We’re seeing more and more success from marketing agencies as a result of using UpViral to grow their clients’ businesses.
In this case study, we’re going to show you how Nina Franks took Elixseri’s marketing strategy to the next level in just 21 days. Take a look at the outcome:
- 3,311 leads (2,213 were direct leads, 1,098 were referred leads)
- $4,900 in sales
- Massive shares and engagement on social media
You’ll be surprised to know that this UpViral campaign was supposed to run for 6-8 weeks. However, Elixseri was overwhelmed by 3,311 leads which came in within a period of 3 weeks — so they asked Nina to end the campaign early. 😮
If you’re running a marketing agency or you happen to be a business owner who needs help with lead generation, you can gain a lot of insights by reading and watching this case study.
By the way, Nina was so kind to share her UpViral campaign link for those who want access to the campaign structure (optin page, share page, and more). Click this link: https://app.upviral.com/dashboard/index/cs/MTQ2ODA0SkhOa1ppaGVLaWxrWm5NM09EbG1jemRr/
💎Another bonus: As we were ending our interview, Nina shared her best lessons and realizations for brands and agency owners. She has also provided a copy of that: Nina’s Insights for UpViral
Without further ado, let’s dive into the case study.
About Nina Franks and Her Marketing Agency
Nina Franks is the owner of Thrive Market Leader, a marketing agency that’s focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses. They’ve served clients who’ve just started out in business, and clients who already have their funnel running for years but need help improving it.
Nina herself has been in the field of marketing and business for over 38 years, and her core strengths include writing copy and lead generation. This level of experience allowed her to increase her clients’ results using UpViral, which Nina has used for years.
What Was The Problem?
For this particular UpViral campaign, Nina was serving Elixseri, an online skincare brand selling serums engineered in Switzerland.
According to her, Elixseri’s challenge was that they were experiencing slow growth. They had low activity in terms of direct marketing and keeping their social media audience engaged. On social media, they were posting only once a week and these posts had a more corporate (rather than personal) feel.
When it came to email marketing, Elixseri was focused on sending sales emails with discounts on their products. This resulted in their audience being responsive only to these incredible offers. In other words, they missed out on the opportunity to build a relationship with their audience. “In the end, they’re giving too much away and their audience is only trained to respond to these promotions,” said Nina.
So, why did they use UpViral? (The goals)
Elixseri needed help with the following:
🎯 Grow their email list. They already had a small list of qualified subscribers, but increasing that would also positively impact their sales in the long run.
🎯 More sales. The plan was to generate more quality leads through an UpViral contest, and then nurture them until they convert into customers. By nurturing, Nina Franks means offering lots of value and allowing customers to know you at a more personal level.
Contest Duration
While the original plan was to run the contest for 6-8 weeks, Elixseri decided to end it on week 3 after going viral fast. They were overwhelmed by the number of people opting into the campaign which exceeded their expectations.
Nina told us that they would have attracted more leads if they hadn’t stopped, considering the rate at which the contest had gone viral.
She also admitted that this incident exposed a bit of weakness on their part as a marketing agency because they failed to consider the possibility of going viral. Usually, they would plan campaign objectives but not the steps to take in case the campaign becomes too successful, like with Elixseri’s case.
Elixseri’s “Hello Glow” Campaign Details
Contest Prize
The main prize was Elixseri’s own product — a set of skin serums. Aside from a grand winner, there would also be 20 runners up who’d win a serum. See the image below (taken from the contest landing page):
While Elixseri wasn’t open to the idea of using another type of prize, the UpViral team thinks that offering their own product was a great move. Here’s why: It generates awareness and interest in your brand, especially among people who are into skin care. (The more targeted the prize, the higher the lead quality).
Nina adds that knowing your avatar is key to choosing a relevant contest incentive.
In order to win the prize, participants should do two things only:
1 – Enter their name and email
2 – Share the contest on social media to earn points
That’s it! Nina made sure that anyone could do it without taking too much time.
Lead Capture Page
“This was the most simple campaign we did,” said Nina, as she showed Elixseri’s opt-in page. You can see below that it uses a basic format with the entry fields on the right and the image of the prize on the left.
It’s straightforward and keeps the text to a minimum. Nina mentions that people entering a contest won’t always read everything, especially text found after the submit button. “The less you say about it, the better.”
Let’s get into each component of the campaign lead capture page to see what makes it effective:
Brand name
Elixseri’s logo on the page made it clear who was running the contest. You can find their logo thrice on the page — above the entry form, the prize image, and after the testimonial (see the image below).
Pre-headline
Instead of calling out an audience, which is often the case with pre-headlines, it features the campaign name: “HELLO GLOW!” In your own campaigns, you can follow this strategy or call out your target audience by saying, “CONTEST FOR [AUDIENCE].”
Headline
The headline “WIN A CLEAN BEAUTY ROUTINE FROM SWISS SKINCARE EXPERTS ELIXSERI” grabs interest. Not only does it tell you what this campaign is all about, but it’s also actionable. It also limits the text to only 10 words, which isn’t overwhelming for the audience.
Brief instruction text and entry fields
Below the headline, you’ll find the text “REGISTER BELOW,” followed by an entry form that asks for your name and email. It doesn’t demand lots of information, which might hinder a participant from entering in the first place.
Terms and conditions
There’s also a terms and conditions checkbox underneath the form, and a link to it after right below the testimonial. Like Elixseri’s campaign, make sure that your terms and conditions are easily accessible to your participants. It should include important information such as participation criteria, winner selection, prize, and limitations.
Call-to-action button
For the call-to-action text, Nina wrote, “CLICK TO WIN AND GOOD LUCK” and used a pink color which contrasted nicely against the white background.
Prize image
On the left of the page, you’ll see the featured prize image. It’s a clear and beautiful shot of the skin serums to be given away. There’s also a text within the image indicating that the serums would be awarded as a grand prize and runner up prize to 20 people.
Social proof
Social proof refers to the size of your audience, number of likes, mentions, and testimonials that you display on a page. As you scroll to the bottom of Elixseri’s lead capture page, you’ll find a testimonial:
“Four people today said how great my skin looks. A girlfriend asked me last week if I had Botox and that has never happened before. Extraordinary!”
Then, below the testimonial, is a photo of Elixseri’s founders.
Placing quotes from your current customers or fans is a powerful way to persuade people to join your contest. It adds authenticity to your business.
💎Pro Tip: Check how your lead capture and share pages look on mobile devices. In Nina’s case, she found that the image on the left and entry form on the right worked. It allowed people to view the prizes first before the entry form when using their phones. (Thankfully, UpViral lets you preview your page appearance on desktop and mobile within the editor.)
Share Page
Like the lead capture page, the share page used a simple design. The unique UpViral referral link and sharing buttons were on the right, while the call-to-action text and prize image were on the left.
Points and actions
Nina incentivized participants on the share page by offering points for the following:
- Entering the campaign: 10 points
- When someone signs up through your referral link: 15 points
- Sharing the campaign on social media: 5 points per platform
Using UpViral, you’ll also be able to incentivize people for taking other actions (called Custom Actions). For example, you can give away 50 points for filling out a survey, visiting your online shop, and more. It could be anything that will give your business a boost!
In this case study, however, Nina mentioned not adding any custom action and just adhered to the standard sharing and referral.
Traffic and Engagement
To kickstart the contest, Nina released a one-minute video clip in which each of Elixseri’s founders offered advice to women.
According to Nina, she simply edited a long video (which was originally Elixseri’s interview with a magazine). She repurposed the video so that it would be relevant to the contest. The UpViral team thinks this was a brilliant strategy since they didn’t have to create a video from scratch.
💎Pro Tip: Why not make the most out of a piece of content (image or video) that you already have? It’s one way to save yourself some time and energy in building a contest from the ground up.
After a few days, Elixseri then posted a banner of the contest with the campaign link on Facebook. See the screenshot of the full post below:
This post generated a lot of engagement and shares. Nina told us that they wanted to make sure to respond to people’s comments on a daily basis. “We wanted to create that high energy. We didn’t want people to feel FOMO (fear of missing out),” said Nina.
Here’s another cool strategy:
Nina convinced Elixseri’s founders to reach out to their best customers and ask for a video testimonial. In the video, a customer would hold up the serum they purchased and state the reason why they love it. Of course, the customers were willing to do it.
Check out a screenshot of one of the videos:
These video testimonials were posted across Facebook and Instagram, Elixseri’s main social media platforms. What’s great about these videos was that they featured a customer’s location. This was Elixseri’s way of letting participants know that they serve people from around the world. 🌎
On Facebook ads
According to Nina, Elixseri probably did just one Facebook ad campaign and spent $500. This campaign performed well because it generated more sharing. They used a simple avatar for the ad targeting, which basically included their audience’s gender, location, and age.
Announcing the Winner
When it came to announcing the winner, one of Elixseri’s founders reached out to all the winners via email. The email congratulated them for winning and asked for their delivery address.
Recommended article: How to Do a Giveaway Winner Announcement That Gets Results
Important Lessons for Marketing Agencies and Brands
Working on Elixseri’s campaign made Nina realize a lot of things, which she would love to share for anyone who needs help. In fact, she has compiled these insights in a document. Click here to get a copy: Nina’s Insights for UpViral
Here’s a summary of these insights.
For marketing agencies:
- Keep your campaign simple. Requiring participants to complete too many actions might defeat the main purpose of the contest.
- Understand your core audience so that you can pick an incentive that appeals to their lifestyle and goals.
- Follow a system for your campaigns. Plan everything, from your offer to your content to your follow-up messages.
- As much as possible, don’t make last-minute changes to avoid detracting from the campaign.
For business owners:
- Invest in your audience by providing value.
- Even if you don’t make money on your first attempt at running a contest, that’s okay. It’s the follow-up that matters.
- Match your whole campaign experience to the kind of audience your business wants to attract.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it — the steps that Nina Franks used in her agency to generate 3,311 leads and $4,900 in sales for Elixseri.
If you are running a marketing agency, you now certainly know that you can use UpViral contests (or referral marketing campaigns) to drive more potential customers for your clients. If you’re a business owner, then hopefully this case study will also inspire you to give UpViral a try. Your next big success is waiting to happen.
