Belk Keeps Eyes on Omnichannel Loyalty Prize
Family is all about loyalty, and as a family-owned business, 301-store, Charlotte, N.C.-based Belk, Inc. makes an effort to maintain and reward loyalty from its customers. So when Belk reached its 125th anniversary this year, the retailer decided to launch a campaign that would reward loyal shoppers while also boosting its presence in channels such as mobile and social.
Prized customer engagement
Working with digital engagement technology provider ePrize, Inc., Belk crafted a strategy for a campaign called “Belk’s 125 Days of Prizes.” The campaign provided a prize a day for 125 days to new and existing Belk customers who signed up across a microsite, Facebook, and mobile channels.
“ePrize’s platform functionality and engagement expertise made perfect sense to host this campaign," explained Jon Pollack, executive VP, sales promotion, marketing & e-commerce, Belk. "We were pleased with the campaign engagement across digital, mobile and social channels.”
Registering strong results
One specific result that pleased Belk was the registration of nearly 220,000 consumers in the promotion.
“To hit almost 220,000 registrations was a big win for us, especially with almost 80% opting in to receive additional information on future promotions,” said Pollack. “Specific to mobile, the campaign significantly helped us in boosting our mobile interactions, as 13% of registrants opted in to receive exclusive offers via text message. Social engagement also increased, with Pinterest followers doubling from 7,000 pre-launch to 15,000 post-campaign, and more than 61,000 Facebook posts about the campaign."
Another clear sign of customer engagement was the level of activity among the 220,000 contestants. There were more than 2 million sweepstakes entries with an average of 9.6 entries per registrant. Consumers uploaded more 24,000 photos sharing their favorite Belk memories.
The game continues
Based on its success with its entry into the realm of omnichannel gamification (using a contest to drive social engagement and reward loyalty among consumers), Belk plans to continue working on similar projects with ePrize.
“Belk has continued to work with ePrize on digital campaigns, including our most recent ‘Share Your Wedding Style Sweepstakes’ campaign on Pinterest,” Pollack said. “We are very pleased with the social and mobile success seen through working with ePrize and will continue to make it a priority integrating multichannel engagement in our overall marketing efforts.”