blogwell austin social media case study: rei, presented by jordan williams
DESCRIPTION
REI's Manager of Digital Engagement, Jordan Williams, shares how REI is using location-based check-ins to build relationships and drive sales.TRANSCRIPT
Donations Instead of Deals A Facebook Places
Check-in Deals Launch Story
Blogwell AustinFebruary 2, 2011
Context of geo-social at REI
Lower frequency of visit
Don’t play the coupon/offer game
Haven’t seen critical mass w/ our customers
Facebook Launches Places
Could this be the tipping point for check-ins?
If a small % of users start checking-in?!
What could REI do?
Design a promotion/test that is:
Brand right
Has multiple opportunities for success
Does more of what we already do well
Social good for social behavior: donation vs. deal
What could REI do?
Design a promotion/test that is:
Designed for multiple audiences:Customers
Non-profit partnersEmployees
Local giving / local partnerships
How did it work?
68 Non-profit partners selected
$1 per check-in
Kicked off November 5th
How did it turn out? (Part 1)
Slow run rate leads to experimentation
$10 per check-in Black Friday
When in doubt… go all in!
What was challenging?
Tying the timing of a national retail promotion to 3rd party technology product launch
Facebook mobile app updates
UX of claiming deal
Reporting
Location spam
What was challenging?
Low awareness of “checking-in”
Early adopters already have a geo-social life
Lots of early adopters on Android
Privacy concerns amongst consumers
Communications fatigue
How did it turn out? (Part 2)
Incremental traffic during holiday shopping period
We drove over 18,000 check-ins
Drove awareness of our non-profit giving
Drove internal awareness on the power of social
Exponential reach through our non-profit partners
Bottom-line
Privacy issues persist with consumers
Hype outpacing reality (for now)
Platform fragmentation makes tough to scale
Brand right experiments make testing ok
Questions?