How Tint Generated 35 Million New Social Impressions for Travelocity (Hint: #Twitter)

Tim:Welcome to Conversion Cast. The only podcast that gets to the heart of the metrics. Now here’s another data driven case study.

What’s up fellow marketer? Thanks for joining me today on ConversionCast. Now today’s guest used Twitter to generate an incredible 35M new social impressions for Travilosity. Their dashboard is impressive and shows just how to utilize an audience to promote your brand. We have a screenshot of the dashboard on our site so visit ConversionCast.com/TravelocityDownload right now to download it and then listen on. Again that’s ConversionCast.com/TravelocityDownload.

Now Tim Sae Koo is the founder of and CEO of Tint, a company that allows other companies to leverage their social media into promotional powerhouses that they can display wherever they want. When Travelocity approached Tint wanting to grow their social reach, Tim knew just what to do to make it happen and make it happen he did. They generated 80,000 new visitors, 25,000 new tweets and 35 million social media impressions. Most importantly they did it very simply by using a hashtag contest. In this episode Tim is about to break down how to implement a hashtag contest in your business and how to turn those impressions into conversions. Again you can check out the dashboard by visiting ConversionCast.com/TravelocityDownload right now and then check out the rest of the episode. I’m Tim Page, the Conversion educator here at LeadPages, this is ConversionCast and here is Tim Sae Koo from Tint.

Hey Tim, how’s it going?

Tim:Very good Tim. [0:01:53] [Indiscernible]

Tim:[Laughs] This is great. We’ve got a double dose of Tim and just ready to make this podcast even more awesome.

Tim:Absolutely.

Tim:So before we kind of get really into what we’re going to talk about today, I would love to hear about kind of Tint and what that’s all about. So can you kind of share that with us today?

Tim:Yeah. So Tint is a simple social media aggregator platform solution for brands. So what we do is we work with brands to help them aggregate, curate and then display any type of social media feeds anywhere they want. So you can aggregate from your own branding content in the social networks, any user generated content via hashtags and then be able to moderate which ones you want to display and then finally display all that social content on any websites, mobile app, TV screens, big projector walls at events, big digital billboards [0:02:44] [Indiscernible] at game stadiums etc., etc.

Tim:Cool. It’s a really interesting thing and it’s kind of what we’re going to be talking about today but it’s more going to be a little bit more targeted. So before we talk about the tactic can you tell us the results that you were able to get for your client, which we’re going to be talking about Travelocity?

Tim:Yeah. So we did what you call a hashtag contest and this keyword here is all about leveraging user-generated content to generate more buzz, conversations and potential leads for your brand. So what Travelocity did was they had this hashtag called hashtag I want to go. Basically they said anybody who uses this hashtag out on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+, etc., etc., anyone who uses that hashtag and tell us a story of where they want to go anywhere around the world the best story or best photo or best video will win a $30,000 trip around the world.

Tim:Wow.

Tim:Now not everybody has that kind of reward or budget to do that but the main idea here is how can you incentivize your users to talk more about you, and through the Tint platform, you can then aggregate all that social content being shared about you on the brand into your website, on to your TV screen, on to digital billboards afterward if you wanted to. So they ran basically like a three-month campaign on this. They shot a 30-second ad on TV with this hashtag and within that day, they got over almost like – so the whole span of their campaign they got over 80,000 people coming on to their site to check up all the injuries through the Tint platform, see who’s participating, see all the other stories that people are submitting and then over 75,000 of them actually decided to scroll through the content. So that’s how we define engagement with our platform. If you kind of have all this content aggregated on your website and people getting scroll through and click through it and engage with that content. So that’s what we saw with them.

Over 75,000 people decided to scroll through and engage with that content because it was very visual, very media focused stories of where people want to go around the world. So they had a high engagement there and then within that three month again they had over, about 25,000 posts come in. So this is people all around the world hash tagging, hashtag I want to go and then basically having all those entries coming here. And then that equated to about 35M social impressions. So what that social impression mean is how much reach that all those conversations reached out on the social web. So a huge success with this campaign and it was what we called the hashtag contest because you got people joining in being able to participate on the social web and that led to a viral effect because if you see all these hashtags, I want to go, people get excited and say like oh what’s all that about.

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And when they hear about it and they actually search for it, so now if you actually search on Google hashtag I want to go, the first result is Travelocity’s campaign. So people searched for it and then they want to join in and then here comes a viral effect of your campaign or your marketing campaign being shout out multiple times over and over again because people want to join in.

Tim:So the main goal here for Travelocity was to get just to get more attention kind of get their brand out there a little bit more, is that right?

Tim:Absolutely and that was accomplished through them first creating a hashtag, that hashtag I want to go and then using our Tint platform to aggregate all that content. Because everyone shares on multiple platforms today and you kind of what to unify all that conversations in one place. So they use a Tint platform to do that and then put it all on their website.

Tim:Got it okay. And so if somebody wanted to kind of implement this, you know, like if somebody that wasn’t at Travelocity wanted to do this, how would you recommend doing that?

Tim:Yeah. So a lot of even smaller brands today like small independent bands to you know, your local yogurt shop, frozen yogurt shop area, what they do is usually it’s a very simple process right? You come up with your own unique hashtag corresponding to your brand and maybe the theme of the campaign you want to run. Create a unique hashtag and then there’s a lot of tools out there just to make sure that you don’t have a hashtag that was previously used by another brand for another purpose right? You don’t want to have that. You create a unique hashtag then you can come out to our platform and actually aggregate all that content basically from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vine, Google+ etc., etc., etc. and then be able to pull that all into your website and display that on your website.

Now that’s kind of step 1 and 2, kind of the next step is starting to get the ball rolling with this campaign or get the ball rolling with people joining in. So on your social channels, you would then start saying like hey everybody use this hashtag for the chance to win XYZ  but you also get to show up on our website. People love and consumers love to be shown on people’s website and brand’s website because that feels like they’re that much more connected. Right? The brand is recognizing the consumer’s content created by putting it on the website. So the consumers love it because now they have two incentives. They could have a little 15-seconds of fame on the brand’s website and they get to join in on this kind of contest now by only using the hashtag. Really what we see today in terms of marketing and social marketing campaigns is before you had to like text to win or you know, fill out a form but now it’s as easy as just using a hashtag that you already kind of used to doing on the social end to be able to join in all these sort of contests now. So that’s kind of see what we’re seeing the shift into. But aside from that kind of rolling it out on your social web and announcing it and using your email blasts, and kind of maybe putting it in some of your stores or brochures or marketing materials, you’ll see a lot of people joining in in the contest element is what will really kick it into effect. Because people always are want to be more incentivized and the more incentivized you can make the consumers want to join in, the more they will join in. So that’s as easy as that really coming up with a hashtag, a unique one, using our platform to be able to aggregate all that content display it somewhere unified so that people can see all entries and then blasting out the campaign so that people could start understanding how they participate and how they can join in.

Tim:I really like this because it’s pretty easy to do and you know, it doesn’t require a lot of in terms of resources. I mean unless you were you know, you want to give away some kind of a big prize.

Tim:Yeah.

Tim:But what I’m wondering is I wonder if there is a way to you know, put some kind of a conversion point at this.

Tim:Sure.

Tim:You know, so like if there’s a way to have it so that you know you can collect an email address from these people that are entering the contest or if there’s a way to you know, get that to convert to a sale in some other way. Have you seen anybody do anything interesting with that?

Tim:Sure. So that brings us to my next point where it’s like after the campaign you know, what can you do with this data, what can you do with you know, the money there and the resources and time you invested into this sort of campaign. So there’s a couple of ways here that I just kind of see it as a conversion, converting. The first one is that you can put an email block gate on the website when people want to visit their entries because when they use that hashtag and they know they’ll be able to show up on the website. They’ll want to come on to your website and actually see it themselves. So you can put a small email gate or just put an email on the top saying like you know, stay tuned for the winner or something like that. So you can actually put an email box on the top of your website or just block it from people. They have to enter it before they visit it.

Tim:Right.

Tim:So that’s one way to just capture some sort of lead. The second way which is actually what we’re building into our own platform today is the ability to actually communicate with those new, essential leads that use your hashtag and join in in your campaign. So what that means is all the content that will come in but also will allow you the brand or our client to actually communicate with them directly on to their posts. So let’s say that you had Sally using your hashtag and you know she’s a great customer potential customer of yours or a great influencer that can be really driving your brand’s exposure.

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You can actually come into our platform and communicate with her saying like hey thanks for the great entry using our hashtag, one can we communicate more and see what we can work together on, two did you know that you know, you can then purchase our product now through this link and you can just shoot it to her or even 3 I love your photo so much may I get the user rights to that and then potentially repurpose it for any future marketing collateral afterwards. There’s a lot of ways when we build in our communication platform which we’re doing right now to basically convert those people who are actually participating into potential customers, into potential influencers of your brand or utilizing it for – utilizing their photos or content for other purposes later on.

Tim:Yeah. I love the idea of having something that’s measurable beyond you know, social media metrics which are awesome but at the same time you know, you want to know that you’re getting an ROI —

Tim:Absolutely. Yeah that’s the only big question that we get from all our brands that we work with. We work about 40,000 brands around the world today and the constant question is you know, how can I measure ROI. So we have a lot of other ways inside the platform but more particularly in this case, the hashtag contest is you know, you run a great contest by having people enter into a hashtag, you’re getting a lot of leads potentially because a lot of people are joining in. You know, like I mentioned in the Travelocity one, 28,000 entries came in. That could equate to maybe like 20.000 people by using this hashtag and that’s 20,000 new leads that you can start communicating with.

Tim:Yeah.

Tim:Converting them into real customers very soon.

Tim:Yeah. I love it, I love it. It’s simple and easy to do and I think people could really do that very quickly. So yeah this has been awesome, Tim. Thanks so much for sharing this with us and people can check out your website by going to what’s the URL?

Tim:Yes. It’s TintUp.com.

Tim:Awesome. Thanks so much Tim. Have a great one.

Tim:Thank you so much.

Tim:Thanks for listening to this episode of ConversionCast. If you liked what you heard here today, we have something awesome that we want to send you. Our amazing team has created a free reference guide for you with every single split test and piece of conversion data that we have access to here at ConversionCast. This free booklet is packed with incredible case studies and real metrics from real people to show you what’s really working across multiple industries right now. This is the kind of information you won’t find anywhere else. As one of our listeners, we want to give you a copy of this book absolutely free. You can get your copy right now by going to ConversionCastGift.com, again that’s ConversionCastGift.com. Go there now and pick up your copy and we’ll see you next time.