It’s October we know, but you’re probably already thinking of your Christmas campaign… You’re not? What? We are bursting with ideas that will tickle your followers and slot you right in to being bang on trend…

Kind of like what we did for Maxol…

Maxol Christmas 2015 Campaign

Objective #1- Make It Fun!

• Offer Maxol’s fans and followers a fun and interactive app experience instead of the ubiquitous “like and share” competitions churned out by its competitors. Not to forget that like and share promotions are illegal.
• The app was housed on Maxol.ie and this gave us more creative space as we weren’t working within the confines of Facebook and Twitter.

The Tasks

Objective #2 – Email Permissions

• An email opt-in has a lot more value than a like or a share. That is because when there is an exchange of email address for the possibility of wining a prize, it bestows multiple opportunities on the brand for communications in the future that can be a little more salesy than regular social content.
• When the Emoji task was completed, a daily prize was unlocked, and the visitor needed to submit their details to win.
• The opt-in to Maxol emails was not obligatory, but we still got a really high opt in rate!

Objective #3 – Engagement

• Drive engagement on Facebook and Twitter – the primary social media platforms in which Maxol engages with its customers.
• The Emoji promotion drove healthy comments and shares, and the sentiment was overwhelmingly positive for the brand, and the Christmas promotion.

Engagement was consistently strong throughout the campaign

Twitter Also Got The Love

Did We Succeed?

Yes! The Emoji Christmas campaign was a huge success. It achieved all of its objectives, and was delivered in a very short space of time, with no technical difficulties on mobile or tablet. The repeat visits were higher than we anticipated and we were delighted that more than half of Maxol’s site traffic over the period came from social!

The Emoji Christmas campaign reinforced the Maxol brand as fun and engaging, with relevant seasonal content. What we are most pleased about at Brightspark is the value of the emails generated. If you apply the internal value of an email to the number generated, this campaign more than pays for itself, and leaves Maxol well positioned to communicate with opted in visitors on a regular basis throughout 2016.

It promoted some light hearted fun where people could interact and enjoy tasks such as “writing an emoji letter to santa” or dragging the ingredients for the “breakfast of champions” into a shopping basket.

The Results

In the 2015 Christmas campaign we helped Maxol achieve:

• Daily engagement up 39%
• Achieved 87% unique opt ins
• It wasn’t a priority but increased Facebook page likes by 14%

Likes, Comments and Shares

Total Reach

It is clear from this example that emojis aren’t just for tweens. 

Like Snapchat, Emojis are an interesting way for marketers to reach a millennial audience and to share their brand’s personality online. Emoji can be integrated on most social media platforms and are free to use. Why not try it for your business?

How To Emoji (for the over 30’s…)

1.  Tell Stories 

One of the biggest emoji practices is telling a story. Many have gone viral as people share their favourite movies told through emoji’s or popular song lyrics.

Image Credit: Buzzfeed

Maybe you could include this in your social media? Tell your brand story, or engage with users by running a competition like we did for Maxol in summer 2014, and again at Christmas 2015. Anything goes once it’s done in a natural way.

2.  Do Politics 

Even the White House has jumped on the Emoji bandwagon!  In a recent report on millennials, Obama and his team gave preference to emojis in order to speak the language of its intended age group. Whether it worked or not leaves a lot to be decided, but the significance of its use is clear. Millennials are a notoriously hard group to connect with, and the White House has always been an early adopter in new ways to to reach out.

3. Emoji Speaks Louder Than Words 

Here at Brightspark we ran a Christmas 2015 campaign for Maxol using Emoji. We wanted to do something unique, a little contemporary, and lots of fun. We’d noticed that Maxol’s fans and followers naturally use a lot of Emoji – well it is the fastest growing language in the world – so we used this as the theme and designed Maxol’s own set of custom Emoji and an app to go with it! The app was launched on 1 December 2015 and not only was Maxol first to the market with its Christmas campaign, but it was the only Christmas campaign to use Emoji.

If you are trying to reach millennials but find your social media strategy isn’t quite there yet, why not get in touch? Our team knows social and while we’re not millennials ourselves, we can certainly help you identify the right platforms and approaches that will work for your business.