News

Mobile engagement helps Auntie Anne's exceed sweepstakes expectations

May 31, 2013

Auntie Anne's Honey Whole Grain Sweepstakes, a branded multichannel campaign created to drive awareness of the new honey whole grain pretzel, drew more than 200,000 participants.

For the campaign, Auntie Anne's partnered with ePrize, a provider of social, mobile and web campaigns. It included a mobile focus geared toward the mom demographic. ePrize worked with Auntie Anne's to launch an engagement program with online, mobile, social and gamification components.

Guests throughout the U.S. engaged with the brand online with a virtual honey whole grain pretzel twisting game, as well as with in-store taste tests on Sampling Saturdays, with mobile-optimized QR code scanning to drive brand education. Digital media invited customers online to drive frequency.

"We were very pleased with the success of this comprehensive campaign, which drove trial and awareness of the new honey whole grain pretzel flavor in an engaging way," said Matt Simon, director of Marketing at Auntie Anne's. "Auntie Anne's understands that we have a loyal brand following, but we were pleasantly surprised when we learned participants were spending an average of 13 minutes connecting with the brand through an interactive pretzel twisting game."

He added that results exceeded expectations on all accounts, including the following data points:

• Amount of registrants:Total registration, 211,173, exceeded Auntie Anne's forecasts by more than 100,000 registrants. Moreover, 59 percent (124,768) of registrants opted in to become a V.I.P. (Very Important Pretzel Lover) in the Pretzel Perks email program to receive additional Auntie Anne's offers and promotions. Visitor and registration conversion reached 61 percent, more than 15 percent higher than anticipated. Overall, the campaign drove more than 1.6M sweepstakes entries.
• Mobile activity:Mobile acted as a highly effective channel throughout the promotion, with one-third of all registrations stemming from mobile web and SMS registrants.
• Customer engagement:The campaign engaged consumers, who spent an average of 3:55 minutes on the site each visit and visited an average of 7.6 times.
• Social sharing:Word of mouth engagement via Twitter and Facebook contributed to the promotion's success with more than 4,800 tweets, and more than 13,000 shares on Facebook. More than a third of people referred to the campaign through Facebook went on to register themselves.

"We worked with Auntie Anne's to craft a campaign to better engage in a dialogue with their valued customer, and the results spoke for themselves. Registrant numbers of over 200,000 blew our estimates out of the park and the amount of mobile engagement similarly exceeded our predictions," said Meredith Hillman, ePrize's vice president, Account Director.

Read more about mobile and social promotions.