CASE STUDY: 1-800 FLOWERS
Connecting with Mom on Mother’s day 1800 Flower.com (MMA cross media integration finalist,2005)
1800 Flowers.com is a traditional direct response advertiser and Mother’s day is their biggest selling time of the year. According to Wikipedia, 1-800 flowers.com, Inc. is a floral and gourmet foods gift retailer and distribution company in the United States. It was one of the first retailers to use a 24×7 toll-free telephone number and the internet for direct sales to consumers.
This case discusses how text messaging campaigns can be used to deliver a positive ROI using an emotional connection of content shared via mobile devices, without being annoying and disruptive, typical for direct response advertiser with sales-oriented messaging. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA)” Direct marketing is an interactive marketing system that uses one or more advertising media to effect a measurable response and / or transaction at any location.”
Moms like to hear from their loved ones on Mother’s day flowers are common way to tug at the emotions. This mobile campaign gave consumers free digital stickers for Mother’s Day though native in app deliver on three messaging platforms (LINE Messenger, Kik and Viber).
The stickers had positive sentiments like smiles and 1800flowers.com branding. There were also interactive contests, chats and discounts available. Stickers drive traffic to the e-commerce site, increasing revenue. Note that nearly 40% of the global population can be reached through mobile messaging apps, so it is a very common option to drive brand awareness and audience engagement, but not necessarily sales revenues.
Results of campaign
THE ROI was exceeded by 705. Also, more that 25% of the orders were placed after the official campaign ended., showing that recall and intent to purchase occurs without the push later on. The results showed 446,000 sticker pack downloads across all platforms, more than 10 times the total numbers of downloads of the 1800flowers.com app during that same time period. The campaign drove 1.7 Million stickers shares and 3.75 million total impressions. During that same time, company internal content on Facebook and Twitter platforms received a combined total of only 50,000 shares and retweets. Line Messenger was accounting for to 10% of all mobile traffic to the mobile website, 1800 flowers.com. here we saw native content with the messaging apps, and that in itself brough the metrics of mobile marketing alive and more successful that a tradition digital campaign.
Questions
- How is direct response marketing different than other marketing and how does 1800Flowers use mobile tools?
- What could 1800flowers.com do to improve the shareability of their stickers in years ahead?
- In what other industries could you see native apps with embedded marketing messages become success. Describe your vision in detail.
Sources
- 1800flowers.com Make Mom smile (finalist 2015)
- http://nraomtr.blogspot.com/2011/12/direct-marketing.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-800-Flowers
- https://www.mmaglobal.com/user?destination=case-study-hub/case_studies/view/37608