In October 2014, Kohl's launched the Yes2You Rewards program with big goals – to engage customers in a deeply personalized, enduring way. To transcend the transaction and provoke passion. To embrace and celebrate the passions that make our customers unique ("You") and the moments of joy that matter to them ("Yes"). To become the soul of the Kohl's brand, driving intimate connections with our strongest loyalists while offering a new face of the brand to potential customers.
As we approached the first anniversary of the program in October 2015, 25 million members strong, we wanted to celebrate in a way that would bring this mission to life while driving value for the company. Specifically, we defined four key objectives:
1. Spur authentic, positive, and personal engagement amongst our current customer base and key growth segments, including Hispanics and Millennials
2. Manifest all three Yes2You program tenets – SAVE, SHARE, and SURPRISE – clearly and seamlessly for customers
3. Further the notion of Yes2You Rewards as a program that celebrates and champions YES and YOU
4. Drive sales during culminating offer period
Strategy
To achieve these goals, we decided to celebrate the Yes2You anniversary by saying #Yes2You to the customers, associates, and partners who inspire us and encouraging them to pass it forward, tagging someone inspiring with #Yes2You. We seeded this behavior across channels and with key celebrity, influencer and brand partners intrinsically linked to the Kohl's brand, #Yes2You ethos, and customer pockets we were seeking to activate. We amplified buzz by executing surprises all over the country based on real-time inspiring #Yes2You activity. Finally, we paid it off with one final surprise – an end-of-month offer for all members.
Implementation
We carefully architected each campaign element to bring this strategy to life:
Partner Engagement: To drive excitement at launch, engage the entire Kohl's family in #Yes2You and access new customer segments through their own networks, we engaged partners such as Jennifer Lopez. To kick off, Kohl's said #Yes2You to Jennifer Lopez for following her dreams to Vegas for her new show, and Jennifer Lopez passed the #Yes2You forward, tagging a prolific Latina influencer, Dulce Candy. Dulce passed it on, leading to a groundswell of Hispanic engagement. Additionally, we engaged partners across diverse passion areas including wellness, fashion and family, triggering engagement that authentically celebrated individuality.
Channel Selection: Based on the latent usage of Twitter to tag fellow users in a virtual "shout-out", we selected Twitter as the central campaign channel. To drive awareness and traffic to Twitter, we cross-promoted on social, digital, email, broadcast, print, and store channels at key moments.
Amplifying Investments: To amplify buzz, we partnered with Twitter to become only the third brand to release a custom emoji and timed the release to coincide with a promoted trend and launch of a digital #Yes2You feed.
Associate Integration: If Yes2You is the soul, associates are the heart of Kohl's, and with a network of 1,100+ stores around the country, they are one of the primary ways customers experience the brand. By saying #Yes2You to inspiring associates on social, encouraging all associates to participate in the campaign, leveraging Store Managers to execute customer surprises, and targeting three surprises to associates themselves, we were able to generate strong associate promotion of the campaign.
Surprise Selection: To drive excitement, we selected 22 customers, associates, and partners for surprises based on real-time #Yes2You activity. For example, a busy mom furthering her yoga practice was surprised with Gaiam yoga gear and a family of avid Star Wars fans with a playroom makeover. These surprises were spread across diverse passion areas and communities and were shared through video and image assets deployed within 48 hours, generating strong campaign excitement and visibility of key merchandise categories.
Each of these decisions played a key role in bringing our strategy to life, generating strong engagement over the course of the month and ultimately driving a successful payoff. For the full campaign journey, see http://kohlsyes2youcampaign.com/ with password kohlsy2y.
The campaign drove standout engagement, exceeding impressions, engagement, sentiment and view through benchmarks across channels.
Results included:
3X #Yes2You impressions over Kohl's monthly benchmark
5X over benchmark engagement on Facebook
15% increase in positive sentiment over Kohl's benchmark
10% increase in view through rate over Kohl's benchmark
Top two engaging audiences on Twitter were growth targets: Hispanics and Millennials
22 surprises, 22 days, 15 states based on real-time inspiring #Yes2You activity
For the full campaign journey, see http://kohlsyes2youcampaign.com/ with password kohlsy2y.
