Top 16 Brands inDigital & SocialMarketing

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IntroAre you looking for some inspiration to make your next digital experience an overwhelming success? There are plenty of brands doing great things in digital, but there are a few standouts that deserve recognition for their outstanding marketing programs, including STA Travel’s unique use of data, L’Oréal’s product launch strategy, and BuildDirect’s highly successful ‘Shop by Inspiration’ programs. The brands identified in this ebook represent some of the best in digital and social marketing, and their lessons will serve as a great foundation as you build out your future marketing campaigns.

BuildDirect, a technology company creating a simpler, trusted and more efficient home improvement industry, was looking to increase its digital engagement, grow conversions, and build credibility for the brand. To help achieve this, BuildDirect launched a ‘Shop by Inspiration’ gallery, which showcased images of BuildDirect products — flooring, tiles, patio furniture and sinks — in real-life settings. These images provided customers with visual examples of how a room could look and which products can be utilized to achieve a similar style. To add an additional layer to this beautiful photo gallery, BuildDirect tagged each of the photos with the products featured in the images. This allowed BuildDirect to drive sales and sample deliveries straight from the gallery.

But the real beauty of this campaign is in the simplicity of the experience. BuildDirect provided a polished, visual experience that showcased its products in an interesting and engaging way. This enhanced digital experience attracted more users, improved BuildDirect’s website performance, and ultimately increased the likelihood that visitors would order materials from BuildDirect. In addition, the information collected from consumers in ordering sample products can be used to re-target and communicate in the future, allowing BuildDirect to provide additional offers to their most engaged users.

BuildDirect | Retail | Visual Commerce1

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Craghoppers, a world travel clothing company, consistently features images of professional world travelers on its site. From world-renowned survivalist Bear Grylls, to filmmaker/photographer Peter McBride, Craghoppers has no shortage of great traveling photos sourced from its professional ambassadors. But where Craghoppers previously came up short is in sourcing images from the other 99% of its clientele. This huge gap inspired Craghoppers to create an entire microsite dedicated solely to its fans’ love of travel.

The site’s focal point was a user generated content (UGC) gallery, which featured images from Craghoppers’ fans and customers across the world. And, in addition to the five minutes of fame fans get on the Craghoppers’ website, users were also given the opportunity to opt in for a chance to win a 12-day trip to Sri Lanka. By including this additional incentive to enter and share their contact information, Craghoppers significantly expanded the effectiveness and lifespan of this campaign. Craghoppers can now contact its most engaged fans and users with additional promotions, materials, product announcements and more.

This beautiful UGC experience and microsite demonstrated Craghoppers’ overall passion for travel, and allowed the brand to share that passion with its biggest supporters. By encouraging others to share their experiences, Craghoppers is helping to spread the enjoyment and excitement of traveling and also building its brand reputation in the process.

Craghoppers | Retail | UGC Experience2

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STA Travel | Travel | Quiz3STA Travel has been in the business of offering relevant and interesting travel packages to young adults for more than 35 years. But since many of STA’s young customers have never traveled internationally, offering up the right kind of trip to its potential customers is crucial. A person who is interested in exploring ancient ruins and learning more about the history of a destination is less likely to react to a spring break party package. So to ensure it was reaching its fans with the correct promotion, STA launched its “Travel Tribe” quiz. This quiz helped quickly uncover the traveling type of its potential customers.

Based on the participants’ responses to the quiz, STA provided one of five different travel tribe descriptions, as well as some recommended STA trips that may be of interest. The value of this campaign comes from the great data STA uncovered. Not only did it create a fun and engaging quiz that captured users’ interest, but it also collected valuable user data. When participants submitted their quizzes to receive their results, they provided STA with contact information, social IDs, travel preferences, and permissions for additional follow up. This type of insight allowed STA to segment and tailor its future communications based on purchase preferences, ultimately resulting in higher sales.

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Bankrate | Financial Services | Referral & UGC Contest4Paying for college is a difficult and expensive undertaking for many students. Bankrate, a financial services company, understands this better than most, which is why it decided to invest in the future of some truly creative and inspiring students. To choose a recipient, Bankrate offered a unique scholarship opportunity through its “#FutureSelfie” UGC experience. In this experience, Bankrate invited current and prospective students to showcase their career ambitions, life dreams and goals through a picture, video or post, for a chance to win up to $5,000 in scholarships.

The response Bankrate received from this campaign was nothing short of inspiring. Thousands of future doctors, engineers, news anchors and more shared their dreams and aspirations with Bankrate. In addition, the #FutureSelfie campaign reached over 10 million Twitter timelines and won a Shorty award for “The Best in Financial Services.” This beautiful campaign helped Bankrate grow brand recognition, increase digital engagement, and inspire the minds of thousands of students. In addition, Bankrate cemented itself as an expert in the financial services sector and an invaluable resource for students seeking financial guidance.

SCOUT | Retail | Visual Commerce5SCOUT, a tote and travel accessory retailer, decided to think outside the box when it launched its latest evergreen engagement campaign. With the very clear goals of building brand awareness, driving ecommerce sales, highlighting new product offerings, and showcasing product reviews, SCOUT launched a shoppable UGC gallery. The idea was to utilize UGC, which has been proven to be 20% more influential on purchases than any other media, to encourage other users to interact with each other and the brand. To help drive participants to the gallery, SCOUT featured a stream of users’ photos on its homepage, included print inserts encouraging hashtag use in all of its shopping bags, launched a promotional email campaign, and publicized the gallery across its social media accounts.

To utilize this UGC experience as a sales tool, SCOUT tagged each user-submitted photo with the featured SCOUT product. This allowed visitors to directly click through to purchase from a user-submitted photo. By harnessing the power of UGC, SCOUT was able to increase its sales significantly without having to invest heavily into creating new content.

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St. Louis Blues | Entertainment | Referral7The St. Louis Blues wanted to share news and promotions about its upcoming games with a broader audience. In addition, it wanted to grow its email database and increase its overall ticket sales. So to help accomplish this, the Blues decided to launch a referral campaign on Facebook inviting fans to enter to win tickets, parties, gift cards and more. In addition, participants were offered an additional entry into the contest for every friend the entrant referred. St. Louis promoted its campaigns across each of its social media sites and on its website to increase its reach. The participation in this simple campaign was fantastic. Not only did an average of 65% of people who saw the referral form sign up, but St. Louis also expanded its email database by over 17,000 contacts. In addition, St. Louis achieved a 235% return on investment over the lifetime of its first three campaigns.

Grand Ole Opry | Entertainment | UGC & Campaign Contest6The Grand Ole Opry, a staple of Nashville’s vibrant country music culture, was looking for ways to engage its fans and drive brand awareness as part of its digital marketing strategy. The Opry knows its younger audience is more likely to interact with the brand through Twitter and Instagram, whereas its general audience primarily engages on Facebook. This insight helped the Opry determine which networks to run its individual programs, and the amount of investment each should receive. Ultimately, the Opry decided to take a multi-campaign approach, leveraging different campaigns to appeal to its unique audiences — sign-ups to reward brand advocates and acquire new fans, viral promotions to drive awareness and engagement and video contests to increase exposure and collect UGC. This multi-campaign approach was crucial in reaching its overall marketing goals. Because of its clear understanding of its audience

and how to target them, the Opry was able to drive incredible results through its campaigns, garnering thousands of new fans, driving engagement, increasing brand awareness, and growing its email database exponentially.

“Know your audience and don’t be afraid to experiment with new types of campaigns and different social networks. Tailor your strategy to your audience and where they like to interact for best results.”

- Katrina MaddoxGrand Ole Opry

Pro TipCollect more email addresses for continued communications by pre-checking the email opt-in box on forms. You should also try different tactics and social networks to understand what channels and types of content result in the biggest return on investment.

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L’Oréal | Consumer Goods | UGC Experience8L’Oréal is known for creating exciting branded experiences for customer engagement, so it is no surprise it launched an entire custom website dedicated solely to fan engagement. On this site, L’Oréal provided tips on how to create the perfect selfie and encouraged its fans to share their selfies using the hashtag #BeExtraordinary. The purpose of this experience was to build brand awareness by leveraging L’Oréal’s biggest brand advocates and also to get fans talking about their favorite L’Oréal products. In addition to providing a fun experience for users, fans could also easily access other resources on the L’Oréal website and interact with other customers, giving visitors a seamless user experience with multiple avenues to find related products.

RW&CO. | Consumer Goods | Referral & UGC Contest9Clothing company, RW&CO., wanted to build up excitement over its newest ELLE dress styles before its spring launch. So to help get the word out, RW&CO. launched a quiz inviting fans to vote for their favorite ELLE dress for a chance to win one of three $200 gift cards. To participate in the contest, entrants were asked to submit their contact information, and were also prompted to share the contests with additional users. Because of the simplicity of this contest and the lucrative prize, fan participation was off the charts. And not only did RW&CO. drum up excitement about the upcoming product launch, but it also captured tons of great data around consumers’ buying preferences, allowing it to retarget participants in the future based on their dress preferences. Additionally this data can also be used for future product launches to drive even more awareness about upcoming products. By opening up additional avenues to communicate with its customers, RW&CO. extended the lifespan of this exciting promotion and reached more customers than they would have through traditional means.

Pro TipDon’t underestimate the power of brand advocates. Most customers would rather hear about your products or services from other customers, rather than read your brand’s messaging. So instead, encourage your biggest fans to share their experiences with your brand.

Pro TipWhen creating a quiz, ensure the data you are collecting is relevant and useful to your brand. Not only will you drive fan engagement, but you will also uncover new consumer insight and preference data.

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5N oYES TO | Consumer Goods | Referral & UGC Contest10YES TO, a global leader in natural beauty products, is all about projecting a positive lifestyle to its customers. To help strengthen this message, YES TO recruited its fans to be the voice and face of the brand by sharing their inspiring images and messages with others using the #YESTOMOVEMENT hashtag. The movement was intended to bring the brand’s positive energy to the forefront of its customers’ lives and inspire them to ‘say yes’ to positivity in as many aspects of their lives as possible. This particular YES TO program leveraged a customer referral campaign at the outset to help drive excitement and awareness of the movement and then as a follow up, YES To invited these registrants to participate in its evergreen UGC contests.

This wildly successful campaign garnered tens of thousands of user email sign-ups and collected thousands of pieces of UGC. And because of its ExactTarget/Salesforce integration, YES TO was able to seamlessly import all of the campaign data directly into its CRM system, ensuring it could communicate with more target users in the future.

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Toronto Maple Leafs | Entertainment | Referral12Many brands leverage UGC contests to promote user photos and videos across their websites and digital properties. Others feature UGC in print and television ads. But the Toronto Maple Leafs took UGC to a completely new level. In its #LeafsNation photo contest, fans were asked to submit photos of themselves or other Maple Leafs fans for the chance to be included in a one of a kind experience. Participants simply had to share their photos on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using the designated hashtag to be entered into the contest. As a reward for engaging with the brand and showing their team spirit, the Maple Leafs aggregated its fans’ best photos and projected them across the entire Maple Leafs rink. Talk about a fun way of repurposing user generated content!

Pep Boys | Retail | Engagement Campaigns11When your marketing goals are as all-encompassing as Pep Boys, a one-size-fits-all approach just won’t cut it, which is why it decided to roll numerous individual campaigns into one overall marketing program throughout the year. The Pep Boys marketing team was tasked with increasing brand awareness, growing customer engagement, acquiring new fans, adding email subscriptions, phone numbers, and marketing opt-ins, as well as rewarding its loyal fans and customers. No short order by any measure. But by leveraging quizzes, sign ups, photo contests, look books and more, Pep Boys was able to created a customized integrated marketing strategy to reach all of their goals. In addition, by combining in-store promotions with digital and social campaigns, Pep Boys provided a seamless experience for its customers, regardless of where they shopped.

This highly-coordinated campaign paid huge dividends for Pep Boys, ultimately resulting in thousands of new fans, opt-ins, visitors and more.

By running multiple campaigns concurrently, Pep Boys ensured it reached a significant number of customers throughout the year across all of its networks.

Pro TipBefore launching any campaign, ensure you have clearly identified the goals and objectives you plan to achieve. This will help your team choose the right tool for the job. A sign-up form may be good for acquiring email addresses, but it may not be the best choice for collecting UGC. Speak with your account rep to discover which experience will be the most beneficial to your goals.

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Boohoo | Retail | UGC Heat Map13New-age fashion retailer, Boohoo recognized the importance of social interaction around the holidays and was looking for a unique way to communicate with its fans on social. What Boohoo came up with was a fun UGC contest asking fans for a photo of how they were spending their Xmas nights, which they then overlayed on a map of the world. To have their photo featured on the map, fans simply needed to upload a photo to Instagram using the hashtag #NightsBeforeXmas with their location tagged. This beautiful UGC collection was featured on Boohoo’s site directly alongside Boohoo products and special offers.

This creative program produced great results for Boohoo. Not only did fans spend more time on the site, but they were also actively engaging with each other and the brand on social media. This helped keep Boohoo front of mind when customers were doing their holiday shopping, a win-win for any retailer.

Stanley | Retail | Shoppable UGC Experience14Stanley knows a thing or two about making tough products for tough people. They call it Stanleyness, and even if you don’t know what that means, you definitely know it when you see it. Stanleyness is that inner strength pushing you to do incredible, sometimes crazy things to wring the most out of life. It’s having the confidence to overcome obstacles and stick it out to the end. Stanleyness is a staple of the Stanley brand, which is why Stanley wanted to capture this spirit and feature it on its website. Users were encouraged to share their photos and stories with the brand using the #Stanleyness hashtag on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Stanley then took these photos, aggregated them into a beautiful UGC gallery, and tagged them with the Stanley product the user was showing off.

To help get the most out of this evergreen UGC campaign, Stanley features it prominently on the Stanley homepage. In addition, the #Stanleyness tag also is prominent across all of its social properties, inviting other users to show their stuff. By creating a simple path to purchase from a user’s photo to the product featured, Stanley is effectively making social content shoppable.

Pro TipSchedule your engagement programs around holidays or special events. The inherent buzz from the event will be a great stepping stone to get customers excited about your digital experiences.

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Canada Goose | Retail | Shoppable UGC Experience15Canada Goose knows how well its gear holds up in the cold, but it doesn’t want you to take its word for it. To help prove its clothings’ value, the brand asked fans to share their own personal Canada Goose experiences with others using the hashtag #AskAnyoneWhoKnows. And judging by the volume of submissions, a ton of people ‘know’. Thousands of customers shared their Canada Goose photos via Instagram, Twitter, or direct upload. These awesome user submissions showcased Canada Goose fans acting as brand advocates. In addition, Canada Goose tagged each of the user submitted photos with the product they were featuring. This allowed visitors to click directly from a piece of user generated content to the product ecommerce page.

To extend the lifetime of this experience, Canada Goose set up links to its gallery prominently on its home page. In addition, since Canada Goose can continue to collect and tag additional pieces of content as users share their photos, the freshness of this campaign will always be up to date. This ensures Canada Goose stays top of mind with its customers, and allows other users to see the value in a Canada Goose product.

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Advocate Health Care | Health Care | UGC Experience16Advocate Health Care, one of the largest health care providers in the Midwest, wanted to increase awareness of its health care services by promoting healthy living and wellness to its fans and customers. The goal was to spark a conversation about living well between doctors and the public in an interactive digital environment. At the heart of this campaign is Advocate Health Care’s #HealthiestLife experience. In it, users were encouraged to share photos, videos and comments across Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram for a chance to win a FitBit or a grand prize of a GoPro Camera. Advocate Health Care promoted this experience across TV, billboards, print ads, direct mail and social media outlets. This ensured it reached a larger potential audience, and increased

the campaign’s success. Because Advocate Health Care included a prize in the experience, it ensured its participants were also sharing their contact information, allowing Advocate Health Care to follow up with additional communications in the future. In all, Advocate Health Care collected over 3,000 pieces of authentic UGC, increased visits to the ‘My Portal’ landing page by 176%, and grew physician appointments by over 26%. In addition, the contact information collected allowed Advocate Health Care to share additional information with its customers through its email and social channels.

Pro Tip“Don’t limit yourself to one channel or social network when you run a marketing campaign - cross-channel promotion is critical for success.”

- Christine BonAdvocate Health Care

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Offerpop is an engagement marketing software-as-a-service platform transforming how global brands engage and convert today’s mobile and social consumers. Leading companies use Offerpop’s integrated platform to power engagement experiences across marketing channels, manage user-generated content everywhere, and improve marketing activation with rich consumer profiles harnessing behavioral and affinity data. The company is headquartered in New York City, with offices in London, San Francisco and Portland, OR.

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