CHALLENGE

In Nov. ‘99, UK music site dotmusic.com ran a Pop Quiz, giving players the chance to win music-related prizes. Even though the quiz was played by a total of 34,000 users, dotmusic knew that they could do better...

CAMPAIGN

This time aiming for 100,000 users, dotmusic devised a ‘new and improved’ quiz to run for four months at the site. Where the first quiz had offered only daily prizes, the second offered daily, weekly and monthly goodies (CDs, MP3 players, DVD players, etc.). An overall prize – a home entertainment system – was also put up for grabs. These prizes, it was hoped, would promote ‘stickiness’ – encourage players to return regularly to the site.

A key feature of the new quiz was the refer-a-friend option – even more prizes were on offer to those players who encouraged their friends to join in the fun. The more friends referred, the greater the chance of winning... Teams of up to eight people could compete for the monthly and overall prizes.

The quiz was publicised with an online campaign – banner ads were run at related sites inviting pop pickers to test their knowledge...



RESULTS

Since May, the dotmusic Pop Quiz has received 6 million page impressions – which amounts to a total of 70,000 users so far. Not quite the 100,000 they were hoping for, but, says Simon Cope, Marketing Manager at dotmusic, “we’re always very ambitious here”. But are they pleased?

Yes. It’s been a fantastic result. And what’s more, we’ve held on to the new users we’ve picked up as a result of the quiz. We had a couple of thousand emails from users saying how much they enjoyed the quiz, and we’re already working on Version Three. We’re going to make it even more interactive – more like a pub quiz machine – and there will be a Flash version, as well as HTML.

COST

Prizes - ‘about twenty grand,’ says Simon. Online marketing campaign - £50,000. Was banner advertising worth it? ‘Oh, definitely – we’ll be doing it again when we launch Version Three.’

NOTES

Haven’t got twenty grand to spend on prizes? Simon says it really doesn’t matter – ‘certainly people wanted to win the prizes, but I’m sure a large proportion of players kept coming back simply because it was fun, and because they enjoyed the site content’.