Looking for end-of-year marketing ideas to engage your customers? How can you leverage your use of Qualifio to make your end-of-year marketing stand out? Well, that’s precisely the topic that our Customer Care Manager, Leon Termote, covered in his webinar. He also talked about successful formats like calendars, personality tests, custom games and quizzes, and real-life examples of highly effective end-of-year marketing ideas. Keep on reading!
? If you prefer to watch the webinar replay, it’s right here.
Standing out with your end-of-year marketing ideas
“If you want to stand out from the crowd, give people a reason not to forget you”
Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group.
According to Forbes, the average consumer sees up to 10,000 advertisements per day. This is why it’s essential to stand out from the crowd nowadays and why brand distinction is the ultimate necessity in your digital presence. Lucky you, Qualifio will allow you to do that with more than 50 interactive formats. Later on, we’ll take a look at what other brands are doing and how they are leveraging the platform to make their end-of-year marketing stand out.
What makes it work?
- Walk the talk: build trust in your brand because it’s the number one factor for consumer loyalty. Stay true to your advertising message.
- Respond to the moment: assess what’s going on in the moment (Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc.) and look for ways your brand can respond to that.
- Make your marketing material valuable: be innovative with your messaging and cut through the noise.
While sales are the end goal, this is done through consistent marketing efforts. Standing out from the crowd can only be achieved by having all the cards in hand. Keep these three steps in mind:
- Define your target audience.
- Know them better by collecting their zero-party data.
- Measure, optimise and repeat until you reach your goals.
Discover the end-of-year marketing ideas of top brands
Discounts or promotions are good but they’re not enough. Your audience wants to be surprised and engaged. Engagement is key and interactive marketing is the way, performing 81% better at retaining visitors and collecting personal data. With Qualifio, you have access to tons of interactive formats and can leverage seasonalities in line with your business objectives.
1. The Advent calendar
We cannot talk about end-of-year marketing without mentioning the Advent calendar. In this format, a new box opens every day to another campaign or new content of any type. Below, you have an example of the French Federation of Football. They launched an Advent calendar full of fun games and prizes and collected newsletter subscribers for themselves and their partners by adding two opt-ins in their form.
The Belgian national railway company, SNCB/NMBS, also chose the Advent calendar for their end-of-year marketing. The calendar was featured on their homepage capturing a lot of attention. They managed to get an average of 1,700 participations per day in December and more than 200% increase in participants for the year.
Even media groups are leveraging the Advent calendar. The Nordic region’s leading entertainment provider NENT Group launched a fully sponsored Advent calendar in partnership with its advertiser Stylepit, a fashion e-commerce. They promoted their online calendar on television with an advertising video.
If you want to see other examples of Advent calendars, head over to this blog article and be inspired!
2. The hidden object
The supermarket chain Lidl launched a “hidden object” campaign for Saint Nicholas, published simultaneously on their website and Facebook page. Consumers were invited to find all the missing objects Saint Nicholas had lost while shopping at Lidl for a chance to win one of the €100 coupons.
3. The form
A simple and effective way to collect data is obviously the form. Let’s take the example of Nespresso’s initiative for Black Friday. The coffee brand gave consumers the chance to receive their Black Friday promotions before anyone else by filling out a form with their email address. This is the perfect campaign to get consumers to sign up for your marketing emails and attract interesting and interested prospects!
Pssst! To tease your audience even more, you can add a countdown to your campaign. You’ll find everything you need to know here on how to create a countdown timer.
4. The gift guide
It’s not always easy to find the right gift, and especially for Christmas. So the brand Kérastase launched a gift guide that presented the best Christmas gift from their range of products following a few questions. In addition, the brand added call-to-actions to their products for each gift and brought traffic through to their webshop.
5. The hide and seek game
Like their virtual egg hunt for Easter, the fashion brand LolaLiza organised a hide and seek game with Christmas balls. They hid the balls in different places on their webshop and challenged participants to find them all. Participants had to visit a dedicated landing page for each ball found, enter the code present on the ball, and get a 10% discount. An original campaign that allowed Lolaliza to:
- Boost their sales;
- Engage consumers;
- Promote specific pages on their webshop;
- Increase their overall traffic.
6. The personality test
Kaartje2go enables consumers to create and send personal cards online. Via a personality test, they identified the participant’s style and preferences and tailored the exit screen accordingly with a sweet recommendation. In addition, they offered a discount on the exit screen as an incentive.
7. The photo contest
You can let your users create the content for you with user-generated content. Concepts around Christmas and New Year Eve are endless for photo, video, and writing contests. From gift wrapping or unboxing videos, to best Christmas tree or jumper photos, and best Santa letters, let your users’ express their creativity. In the example below, Keytrade Bank launched a photo contest inviting users to upload a picture of their favourite Christmas jumper.
8. The catcher game
The catcher game is a fun and addictive game where items fall from the sky and are caught by something at the bottom. If you want to create yours, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Studio team. You’ll be able to personalise the game with your visuals, your gifts, basket, music and more.
We’ve shown you 8 ways to make your end-of-year marketing stand out from the crowd. Remember that brand distinction is key, so let your creativity run free to propose unique, innovative, and original content.
If you want to download the presentation slides or watch the webinar replay, it’s right here!
