to be front and center for all marketers this year!" said Maria
Braune, Product Marketing Manager, Liveclicker.
NASCAR sent birthday emails to their
customer database. The birthday emails contained a static image with a special
discount, encouraging fans to celebrate themselves with a gift from the NASCAR
Shop.
NASCAR tested a static image against a peel-to-reveal mystery offer using the
Liveclicker real-time email marketing platform. Both emails offered discounts,
incentivizing customers to click through to the shop. However, the
click-to-reveal email sought to transform the passive promotion into a tactile,
engaging experience, evoking the feeling of unwrapping a gift on the
recipient’s special day while driving more traffic back to NASCAR’s website.
Creative Sample #2: NASCAR’s peel-to-reveal birthday email
Compared to the default campaign that promoted equivalent offers,
the mystery offer on average saw a 19.2% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR)
from April-July 2020 and a 2.9% increase in clicks. Year over year, NASCAR saw
a 94% increase in conversions and a 308% increase in revenue after implementing
the new birthday campaigns. The team also achieved a 161% increase in site
visits and 406% jump in orders during the same period.
"We thought that by creating newsletters that were sent to
our fans on their birthdays, that we were already doing a great job of engaging
them in a personalized way. We found that by adding dynamic elements from
Liveclicker that created more interaction and excitement that we could reach a
new level of email engagement. It's always worth it to keep trying new things,
and keep testing, even on elements of your marketing strategy that are already
doing well,” said Donald Baal, Senior Director, Digital Marketing, NASCAR.
Quick Case Study #3: Live social proof
decreased order conversion for online mattress store
For two months, the team at MattressInsider.com A/B tested live social proof –
essentially a browser pop-up customers see on e-commerce sites with a message
like “Dawn in Jacksonville just bought this product 25 minutes ago.”
The addition of this feature to the website resulted in a 10% drop
in order conversions over two months.
“A lot of ecommerce sites use those social proof services and I
suspect they don't test them to see how they impact conversions and revenue.
While it may work for certain types of sites, it clearly didn't work on ours,”
said Jonathan Prichard, Founder & CEO, MattressInsider.com.
Quick Case Study #4: Amazon Pay decreased
revenue for online mattress store
The ecommerce mattress website from the previous case study ran a
test displaying Amazon Pay during checkout.
It led to a 20% drop in revenue over the course of two weeks so
they abruptly shut that test off and removed Amazon Pay from the site without
further testing.
“Amazon is a direct competitor in many of the niches we are in and
we suspect we were giving customers a reminder to go search Amazon.com during
check out before buying from us. If you're offering products that can also be
found on Amazon, you definitely want to split test this,” Prichard advised.
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