Most of the time we spend thinking about loyalty marketing is focused on outbound campaigns. We ask ourselves questions like, What should I send? What should I offer? What time of day? etc. Oftentimes we overlook the importance of the inbound campaigns. These are campaigns created to get more customers to join our network and opt-in to receive marketing messages. Since it’s currently high-flying NBA playoff time around here, I’ve been reminded of a Southern California ice cream shop who used the Super Bowl to grow their network, and it was a touchdown. Here’s how it worked.

How To Promote Ice Cream Sales Case Study

Ricky was the owner and manager of a little ice cream shop outside of San Diego. During this year’s Super Bowl, when the New England Patriots were playing against the Atlanta Falcons, Ricky thought of an idea to boost their customer network and collect customer data. He knew what kind of hype the game brought every year and decided to leverage it for his business.

Using the CityGro App for iPad, Ricky allowed customers to pick the team they thought would win the game. Winners would receive a buy one get one free coupon and possibly win more prizes. As customers selected a team, they were automatically added to that team’s group. Getting customers to opt-in to marketing messages was easy since that’s how people would receive their coupon. Ricky ran this campaign for a couple weeks leading up to the Super Bowl and gathered hundreds of contacts, and all of them opted in. Great job, Ricky!

How to Use Current Events to Market Your Business

Now, let’s pause. The Super Bowl brings a lot of hype, but think about how many things throughout the year also create some buzz. High school football, March Madness, local competitions, etc. The idea isn’t exclusive to the Super Bowl — it can be used for a countless number of things. However, capturing customer contact info is only half the strategy.

Here’s where this idea really becomes fun: adding contacts was not the only thing that Ricky did. Ricky knew which team each contact was cheering for and for the days leading up to the big show Ricky was sending out team flavored ice cream promotions such as Patriot Blue Raspberry and Cherry Falcons. He’d promote the right flavor to the right list which, meant his marketing was personalized and relevant.

After everything was said and done, Ricky used the hype of the playoffs to promote his ice cream businesses. I haven’t followed up with Ricky for a while, but I imagine he’s repeated this campaign with other sports, local events and more. He collected great customer data and used it to send relevant campaigns to bring his customers back more often. This is what we love here at CityGro.  

What campaigns come to your mind that would help build your contact list?