Belk omnichannel Santa promotion a big success

Charlotte, N.C. – Nothing succeeds like success, and 300-plus-store department store chain Belk Inc. took a previously successful TV holiday campaign and modernized it for the omnichannel era, with impressive results.



“In January 2014, we started to look at how to improve our fourth quarter performance and engage with the customer,” said Jon Pollack, executive VP of sales, promotions, marketing and e-commerce in an interview with Chain Store Age. “The idea was born to revive ‘Santa Baby,’ a campaign from 2009, and modernize it to drive sales, engagement and interaction.”



The 2009 holiday TV advertising campaign featuring the non-traditionally young and hunky “Santa Baby” character was highly successful, and also drove what Pollack termed “wildly reactive” social commentary.



“It was our most talked about commercial,” said Pollack. “But we knew we couldn’t just do another commercial.”



Belk decided to create an omnichannel Santa Baby promotion that would let customers directly interact with the title character. Having previously worked with rich engagement platform provider HelloWorld on omnichannel promotions, Belk decided to partner with the technology company for Santa Baby.



Combining HelloWorld customer engagement capabilities with existing internal social infrastructure, Belk launched a digital campaign across all channels, including social and mobile as well as TV, in fourth quarter 2014. The campaign included the ability to create Santa Baby e-cards to send to friends, as well as register for a sweepstakes with a grand prize of $10,000.



Consumers could also earn bonus sweepstakes entries for sharing the campaign across social channels, watching the Santa Baby TV commercial and following Belk on Instagram and Twitter.



Results included Belk collecting 300,000 consumer emails and 30,000 mobile opt-ins. Belk saw 233,500 total registrations and 1.1 million sweepstakes entries. There were also more than 1.6 million personalized e-cards sent, even though no sweepstakes bonus was offered for e-card creation. Belk is pleased enough to not plan on waiting another five years to launch the next iteration of Santa Baby.



“We’ll do it again this year and build on it,” said Pollack. “Surely it has legs.”