the yext guide to snapchat geofilters

The Yext Guide to Snapchat Geofilters

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Snapchat has rapidly become one of the most widely-used apps on the market, offering users a storytelling stage that is at once local, candid, exclusive, and hyper-relevant. With nearly 158 million daily active users worldwide, the platform recently made headlines for surpassing Instagram as the second most used app in the United States. Over 60% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 38 use Snapchat, and its user base is expected to reach more than 70 million Americans in 2017, with platform usage increasing by 14.6%. On top of this, much of Snapchat’s growth is being driven by older Americans. This year, 6.4% of Snapchat’s users will be between 45 and 54.

Snapchat recently rebranded its company name as Snap, Inc., and released its first hardware product — Spectacles — a set of connected sunglasses that allow users to record 10-second snippets of video. With Snapchat’s constant changes, upgrades, and innovations, brands across all industries have discovered that one of the best ways to reach these users is through location.

Snapchat Geofilters present businesses with a unique opportunity to engage with local customers. At Yext, we help businesses provide customers with the digital knowledge they need to find and engage with them quickly. That includes making it easy for those brands to provide Snapchat with the precise location data necessary for them to effectively reach those customers once they’ve arrived. Now we also help those brands provide Snapchat with the precise geodata necessary for them to effectively reach those customers once they’ve arrived!

2 Snapchat Overview

3 Snapchat Geofilters: Getting Started

4 Snapchat Geofilters: Small & Medium-Sized Businesses

10 Yext for Snapchat Geofilters: Enterprises

13 What’s New?

WHAT’S INSIDE

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Snapchat Overview

Snapchat is arguably the most potent word-of mouth marketing tool for brands. With 10 billion snap video views daily, 1 Snapchat follower is now considered equal to 20 Instagram followers. Snapchat users share over 400 million Snaps a day and have viewerships that are faithfully watching. These users can be some of your business’s most powerful marketing messengers. Your business can best leverage these propellants by ensuring they can engage with and capture your business in their Snaps while at your locations. As you begin crafting Geofilters for Snapchat campaigns, remember these key concepts to help steer you on the road to success:

Snapchat content is candid.

When using Snapchat, you can capture photos or videos directly in the app, or upload them directly from your mobile device’s gallery. Snapchat gives viewers an authentic peek into a user’s experience — and your brand. If your brand is known for its outstanding customer service, store design, or enticing menu, Snapchat will be a particularly useful outlet.

Time is of the essence. All Snaps, whether private or posted to a Snapchat story, will expire within 24 hours. This makes Snapchat the perfect venue to publicize your business’s special promotions and sales, pop-up events, daily specials, limited quantities, and more.

Reach is exclusive. With Geofilters, visibility and penetration on Snapchat can extend beyond your audience to their audiences, presenting a huge opportunity for your brand. Use this to your advantage and run a Geofilter at your locations, which can help amplify the impact of just one visit. Geofilters can help your visitors’ audiences — their families, friends, and followers — see what your brand is all about, firsthand. They’re one of the most fun ways your brand can maximize customer engagement on-location and generate value from every visit. The combination of real-time, on-location engagement and visibility to all your visitors’ followers makes Geofilters an impactful feature for your brand to leverage in its Snapchat campaigns.

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Snapchat Geofilters: Getting Started

Businesses of all sizes have the opportunity to create their own Geofilters, or choose from a variety of custom, downloadable templates. Downloadable templates can be found here.

When designing your brand’s Geofilter, make sure it meets these specifications:• Web-optimized, transparent PNG file

• 1080 pixels wide and 1920 pixels high (you can even use the purchase tool preview page to see how it will look on different devices)

• Under 300 KB in file size

Snapchat requests that you leave a buffer zone of 149 pixels at both the top and bottom of the design template to account for the screen area your phone cover may block. There should be no competing design or imagery within these ranges. Avoid borders or any designs that will cover up too much snap surface area as well.

Make sure your brand abides by these general rules of thumb when designing the creative portion of your brand’s Geofilter.

• Ensure you have the rights and permissions to include brand name, marks, logos, and/or trademarks in your Geofilter.

• If you are submitting a Geofilter for a business, your Geofilter must include a business name.

• Contact information like URLS, hashtags, and social media handles, as well as photographs of people, are not allowed.

• Note: Snapchat may display your brand’s name to inform Snapchat users that you’re providing the Geofilter.

Additional content guidelines can be found in Snapchat’s On-Demand Geofilter Submission Guidelines. It is advised for enterprises who want to deploy Geofilter campaigns across multiple locations to work with their Snapchat representative to define the scope and duration of the campaign.

DESIGN

Avoid borders!

OK Not OK

PNG should have a width of 1080 pixels and a height of 1920 pixels.

1080 px

1920 px

Please submit a web-optimized, transparent PNG.

☑ Save for Web

☑ Transparency

☑ PNG-24

Leave a buffer zone on the top and the bottom of the phone.

149 px

149 px

buffer zone

buffer zone

Snapchat has specific guidelines for how to design the Geofilters that your customers can then choose to add to their Snaps from your locations. Read on to learn more about these guidelines and how to use Yext to define where you enable your Geofilters.

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Snapchat Geofilters: Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

As a small or medium-sized business with one or several locations, by managing your digital knowledge in the Yext Knowledge Engine, you already have an advantage — perfect facts about your brand everywhere online! With flawless location data, you can set up On-Demand Geofilters for your business’s locations in no time and be well on your way to enriching the customer experience.

SUBMISSIONIf you are submitting a Geofilter for your location(s), or if you’re making a submission on behalf of a client, you can do so via Snapchat’s On-Demand Geofilter tool. Note, you must have a Snapchat account associated with a verified email address in order to make an On-Demand Geofilter submission.

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Once you’ve signed in, you can upload the Geofilter file, designed according to the specifications provided earlier in this guide (Use Your Own) or choose from a variety of pre-designed templates (Create Online). Select the path you’d like to take by clicking ‘Upload’ or ‘Design.’

UPLOAD DESIGNWhen you click ‘Upload,’ you’ll be prompted to select your pre-designed file from your computer. Once you’ve uploaded your design, you’ll need to choose the dates and times on which you’d like the Geofilter to run.

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CREATE ONLINEIf you choose to create your Geofilter using Snapchat’s design tools and templates, you’ll be presented with a variety of themes. Because you’re a small business, it’s advised that you select the ‘Business’ theme.

After you’ve chosen your theme, use the features provided in the Geofilter design tool. You can use a combination of their pre-loaded templates, add playful text, select your color palette, insert pre-made Bitmojis, and more, to make your Geofilter truly unique!

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Once you’ve uploaded or designed your Geofilter, click ‘Next.’ You’ll then need to select the dates and times on which you’d like the Geofilter to run. This can be as long or as short as you’d would like, depending on the goal of the Geofilter, but can be no longer than 30 days.

Snapchat does give you the option to keep your Geofilter going by purchasing Long-Term Geofilters. Long-Term Geofilters allow you to buy your Geofilter on a long-term basis for a discount. The non-refundable annual plan will automatically renew at the then-current price. This also includes a few benefits including reporting and metrics, being able to change your Geofilter creative at any time, and a discounted price.

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After, you’ll be prompted to set the Geofence in which you’d like your Geofilter to appear. Begin entering your business’s address into the Search bar at the top of the map — you’ll be able to find that information very easily if you already use the Yext Knowledge Engine. Then, select the Draw Fence button at the bottom of the page to begin drawing your polygon.

And don’t worry if you draw outside the lines! Snapchat makes geofencing less complicated with their Reset Fence button, in case you need to start over.

Note, when selecting the Geofenced area, make sure that it covers only the relevant area at which you want your Geofilter to appear (i.e. the street block or lot of the location). The selected area must be a minimum of 20,000 sq ft and Snapchat recommends keeping it local—do not select an entire country, state, or province.

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Lastly, you’ll be led to the checkout page. Under the Order Summary section, you’ll see a summary of the start/end dates, times, Geofence, and price. Cost of the campaign will vary depending on the length and Geofenced area of the Geofilter. Make sure to provide a descriptive Geofilter title, as well as fill out any mandatory fields and checkboxes. Supply the information of the credit card on which you wish to be billed. Once you’re confident with the information in the submission, press the Submit button at the bottom of the form.

Once you submit, the Geofilter is launched to Snapchat for review! It can take up to one business day for Snapchat to review your Geofilter. The email address associated with the Snapchat account will receive an email confirmation from Snapchat once the review is complete.

Correct facts about your business will help you start off on the right foot, but remember, Snapchat has very strict rules regarding its Geofilters and reserves the right to accept or reject submissions. Potential reasons for rejection include: incorrect file type, a screen-dominant design, low-quality design, irrelevant design for the location selection, etc.

For more details, please visit Snapchat’s Geofilter Submission Guidelines.

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Yext for Snapchat Geofilters: EnterprisesYext makes creating Snapchat Geofilters even easier and more efficient! Snapchat is now an available format in Location Export for multi-location, enterprise businesses, meaning that you can export your location information from the Yext Knowledge Engine so that it’s Geofilter-ready.

LOCATION EXPORTExport the lat/long data for your brand’s various locations directly from Yext to be well on your way to setting up your brand’s Snapchat Geofilter campaign.

• Begin in the Locations tab in the Knowledge Manager and select the folder or label of the locations at which you want to run your Geofilter campaign.

• Check the checkbox(es) on the left-hand side of the row, or select all.

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• Once you’ve selected your desired location(s), select Export Locations from the More Actions dropdown at the top of the menu.

• Here, on the Export Locations page, you’ll be able to select the format in which you’d like to export your geodata. In the Export Format row, select Snapchat.

• Press Continue.

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• On the next page, you’ll be shown the fields your file export will contain; these are determined by your chosen Export Format. For Snapchat, Yext automatically selects the fields that Snapchat requires.

• When you’re ready to export, press the Export Locations button in the bottom right-hand corner.

• And voilà! You have the building blocks for creating stellar Snapchat Geofilters for your brand’s locations. From here, send the exported location data to your brand’s Snapchat representative to coordinate your campaign.

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What’s New?

In recent news, Snapchat announced a new initiative called Snapchat Partner. This API brings together more than 20 collaborators in an effort to help advertisers optimize and better navigate advertisements on Snapchat. There are two kinds of partners — Ads Partners and Creative Partners. Snapchat Ads Partners help develop advertising software, including ad buying, campaign optimization, and campaign analytics programming.

Snapchat Creative Partners help guide advertisers on content creation and content optimization for Snapchat’s vertical video format, Snap Ads. Ad inventory will be auctioned via an automated platform through the API.

As Snapchat continues to make enhancements that help brands take customer engagement to new places, we look forward to keeping you informed.

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the yext guide to snapchat geofilters

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