12 Days of Golden Giveaways

Digital marketing campaign focused on translating online activity into foot traffic to area retailers and restaurants, using social media, email, and online advertising
 

In 2011, Carousel30 created a holiday marketing and advertising campaign for the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District (BID) to introduce the Golden Triangle neighborhood to new audiences and bring new customers to its restaurants and retailers. It has now run two years in a row to great success.

Golden Triangle is Washington, DC’s central business district and is home to 286 properties, over 3,000 businesses, over 200 restaurants, 30 million square feet of office space and six national parks. It was the first BID established in the city and continues to set the standard for quality of service for its many business and retail tenants.

Objective
The Golden Triangle BID had several objectives to capitalize on the holiday season, including extending the reach of Golden Triangle’s current audiences, collecting new email addresses for the mailing list, and sending new customers to restaurants and retailers within Golden Triangle.

Steps Taken
Carousel30 produced a campaign to help Golden Triangle BID celebrate the season. Our team developed the campaign concept and communications plan, designed social media graphics, website pages, advertisements and email blast. We promoted “12 Days of Golden Giveaways” through Facebook Ads, display ads on popular DC sites like DCist.com, blogger outreach and social media marketing.

The “12 Days of Golden Giveaways” campaign ran during the holiday shopping season in both 2011 and 2012, allowing people to enter a drawing to win one of 12 prizes valued up to $1,000. We added special rewards for sharing to incentivize people to encourage friends and family to participate. By providing a friend or family member’s email address (who would then receive a branded email blast about the campaign) or by tweeting a pre-fabricated message that used the hashtag #12GoldenDays on Twitter, the entrant’s name was entered twice into the daily raffle drawing. A winner was announced each business day starting December 1st. Prizes increased in value each day.

In 2012, we added more opportunities and incentives to share the contest with friends, and we also added a "flash prizes day" to the campaign, which brought a huge influx of foot traffic to Golden Triangle retailers. This helped contribute to an over 250% increase in entries from 2011 to 2012. It also drove so much traffic to retailers that several stores had lines reaching outside during the flash prizes giveaway.

Measuring Success
“12 Days of Golden Giveaways” became so popular within the Twittersphere that the BID’s Twitter handle, @GoldenTriDC, and the campaign hashtag, #12GoldenDays, were both trending topics in DC on the day the campaign launched.

The ultimate goal was increased foot traffic to Golden Triangle restaurants and retailers. With a 519% increase in participants the first year we ran the campaign, to a 256% increase the second year, we were able to get lines outside of stores located inside the Golden Triangle during the holiday season, and have created a holiday tradition that will continue to grow.