The winners of the Canada Post INCITE award, at the Canadian Marketing Awards, seamlessly connected digital and physical marketing channels. Customer response? High sales and stronger, positive brand awareness.
Congratulations are in order for these 2016 winning campaigns:
- The WOW Guide (Gold); client Canadian Tire Corporation; agency Rogers Media Custom Content
- Momentum Savings Account Acquisition (Silver); client Scotiabank; agency Track DDB
- MasterCard Priceless Cities (Bronze); client Master Card; agency McCann Canada
The WOW Guide reinvents Canadian Tire’s catalogue to bridge the gap between digital and physical
Canadian Tire sells a lot more than auto parts and sporting goods. The iconic retailer has introduced new high-quality, exclusive products, especially in the home category. Their marketing challenge was to become top-of-mind for consumers.
Strategy
To educate consumers about the new Canadian Tire, the store revived and reinvented its catalogue. The WOW guide, explains T J Flood, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Canadian Tire, “is a digital ecosystem providing a sweeping breadth and depth of product visuals and information, while also offering additional features like dynamic pricing, customer reviews, inventory levels, how-to and product videos.” A downloadable app allowed shoppers to hover their smartphone cameras over a product and access the digital content – and buy with the swipe of a screen.
Results
The WOW campaign launched with a bang, using targeted television ads, and sending the catalogue to 12 million households. Canadian Tire’s online weekly sales doubled. The company saw double-digit sales increases across all stock keeping units (SKUs). A bonus was the category halo impact due to the positive customer bias created as shoppers experienced the catalogue physically and digitally.
Multi-channel campaign for new Momentum Savings Account Acquisition brought in over $1.3 billion
Low interest rates make it tough for banks to attract savings accounts. To differentiate itself, Scotiabank created a savings account that rewards account holders with interest paid not once, but twice. The challenge; how to explain this somewhat complex offering and attract new customers.
Strategy
Scotiabank crunched data on existing customers, and targeted the prospects most likely to respond. The creative team used iconic piggy bank imagery to convey a back-to-basics message of saving, with copy that highlighted the benefits of dual-interest. A multi-channel approach used staggered email and an interactive “Break-a-lope” direct mail piece.
Pulling each side of the DM paid off with two piggy banks and two messages, while the email featured side-by-side graphics of the two piggy banks. Both channels gave easy online, phone, and in-branch options for opening the new account, effectively increasing the response rate.
Results
The marketing efforts were highly successful, with more than 32,000 new accounts opened. The $1.3 billion deposited into the new accounts was three times the campaign’s target. More good news was that 71% of the customers deposited a portion of their balances from outside sources.
MasterCard Priceless Cities is rewarded by tapping into travel dreams
MasterCard wanted to generate awareness for its Priceless Cities rewards program – a fresh way to experience travel destination cities.
The campaign had two goals:
- Convince existing cardholders to opt-in for Priceless Cities emails.
- Acquire new converts to the rewards program – with a cost per acquisition (CPA) lower than the industry standard of $25.
Strategy
MasterCard partnered with its issuing banks to reach receptive cardholders. Data analysis identified affluent cardholders who liked to travel. The banks provided data on which cities these customers traveled to, allowing MasterCard to send relevant travel offers and experiences.
The campaign launched with a direct mail (DM) piece that highlighted the fresh, local experiences offered by Priceless Cities rewards. The DM included a chance to win an all-expenses paid trip, and gave customers extra entries when they opted-in for future emails. Customers’ historic travel data allowed the issuer to vary the grand-prize destination, making it more appealing to the audience.
Priceless Cities’ message, to “detour the everyday,” was highlighted by a “peel and reveal” creative treatment that was multi-layered. Recipients pulled tabs to peel back the layers of the city and reveal the contest’s vanity URL. The format meant that cardholders physically engaged with the DM as they consumed the content.
Results
The data segmentation, and engaging creative, created better-than-hoped-for results – with card conversions over double the campaign target. Email opt-ins were through the roof – 73% of the cardholders who entered to win also signed in for future Priceless Cities emails. And the CPA was well below $25, at an efficient $22.01.
Conclusion
Each of these award-winning campaigns looked hard at their customer data to build offers and creative that would resonate with prospective customers. They leveraged the unique properties of digital and physical channels to excite interest, and make it easy to “buy” the product on offer.