Woah, this company had collected 100,000+ email addresses before its operation even began! Find out how it did it… [Thursdays: FYO!]
Harry’s is an online male grooming brand in the US.
When it started its operations in 2012, something incredible happened…
The brand had collected over 100,000 emails for its EDM campaigns EVEN BEFORE it officially opened its business!
How was this possible?
Through incentivization.
Incentivization is a marketing strategy wherein businesses offer incentives to customers to motivate them to make another transaction or help increase brand awareness.
Harry’s co-founders Jeff Raider and Andy Katz-Mayfield wanted to create a campaign that would encourage online users to help spread the word about their business.
What better way to do that than to incentivize?
Harry’s had a relatively simple user interface for its campaign: A two-page microsite.
Page 1: The Splash Page
On the splash page, online visitors were invited to enter their email addresses if they wanted to know more about Harry’s products and be the first to get updates. It was a clever way for the company to expand its contacts database for future EDM campaigns, as well as to keep track of online referrals.
[Splash Page: An introduction page that often features high-quality visuals and other designs to attract online users to further proceed into the website. It is used to promote a company, service, or product, as well as inform users about the softwares or browsers needed to view the rest of the site’s content.]
Harry’s kept this page simple, giving users some idea of what its brand is while still leaving an air of mystery about its products.
Once users input their email address, they’ll need to click “STEP INSIDE” to move to the next page.This call-to-action button, coupled with a small drawing of a key at the top, reinforces the message that the company is giving users “insider access” to the brand.
Page 2: The Referral Page
Potentially still elated from the promise of being “the first to know,” these online visitors are more likely to tell other people about the experience.
To speed that process along, Harry’s designed the second page of the microsite so it shows both an appreciation for signing up and an expression of concern for friends who might “get left behind.”
For this referral system to work, Harry’s needed to offer more than just one-time freebies, and it needed to be able to track referrals flawlessly.
This referral page contained a shareable link to the splash page, which was coded specifically to each user, and below it are buttons to easily share the link through email, Facebook, and Twitter.
By sharing the link with their friends, users had the opportunity to earn free products from Harry’s. The more friends they convinced to sign up, the bigger the incentive they could earn!
Harry’s incentives were:
- 5 successful referrals (friends clicked on the shared link and signed up to Harry’s using their email addresses) = A free shaving cream
- 10 successful referrals = A free razor
- 25 successful referrals = A free shave set with Harry’s premium razor handle, “The Winston”
- 50 successful referrals = A year’s worth of free shaving equipment
Harry’s wanted the entire campaign to feel like a fun and exciting game for its users. In order to achieve that, the campaign page included a tracker where users could see how far they were on their referrals and what prize they had achieved―or were yet to achieve.
The campaign tracker page served the dual purpose of helping users keep track of their referrals and assure them that Harry’s is true to its word (incentives).
By the end of the campaign, Harry’s co-founder Jeff Raider said that 77% of the email addresses collected were via referrals, which means about 20,000 online users referred the company to around 65,000 others.
On average, that means those who joined Harry’s referral campaign had successfully referred at least 3 people each.
In total, the company gathered more than 100,000 email addresses.
Here’s another interesting result by the end of Harry’s campaign: Over 200 participants successfully referred over 50 family members and friends, therefore achieving the highest tier reward!
Some of the online users who participated even said they took on the referral campaign like a personal challenge for themselves.
Similar to Harry’s strategy, you (as a business owner or marketer) can also use incentives to give your brand’s online visibility a boost!
Make sure your incentives are valuable to your target market and will spur them to take desirable actions, either by signing up to your newsletter or buying more products from you.
Don’t forget that your incentives also have to be attainable in order for the campaign to be effective!
Start planning now and motivate your customers through your brand’s own incentivization strategy.
By doing so, you get to interact with your customers and target market and also achieve the online visibility you’re aiming for!
Once you’ve finalized your strategy, make sure you have a steady timeline for it and… let the fun begin!
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Thursdays: FYO! Find You Optimization”
Why should you stop thinking SEO and start thinking FYO?
We’re not saying that you should abandon Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Don’t get us wrong, of course, we know this is something very important, especially in today’s digital marketing age.
The internet landscape is vast, and a world of its own. You really need to distinguish yourself and make your brand/company/website known and easily searchable.
Better yet, get to the top of page one for Top Results on Google or any other search engine.
However, what is the purpose of SEO? It’s that customers Find You!
That’s what matters. So, while SEO is one factor of FYO… it really is only one, and we ought not to abandon all the myriad of ways digitally and offline for improving your FYO.
How can we look at this from a different and better perspective?
Let’s say you have it in the bag! You and your team are experts in SEO. Awesome. But did you ever wonder what else you could do to push it further and give your SEO skills a boost?
FYO! Find You Optimization!
You need your target audience to FIND YOU—your brand, product, service, or offer. This is SEO plus other tools that increase visibility online (and offline).
Every Thursday, we publish content on how you can get your target market to find you, beyond the typical “type and search.” There are other things you can do along with your SEO to give your online advertising process a boost.
Try considering other tactics beyond it—WOMO (Word Of Mouth Optimization), RO (Referral Optimization), and “All-Other-Means-Of-Getting-Your-Target-Market-To-Find-You” Optimization (AOMOGYTMTFY, if you’d like a long acronym).
Part of a great marketing strategy is knowing how to adapt new methods and make use of different types of marketing and promotion that best fit your business goals and which give you the results you want.
Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next Thursday’s FYO!
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
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