MarketingSherpa Summary:  
Sometimes the right product, at the right time, with the right promotion can benefit from buzz from a completely different product. Take ZAGG’s iPad giveaways, for example. By giving away one of the hottest products in the country (Apple’s iPad) the team saw tremendous success in growing its email list and sales of gadget accessories. This simple effort had a massive ROI.  

Agency: None
Client/company: ZAGG
Campaign launch date: April 5, 2010
Target audience/demographic: Gadget owners; people with smart phones, MP3 players, laptops, tablets, etc.

Goal:
Our primary goals were to build our marketing email list and to generate sales of our accessories. Our target market is anyone with a handheld electronic gadget.

Campaign Description:
The campaign was broken into individual weekly contests where we gave away a free iPad each week. Initially the contest was for the month of April. Every week, users would enter their email address into the contest form.

In addition to entering the contest, the user also received a discount code in an email immediately following their entry. The discount amount was selected at random and could be from 10% to 50% off. We sent an email that included the discount code, the expiration date (30 days from issue) and encouraged the user to share the code on Twitter or Facebook if they couldn't use the code.

At the end of the week we picked a random email address and sent them an iPad protected with our product, the invisibleSHIELD. Each week we sent an email to our list with the name of the winner and a button to enter the current week’s contest. The creative linked to the contest landing page.

We added a marketing banner to the website that looked like a triangle and appeared on every page of ZAGG.com in the bottom right hand side of the page. This linked to the contest landing page as well. Every week we also added an entry to our Facebook fan page and tweeted it to our Twitter followers.

The contest landing page has a Facebook share, re-tweet and StumbleUpon share buttons.

Channels Used:
We used Web, email, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, YouTube and PPC.

Measurement Tactics:
Each week we added the contest entrants to our email marketing list. Our weekly marketing campaign for the contest also tracked revenue generated through each specific mailing. We knew exactly how many new email addresses we collected and how much revenue we generated from each mailing.

How the Audience Helped Spread the Message:
On the contest landing page we had more than 2,000 Facebook shares, 800 re-tweets and 291 stumbles.

Results:
The results were so spectacular that we have extended the weekly giveaway contest through June and will probably continue as long as it remains successful.

In April and May, we collected more than 518,000 email addresses of which 268,000 are unique. The weekly emails drove 45% more revenue than our average email promotion. Our only real expense was the $4,000 for the iPads.  We used the same creative week to week with just the name of the winner changed.

We have had more than 1,533,147 page views in April and May for the contest page and it was the #1 viewed page on ZAGG.com for that time period.

How Results Changed Over Time:
The contest has actually grown week to week and we attribute that to our social media and email marketing efforts.

Biggest Lesson:
The amount of participation has surprised us. We were looking to use the contest to increase sales and grow our marketing email list. I never imagined we would attract so much attention. We have surpassed all expectations, which is why we extended the contest through June and possibly for many more months to come.