Narragansett Beer is a historic brewery founded in 1890 and based in Providence, Rhode Island.
They decided to start using UpViral to enhance their giveaway campaigns.
This case study is a great example of how "any business" can utilize UpViral to generate a surge of new leads and customers.
It truly does not matter what niche or industry you're in.
Whether you're selling beer or anything else, every business needs to generate leads and UpViral is the number one platform to catapult your lead generation efforts to the next level!
Narragansett Beer, with a rich history dating back to 1890, faced challenges and triumphs, including a period of closure and subsequent revival in 2005.
The brewery distributes its beer in 25 states and has a unique place in popular culture because the beer company has been featured in the iconic movie "Jaws."
Prior to using UpViral, the brewery created giveaways on social media.
But, the giveaways they were doing weren't focused on lead generation. They hosted the giveaways on the social media platform itself and asked people to comment, like, and share.
That's when they discovered UpViral which helped them elevate their results, and be able to collect leads not just likes and followers!
UpViral Campaigns and Results…
Narragansett Beer primarily ran monthly giveaways through UpViral, tailoring each campaign to align with seasonal themes or events.
The results were impressive, with 61,117 leads generated within just nine months of using UpViral.
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That's a ton of leads that the company can now engage with and turn into paying customers.
It's crazy to think about the number of leads this business could generate if they continue on the same path over the next few years!
One of the benefits to their brand and any business which sells a consumable product is the product runs out.
So, if you have a business like this where you’re selling a consumable product e.g. supplements, clothing, skincare, or any product that runs out, it’s critical to be obsessed with generating leads.
Because once you acquire a lead and then a customer once, this person has the potential to be spending money with your company for months or years to come.
Business truly is a numbers game!
The more leads you generate, the more customers you'll have.
All things being equal, if you can just double the number of leads you're getting, you can literally double your business.
Plus, besides generating more sales, the benefit of doing the giveaway is that they increase their brand audience, followers, email list...etc.
This is one of their goals, to reach the mass market and get more people to “know, like and trust” them, so they can continue making sales well into the future.
Let's next dive into an example campaign…
Here’s a campaign Narragansett Beer used with UpViral to generate a flood of new leads and customers.
Check out the landing page they used below…
The prize of the campaign was to give away a weekend trip and gift card. It was a sweepstake campaign. So entering with an email address would give people the chance to win the prize.
Something we have mentioned before at UpViral is to focus on sweepstakes for 1-2 weeks as it's easier to keep the buzz around the campaign for that length of time.
Narragansett Beer utilized the upper end of this with a 2-week campaign.
However, UpViral has also seen success for our clients with longer campaigns but these businesses do a great job with their backend communication to keep people engaged.
Our recommendation is to focus on shorter campaigns 1-2 weeks in most cases.
Generating Traffic
Narragansett Beer primarily relied on organic methods to drive traffic to their campaigns.
This email is the broadcast Narragansett Beer sent out to their existing email subscribers to get them to sign up for the giveaway.
Something to note here is the "congruency" between email and landing page.
This is critical for your success with any sweepstake.
Your emails, landing page, and social posts need to be congruent with similar copy and images.
This is a great example that you don't have to use paid ads or boosted posts to generate a ton of leads for your sweepstake.
You can use organic or paid traffic to promote your campaigns.
Paid ads just allow you to amplify your results and reach more people.
Something that Brooke Cure (Narragansett Beer’s community manager) also mentioned, was they gained insights into when their audience was most engaged and then timed their sweepstake with this period.
This is something to take note of and pay attention to for your own sweepstakes.
Do your research and see which days of the week and times your audience opens their emails, and comments/reacts with your posts.
By launching your campaigns at the same time your audience is most engaged, you can maximize the results of your sweepstakes.
Okay, let's now dive into the nitty gritty of this specific campaign results…
In this sweepstake example, you can see they generated 7,605 leads and they had 1,021 referred leads.
Notice the number of "referred leads".
These are extra leads generated which were only possible thanks to UpViral.
That's a lot of leads that would have never entered the sweepstake had they not used UpViral.
So, when you consider using UpViral or not, you need to think about how many "extra leads" and "extra revenue" you are missing out on by not using UpViral.
In Narragansett Beer's case, they're running a campaign every month.
So, over the course of a year if they didn't use UpViral they would be missing out on an enormous amount of leads.
A percentage of these leads will turn into customers, so by not using UpViral they would be effectively leaving a huge amount of revenue on the table.
Gaining Social Media Followers
Brooke mentioned in the interview that they added 4,000-5,000 new likes to their Facebook page when they put a “like our Facebook page button” on the thank you page of the sweepstake.
This is a great example of how UpViral not only generates leads but can build your social media following, too.
This can help create a snowball effect for your brand.
Ultimately, more followers can turn into more leads and customers.
So, this is another added benefit to using UpViral.
You're not just generating leads, you're building all your social media accounts as well which helps grow your brand faster!
Not only did Narragansett Beer generate a flood of new followers and likes on their social media pages, but they also created a ton of engagement on their sweepstake posts, too!
Take a look at this screenshot below…
As you can see their posts were shared 2,550 times, and there were 6,987 actions which included comments, likes and new social media followers.
This shows you how much engagement was created from their sweepstake posts.
Keep in mind, social media channels show more posts that get higher engagements, so this means you’ll generate even more brand exposure as a result of your campaigns.
Post-Campaign Engagement
After the campaigns concluded, participants seamlessly transitioned into Narragansett Beer's email campaigns.
While specific conversion statistics weren't provided, Narragansett Beer noted that many sweepstake participants turned into customers.
This is key and is something we always talk about at UpViral.
It's not just about generating leads, you need to nurture these leads over email by providing value, and more of these leads will turn into customers over time.
Something important to note is that Narragansett Beer sells merchandise on their website.
Therefore, their follow-up email campaigns are used to sell their merchandise as well as promote their beer.
It’s a great example of how you can utilize leads from your campaigns to sell multiple different products and services.
Here’s a screenshot of one of their merchandise pages on their website…
An extra key point on email engagement…
The key is to make sure your giveaway is congruent with what you sell.
If you do that, then you will get buyers and people opening and engaging with your emails.
Here’s proof below from Narragansett Beer’s numbers that these new leads are engaged leads.
These open rates are well above the industry average…
📖 Learn more: Email Engagement Tips to Keep People Hooked on Your Contest
Extra notes from Narragansett Beer…
Narragansett Beer highlighted the importance of sustained effort in promoting campaigns even after the initial launch.
Regular resharing on social media and strategic email reminders significantly contributed to the success of their campaigns.
Additionally, they noted they need to continuously email their new leads to turn them into loyal customers.
Future Considerations
Looking ahead, Narragansett Beer expressed a desire to explore additional avenues for expanding their reach.
This includes potential experiments with paid ads.
While paid ads are not necessary to get the best results from your sweepstakes they can add fuel to the fire and help amplify your results.
Conclusion
Narragansett Beer's success with UpViral serves as an inspiring case study for businesses looking to enhance their marketing through giveaways.
By leveraging UpViral, Narragansett Beer achieved remarkable results in lead generation and customer engagement.
Key Lessons to Be Learned from This Successful Campaign
1- Follow-up is key after the sweepstake
If you don't nurture your new leads, you’re going to squander any future opportunities to turn these leads into customers.
The name of the game is to generate customers, so don't get lazy by just generating leads and missing the next step.
That's why email marketing is so key after the sweepstake. .
If you continuously follow up and build relationships, a percentage of these people will turn into loyal customers.
2- Use seasonality with your sweepstakes to make them relevant
One thing Narragansett Beer did so well is using seasonality in their sweepstakes. This is key because it keeps the sweepstakes relevant, so it's not random.
This also makes coming up with sweepstake ideas extremely easy.
Xmas, Halloween, Easter, Thanksgiving and New Year are super easy opportunities to create sweepstakes around.
UpViral has pre-built campaign templates for each of these occasions, you can sign up for a 14-day risk-free trial here.
3- Create sweepstakes regularly to get the most bang for your buck
Once you have a constant format delivering results for your business, why stop doing it?
You want to utilize sweepstakes your marketing efforts on a consistent basis to reap all the benefits over the long haul.
Once per month as Narragansett Beer used is a great format without burning out your audience.
What Narragansett Beer says about UpViral
This final quote from Narragansett Beer hits the nail on the head on the true power of UpViral.
You’re able to get in front of people you wouldn’t be able to unless you used UpViral.
So, all these potential leads, customers, and revenue are just being left on the table.
So, are you ready to finally STOP leaving money on the table and put your lead generation efforts on steroids?
If you are, then click here to start your 14-Day Risk-Free Trial of UpViral!
Using UpViral is like pouring rocket fuel on all your sweepstakes. With (almost) no extra work or effort you’re able to generate a boatload more leads with all your sweepstakes. It’s as simple as that!
Plus, UpViral can be your secret weapon for not just your sweepstakes but all your lead generation campaigns; lead magnets, events, giveaways, contests, pre launch campaigns, waiting lists, newsletters, and more!
P.S. If you're already an UpViral customer, hopefully this case study has highlighted some of the keys to turning your sweepstakes into blazing successes! 🔥
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