Integrated Marketing Plans
Below are examples of ways that I have worked crossed-functionally to create and activate omni-channel campaigns using both on- and off-line channels.
College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resources Sciences and Extension Campaign
Scenario: Minnesotans have a profound attachment to the Minnesota State Fair. But what most Minnesotans do not realize is that the University of Minnesota helps manage and execute most of the displays and activities that make the Fair an event. Our goal of the project was to leverage the University’s involvement in the Fair and utilize digital and in-person activation to increase engagement and awareness to promote giving.
Process: We created a landing page (z.umn.edu/state-fair) to serve as a hub for engagement, information and giving. We would thus encourage participation through in-person QR codes, e-appeals, telemarketing, and social posts. We then partnered with our two most State Fair units, the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences and Extension services to target the donors, nondonors, and use their in-person presence at the Fair to help share the message.
Results: We contacted a cold, targeted audience of 10,000 people. Our emails saw a 35.6%-50.8% open rate on our emails, engaged with 334 people over the phone, and had just under 2,400 organic impressions on our social pages. These pieces drove just under 300 visitors to our landing page and ultimately yielded 19 donors, raising $1,322 and collecting 12 unique donor stories.
Willie Burton Banner Hanging
Scenario: Willie Burton played for four seasons with Gopher Men’s Basketball and lead the team to previously unmatched heights. It was decided amongst myself, the team, and senior staff to have Burton’s banner raised in Williams Arena. I worked extensively with our external group to host a memorable event not only for our fans, but for Burton. We strategically selected the game on 1/26/20 to target a sold out crowd for one of the biggest games of the season, the largest TV broadcast of the season, and mean the most to Burton as the opponent had the highest emotional connection to him.
Process: The campaign included a press release, video interviews, highlights, custom shooting shirts for the current players for warmups, an autograph signing pre-game, donor visits, giveaways, team reunion, social, paid advertisements, email, radio trade, and PR campaign both on campus and with local media. Above, you will find a few creative pieces and photos from the event. Below, you will find links to videos that we used to promote the game and highlight all of Burton’s accolades.
Interview with Burton’s old teammates
Old foes reflect on Burton’s impact
Results: Our organic social campaign of the banner hanging had over 5 million impressions and over 275,000 engagements across the men’s basketball Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts. Our Facebook ads had over 85,000 impressions and had a $.30 cost per result. Lastly, our banner hanging specific emails had a 35% open rate.
All of the prep work lead to our desired sell out and generated $303,648 in ticket revenue alone for this game. We also had overwhelmingly positive comments about the ceremony itself, as well as the nostalgic factor of the game on our post-game surveys.
A Game For You: Fan Appreciation Day
Scenario: I worked tirelessly with our third party rights owner to highlight several sponsors and show appreciation to our fans during a Big Ten matchup. The goal was to engage with a variety of our sponsors, not just men’s basketball sponsors, and show them the potential exposure if they were to invest more with the Gophers. In addition, we wanted to make sure the engagement was genuine and that our fans would receive the activation positively.
Process: We created a micro-site that promoted all of our participating partners, shared discounts, team comments, Fan Hype Video, pre-game pep rally, and more. In terms of the pre-game event, we worked with all of our participating sponsors to host a give away or a register to win. We also hosted a merchandise sale, food discounts, and activities for youth and young at heart. Then, during the game we doubled all of our fan promotions, did the first known parachute drop, hosted a Baby Race with Lil’ Gopher Fans, and several surprise and delight giveaways. We promoted the game via paid, social, email, radio, and media relations both within our department and our partners.
Results: Our organic social campaign of Fan Appreciation Day had over 3.3 million impressions and over 155,000 engagements across the men’s basketball Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts. Our Facebook ads had over 83,000 impressions and had a $.37 cost per result. Our Google Display ads garnished 266,185 impressions and an overall positive ROI of 703%. Our Google Search had a CTR of 6.96% and ROI of 2,354%. Lastly, our Fan Appreciation specific emails had a 36% open rate.
In addition, we were able to engage with 15 sponsors, nine of which don’t normally partner with men’s basketball. Now in the future, our third party team can refer to the event’s success to upsell to those clients. Our fans responded positively on the post-game survey and many had said that they would like Fan Appreciation Day to occur more than once per year. In addition, our fans also commented about how they liked the newly debuted Baby Race.
Digital State Fair
Scenario: The goal was to engage with fans in a new way while generating/maintaining revenue when we couldn’t sell tickets because of COVID.
Process: We created a landing page where we could house all of our digital assets which you can view here. Our assets offered resembled what we offer at our usual State Fair Booth that included: 25+ digital interviews with every team, healthy twist recipes on fair food favorites, highlights from past State Fairs, photo gallery of the best photos from 2019-20, discounts at our Golden Gophers Team Shop, discount on our Kid Club membership, gave away prizes, hosted a shirt design contest, and shared information about our presenting sponsor, Cub. We presented these materials in a myriad of ways that included videos, graphics, email, social, press releases, and media activations.
Results: Overall, the Digital State Fair received over 28,000 page views, during a time when we had very little website traffic. The most popular activation was our team interviews that made up a quarter of our site visits. In addition, several interviews were shared on social where select videos gained up to 6,700 views on those platforms. We were also able to secure a presenting sponsor, gained over $5,300 in sales from merchandise, and 75 new Kids Club memberships during the activation.
Brock Lesnar 20th Anniversary Title Celebration
Scenario: Lesnar, a Gopher Alumni, has not returned to the Pav in several years so we really wanted to bring back a legend to celebrate his 20th Anniversary of his NCAA title win. We were able to pull something together in a record 7 days notice of his attendance at our home match on 1/10/2020 and were able to engage fans young and old for this anniversary.
Process: We were able to get some creative featuring Brock, have videos created featuring Brock and our student athletes, had a special ceremony at halftime, and had a photo opt with youth in attendance. We promoted the celebration via social, email, and media and had the largest crowd of the season for the special day.
Results: We were able to have a season high of 3,882 tickets sold for the 20th Anniversary Title Celebration match. However, our biggest success could be seen through our email and social strategy. Our targeted email promoting the match and celebration had a 36% open rate. Then, from 1/1/2020 until match day on 1/10/2020, we had over 4 million impressions and over 450,000 engagements across the wrestling Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.