Christmas is a magical time when the French want to please their loved ones and themselves. Consumers are therefore more inclined to interact with brand content, especially when it inspires them to buy gifts.

For companies, Christmas represents an average of 20% of sales..
Dans certains secteurs, ce chiffre peut même monter jusqu’à 35 %.
Il est donc crucial pour elles de create distinctive Christmas marketing campaigns to capture the attention of their audience and boost their end-of-year sales.

In this article, we’ll be sharing some ideas for interactive formats and games to help you achieve your objectives and energize your Christmas marketing campaign.

SUMMARY

• Anticipate the festive season to optimise your campaigns
• 5 trends to boost your Christmas marketing campaign
• 3 ideas for Christmas marketing campaigns to stand out from the crowd

E-commerce is booming. At Christmas time 75% of French people buy their gifts on the Internet.

The French are more inclined to spend online and, above all, to plan their purchases in advance so as to spread them over several months and take advantage of the promotional periods that precede this marketing high point (such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday, for example).

For brands, this means anticipating their marketing campaigns as far as possible Christmas. By planning events in the weeks leading up to the festive season, they can multiply the points of contact with their audiences, and the chances of them making purchases on their e-commerce site (or in-store).

The marketing highlights leading up to Christmas (Halloween, Black Friday, etc.) can also be excellent opportunities for collecting leads. and customer data. Companies will be able to activate them over the festive season by creating personalised marketing campaigns that are more effective in converting prospects into customers.

Speaking out in advance also allows you to position yourself before everyone else. Brands that start earlier can boost their visibility and reduce their media budget by communicating at a time when competition is less intense and consumers are less affected by ‘advertising fatigue’.

To create an effective Christmas marketing campaign, it’s important to take account of your audience’s expectations, and market trends as a whole. Whether linked to advertising, marketing or new consumer habits, these trends will enable companies to capture the attention and better engage consumers during the festive season.

These include :

• Made in France. 1 consumer in 2 would prefer local products, Made In France, for Christmas presents. As well as highlighting the provenance of their products, brands can also capitalise on this trend to offer competition prizes that are more in line with their customers’ values;
• The end of third-party cookies and proprietary data collection. Brands need to focus on implementing zero-party data collection and opt-in tools to maintain contact with their audience and refine their customer knowledge.
• Influence marketing remains a powerful lever for engaging communities. Consumers are sensitive to partnerships between brands and content creators. These campaigns are particularly effective in collecting leads and generating new conversions.
• Short content is recommended to captivate your audience and communicate effectively. Companies need to take account of consumers’ attention spans and offer striking animations that will encourage users to stop scrolling.
• Native advertising (i.e. one that respects the format and codes of the channel on which it is broadcast) is crucial to optimising your presence on social networks and on your website. It makes for a smoother, more immersive browsing experience.

By capitalising on these trends to capture consumers’ attention, brands can create effective Christmas marketing campaigns, specifically targeting their strategic objectives.

To inspire them, here are 3 ideas for animations and interactive campaigns to engage and convert your audience at Christmas.

An engaging speed game to boost brand awareness

Gamification (i.e. incorporating playful elements into sales promotions) is an excellent way for brands to capture and hold the attention of consumers. One of the most effective formats at this time of year is an engaging mechanic like Tiny Wings.

This speed game was used by household appliance brand Electrolux for its ‘A Swedish Christmas’ campaign. The campaign aimed to The main aim was to highlight the company’s Swedish origins through a fun, viral game, and thus raise its profile over the festive period.

The engaging and addictive nature of the marketing game also enabled the company to capitalise on the interaction with participants to collect opt-ins. With an engagement rate of 92% and game sessions lasting an average of 1 minute and 18 seconds, this activity helped to strengthen the brand’s appeal to consumers over the Christmas period.

SFR Réunion also relied on this mechanism for its Christmas marketing campaign. Focused on lead generation, the campaign was a great success during the recruitment phase, thanks in particular to a media strategy based on native advertising.

Thanks to an attractive prize fund, the company was able to attract more than 10k new visitors. on its website. And with an average of more than 7 games played per subscriber and an average playing time of over 3 minutes, this interactive activity generated a high level of support for the brand among participants.

2. Instant win for Christmas coupons

Instant winners are also very effective during the Christmas period, when users are looking for good deals and discounts to save on their gift purchases.

The 100% winning Claw machine, for example, enables companies to distribute discount coupons to all participants. Showroomprivé.com banked on this Christmas marketing game during the festive season. 7,000 vouchers were distributed during the campaign, helping to convert prospects into customers and boosting the brand’s sales.

This animation can also be used as part of a Drive to Store campaign during the Christmas period. McDonald’s franchisees in the North of France have chosen to set up a campaign combining a Flappy and a 100% winning claw machine. These events enabled users to win discount vouchers to be used towards the purchase of a Maxi Best Of menu in participating restaurants, boosting traffic in the brand’s points of sale.

3. An omnichannel Christmas campaign to engage consumers

It takes an average of 8 interactions between a brand and its prospect before they are ready to buy. If brands want to to boost their Christmas sales, they need to multiply the points of contact and the incentives to buy with their audience.

This is what brands can do by implementing an omnichannel Christmas marketing campaign. Companies will deploy a marketing game tailored to this marketing high point (such as the Shopping List for example) across all their communication channels. Adictiz’s customisable form can be used in engaging interactive formats across 4 distinct channels: the e-commerce site, blog articles, live shopping sessions and native advertising.

Brands will be able to engage their audience across all their channels, multiplying interactions to convert as many prospects as possible and boost their Christmas sales.

Conclusion

To create an impactful Christmas marketing campaign, your brand can rely on engaging game mechanicsthat will capture consumers’ attention. Create differentiating brand experiences to boost your brand awareness, collect leads and generate more conversions during the festive season thanks to interactive marketing activities!

Culture is a crucial sector in France, because it helps to preserve our historical heritage and put the country on the international map. But it is also a sector that has suffered from the pandemic.

To revitalise cultural sites and experiences, and improve visitors’ experience of them, marketing gamification is an effective lever to explore. Integrating game mechanisms into areas such as leisure, culture and tourism makes the customer experience fun, interactive and memorable.

Thanks to interactive marketing experiences, visitors to a cultural venue are no longer passive spectators. They are immersed in the history of a venue or behind the scenes of a cultural movement, right from the moment they get in line. They are captivated by the world they are discovering, and are much more likely to retain the knowledge that is being imparted.

In this article, we’re going to look at the ways in which gamification can be a solution to facilitate the discovery of a heritage site or museum. We’ll explain how you can use gamification in an original way to stand out from the crowd and improve the customer experience at your venue or cultural event.

Gamification, i.e. the integration of game mechanisms into an experience is not a new phenomenon. It is already used in marketing, in education and vocational training.

This is a widespread approach in cultural institutions. Which offer their visitors the chance to rediscover a place or a piece of history through gamified experiences (challenges, competitions, treasure hunts or riddles).

The aim is to use these entertaining mechanics for more than just fun. There, the aim is to educate visitors, enhance cultural heritage and improve the customer experience by making the visit more attractive (for younger visitors or those waiting in line).

As we have already seen in the marketing sector, gamification is a very interesting tool to deploy at every stage of the customer experience. It’s a great way of capturing their attention. But also to boost their engagement by multiplying the opportunities for them to interact with the brand.

But interactivity can be a powerful strategy before and after the visit. It can be used to prepare for the visit (by arousing desire or sharing relevant information in a fun way that the visitor will need afterwards). Once the experience is over, gamification becomes a loyalty-building lever, using the data collected during or before the visit, for example, to propose similar/complementary offers to visitors.

In a nutshell, gamification is a way of improving the customer experience in the culture by:

• Creating a real buzz around an experience or event (particularly online)
• Making a museum visit more fun and memorable;
• Enabling consumers to reappropriate cultural content;
• Multiplying interactions between visitors themselves to federate committed communities around a cultural institution.

Whether it’s an interactive game, a treasure hunt, an augmented reality digital tour or a photo competition, culture and leisure operators have no shortage of ways to gamify and therefore improve their customer experience.

Here are 4 use cases to inspire you.

Wait marketing before a visit or cultural event

Wait marketing is based on the use of digital tools to animate an audience before the launch of a new product or in the queue at a cultural event. It is a lever particularly used in certain sectors where consumers have to wait in a waiting room (particularly in the medical world), but also in events.

The aim is to optimise the user experience before it even begins and to make the most of customers’ waiting time. This time can be used to display relevant information prior to a visit, for example; but above all, wait marketing can transform this tedious moment into a pleasant and entertaining one.

Before the visit begins, or before the artists take to the stage, the cultural institution can, for example, broadcast a quiz on a large screen. It’s a great way to keep visitors waiting while testing their knowledge and skills. by teasing out what would happen next.

For the Paris-Roubaix race, the Haut de France region set up an Outrun game to immerse participants in the heart of the sporting event.. The campaign engaged the public and recruited qualified leads by means of an entry form for a competition to win attractive prizes (goodies, etc.)

Geocaching: turning a walk into a treasure hunt

Geocaching is a practice that combines the principle of treasure hunting with new technologies. It offers a unique and entertaining way to explore a territory or cultural site.

Using a smartphone and a series of clues, participants are tasked with finding ‘geocaches’ hidden along a footpath, in a neighbourhood or even in a town. This interactive game is a highly effective way of enhance the value of your location, reveal little-known or forgotten sites, and improve the customer experience.

In the tourism sector, geocaching allows travellers to collect points for the monuments they visit, or for sites observed. The more points they have, the more rewards they can receive to encourage them to return or share their experience with friends and family.

Interactive tours to attract young visitors to the museum

Interactive or augmented tours can be experienced both physically and online. In addition to a guide, visitors interact with a digital device (a smartphone or tablet for example) through which they can take part in a game.

The Royal Museum of Mariemont in Belgium, for example, has set up a tablet video game called ‘The Ferryman’. Aimed at the very young , this interactive game showcased the museum’s Egyptian collection. Children had to find hidden objects, solve riddles and complete levels. This fun format was ideal for introducing them to Egyptian mythology in a more immersive and entertaining way.

Outside museums, digital walks also combine education and fun. Mobile applications can, for example, enable visitors to take part in quizzes to find out all they need to know. The use of QR codes will also make it easier to display these interactive animations in key places. It’s an excellent way to visit without getting bored, but also to remember important information more easily.

Conclusion

Gamification and expectation marketing are two powerful levers for improving the customer experience in the culture and leisure sector. They enable you to engage your audience at every stage, from discovery to loyalty. To make your cultural venue more attractive, don’t hesitate to use our interactive game mechanics!

Seasonality is a major challenge for brands, whatever their sector of activity. They have to adjust their marketing strategy to take account of the different needs of their audience at different times of the year.

But the summer period presents an additional difficulty: a drop in consumer attention and purchase intentions in verticals that are not directly linked to tourism/leisure.

The key to keeping customers engaged over the summer, but also to generate sales, is to understand and anticipate consumer expectations. But above all, it means offering them engaging and well-targeted brand experiences.

In this article, we explain how the summer competitions can help you overcome the main challenges of the summer period. We’ll also share some concrete examples to inspire your future campaigns.

SUMMARY

• The main challenges of summer marketing campaigns
• 3 good reasons to organise summer competitions

Summer is a challenging time for many brands. Many of them see their sales fall drastically or, on the contrary, have to manage a peak in activity. Here are the main challenges they face during the summer months.

1. Attract the attention of less available consumers

Many companies experience a slack period during the summer season due to a decrease in consumer attention. They are often less available (due to holidays, travel, etc.), which has a direct impact on their interactions with brands, particularly on social networks.

During the summer months, engagement rates can drop drastically. A study by HubSpot shows that this drop can be as much as 30% during the summer holidays. It is therefore essential for retailers to adapt their marketing campaigns by offering content that is more visual, less intrusive and more fun.

2. Follow your customers on their summer travels

In summer, consumers also tend to be more nomadic, particularly when on holiday and therefore travelling to tourist areas. For brands, the challenge is to remain available, particularly online or by simplifying the delivery of their products to holiday destinations.

For some sectors, which have a good physical presence throughout the country, the challenge will also be to make these outlets visible. This is the case in supermarkets, for example, by offering geolocated promotions. Sports clubs can also offer summer passes to encourage their users to visit the establishment closest to their holiday destination, or by integrating digital services (such as an online sports application).

3. Meeting different needs during the summer holidays

One of the greatest challenges of seasonal marketing is to understand and anticipate changes in behaviour of consumers at different times of the year. For example, shoppers will be more inclined to spend on leisure activities in summer and more inclined to buy products in winter.

The products and services offered by retailers must therefore be adapted to meet these new needs. To take the example of supermarkets, brands need to take account of the fact that their customers are turning more to fresh products that are easy to eat on the move (ready-to-go).

4. The impact of seasonality on stock management

The challenges of summer marketing campaigns are not limited to companies whose sales are falling. Sectors that experience major peaks in activity can also be hit hard if they are not sufficiently prepared to meet customer demand.

A survey carried out by McKinsey & Company revealed that 70% of retailers observe an overabundance of stock outside seasonal peaks, and 40% of them believe that their stock management could be improved to better adapt to seasonal cycles.

It is therefore crucial for brands to adapt their stock management strategy in line with the seasons. This will help to avoid overstocking or stock-outs during the high season, both of which have a considerable impact on profitability, image and customer satisfaction.

To meet these marketing challenges and better engage their customers over the summer period, brands can capitalise on gamification.This strategy involves introducing fun, interactive formats (such as competitions) into its communication campaigns.

Here are 3 good reasons to adopt Playable marketing this summer and 3 inspiring examples to get you going!

1. Boost your communication and grab consumers’ attention

Summer is a time when consumers are on holiday and looking for lighter, more entertaining content. By organising a competition, brands can offer them a fun and engaging experience and capture the attention of an audience that is less receptive to traditional messages.

Competitions therefore make it possible to multiply the points of contact, even in summer, boosting the brand’s visibility organically (particularly on social networks).

Example: Showroomprivé’s Summer Trips campaign achieved its visibility objective at the height of the summer season, highlighting Parc Astérix as an attractive partner for generating leads.The results have been impressive, both in terms of participation (177K users in total) and engagement (with over 186K games played and an average session duration of 1min49).

2. Maintain sales during a slower period

Summer can be a slow period for some industries. In this context, competitions are an excellent way of stimulating sales. Not only can the format be used to promote the summer offer in an original way (by encouraging the creation of user generated directly by users as part of a photo competition). But it’s also a way of encouraging impulse buying by distributing time-limited discount vouchers.

Example : Altarea Cogedim has launched its Summer Test campaign to energise its shopping centres during the summer sales period. This
personality test was designed to generate point-of-sale traffic and stimulate purchases by sharing personalised product recommendations. The campaign also recruited new fans, leads and opt-ins, helping to enrich the customer database and to
maximise the impact of the summer highlight.

3. Prepare back-to-school marketing campaigns and collect valuable data

Summer competitions can also be used by brands to gather valuable information about their customers (product preference, consumption habits, budget allocated to purchases, etc.) This data can be obtained via the game mechanics themselves (in particular with a Swiper, for example) or using a form (at the start of the course to access the game or at the end of the experience to unlock the reward).

This data can then be used to prepare and optimise back-to-school campaigns and brand communications throughout the year. Using the information collected, the brand can better segment its audience and thus deliver more impactful retargeting campaigns (thanks to personalised content and offers).

Example: The Tape à l’Oeil brand has opted for a summer competition to strengthen its relationship with its customers. The choice of a fun game mechanic such as the Piñata not only boosted the brand’s visibility during the summer period. But gamification also made it possible to collect data and attract qualified leads (thanks to
an opt-in form) which the company could then retarget through an e-mailing campaign, for example.

Conclusion

Competitions are particularly relevant in summer to keep your customers engaged, boost your sales and optimise your future marketing campaigns. It’s an ideal format for the summer period, making your communication more dynamic and more fun. Discover
our marketing game formats and boost your visibility and revenue even during the summer holidays!