Boosting traffic for UK retail giant hmv

Intro

hmv wanted to increase traffic into hmv.com and into hmv stores before Christmas, and to be ready for January sales.

Parties involved

hmv: One of Britain’s leading entertainment retailers

24SevenSocial UK: Empowering brands to succeed with Facebook marketing.

The story

It’s December and time for hmv’s advent calendar. The calendar was built with several objectives 1) to send traffic into hmv.com and their various Christmas offers. 2) Collect data from entrants. 3) Interact with fans leading up to Christmas. 4) Get product and brand awareness. 5) Increase Facebook fan base.

Leading up to advent, fans could sign up to be reminded when the campaign started.

Each day a window in the calendar was timed to open and reveal the daily prize giveaway. To compete, you entered your contact info and answered today’s question. Daily winners were selected randomly among the ones with the correct answers. You could also share the contest with fans through sharing buttons. One of the days also had a timed Breaking Bad takeover, when the whole advent calendar turned into a Breaking Bad calendar. A fun twist that both surprised and engaged fans. 

The solution

• Ran on hmv’s Facebook-Page.
• The contest was set up with 24SevenSocial and ran on hmv’s Facebook Page and as an iframe on their website hmv.com. The contest was optimized for both desktop, tablet and phone.
• The contest was promoted with Facebook posts, Twitter, and through hmv newsletters. It was also picked up by Hot Deals UK.

Results

• More than 7000 people signed up to receive notification of the start of the calendar
• The contest got more than 34.000 entries
• The entries resulted in about 30.000 new email addresses that approved to receive further communication from hmv
• More than 2000 new Page likes
• Huge degree of engagement on the hmv Facebook Page throughout the campaign

”We were really happy with the level of service from 24SevenSocial. We found we were able to get a large number of RTs and reach on social via the competition as well as securing a high level of opt-in data from our customers.”

Sapphire Joyce, Head of Social Media, hmv digital