How to get users to care about your newsletters using movement, wit and a LOT of vodka.
This is the story about how we dramatically increased user engagement rates for ABSOLUT's eCRM program while simultaneously creating new opportunities for the brand's online presence.
Our primary objectives with this project was to:
A) Increase engagement rates for Absolut's eCRM program
B) Take over "Let's grab a drink" on the Giphy Platform
Here's how we did it.
Our initial theory was that animated drink images will garner higher click-through and engagement rates in the eCRM Program. The only way to send animated content over e-mail is the Gif format, which brought us to another opportunity.
The GIPHY platform allows our target audience to communicate with GIFs over a number of popular services such as Tinder, Gmail, Slack, Apple Messages and many more. Looking through the content available on GIPHY we were hardly able to find anything that said: "Let's grab a drink".
Additionally, none of our competitors were present on GIPHY. We saw this as a great opportunity to get ahead of the curve, and decided that our secondary goal for this project would be to take over "Let's grab a drink" on GIPHY.
By making use of Stop Motion animation we were able to find a style which resonated deeply with audiences and the brand itself.
The core of this style being:
Everything happens in the camera – We found that the audience is hyper-sensitive to things that clearly look computer-generated or fake. Our content only consists of things that we actually took pictures of, nothing modelled, nothing fake.
Witty, unexpected and to the point – By limiting the file size of our GIFs to 2mb we've significantly reduced the chances of our audiences just moving on to another e-mail before our content has even loaded. To keep our high quality finish (that we're EXTREMELY proud of) we're limited to about 3-5 frames per asset. While this can be challenging it drives us to be wittier and more concise in the way we tell our stories.
By keeping up with the platforms that implement GIPHY support as well as trending tags and memes we're able to create relevant and entertaining content that's useful to our audiences as well as the Absolut brand as a whole.
• Up to 60% higher engagement rates for both newsletters and social media compared to still images
• A Giphy channel that almost instantly got featured as one of the site's "best practices" cases
• The assets posted on Giphy have been used over 11 million times (Between March 2016 - Nov 2016)
• Over 100 Gifs currently being used in the eCRM program, social media and .com
We've managed to exceed our initial goals and simultaneously generate new opportunities for the brand's online presence. Skål!
