On average, going in store to try and pay for their purchase is still preferred by 65% of French people.
However, this preference is declining among young people, forcing brands to revitalise their physical points of sale in addition to their online channels, in particular by organising an in store animation.

Whether to boost brand awareness, increase store and website traffic sales promotion is an essential marketing lever. In fact, it permits to generate more sales and build loyalty through a unique shopping experience. It has an even greater impact when it immerses customers in the brand’s universe, notably with in-store competitions offered via QR codes or interactive terminals.

In this article, we’ll take a look at Galeries Lafayette’s animated marketing strategy, through several examples of campaigns.

SUMMARY

• What is an in-store marketing event?
• Gamifying in-store sales events: the Galeries Lafayette example

An in-store brand promotion is a commercial operation designed to boost the appeal and profitability of physical points of sale. Its one-off or regular actions can, for example, serve to promote the brand’s image. In fact, it provides greater visibility for a new product launch, it also boosts sales and builds loyalty.

Depending on the expected results, marketing activities can take a variety of forms: product demonstrations, competitions, distribution of discount coupons, treasure hunts in the aisles, and so on.

In all cases, the ultimate goal is to capture the public’s attention, be it the store’s visitors or the brand’s audience. Online, we speak of a drive-to-store strategy. The aim is always the same: to increase in-store traffic.

For several years now, the company has relied on marketing gamification (the integration of interactive and playful elements into its marketing activities) to energize its points of sale and online campaigns.

1. Boost store awareness with brand animation

The primary benefit of in-store marketing events is to raise brand awareness. In-store marketing events give the brand greater visibility, help it stand out from the competition and attract consumers to the store.

This includes the creation of POS (point-of-sale) advertising. The brand will therefore develop advertising media installed directly in its shop (in the window, in front of the shop entrance, on the shelves) to promote the point of sale itself, a brand event or a product.

To arouse the curiosity of consumers, Les Galeries created Tesla stands in their stores, giving the partner brand a high profile via an interactive quiz organized during the Weekend de l’homme. By exhibiting cars and offering great prizes (a weekend in a luxury hotel with the loan of a Tesla), the brand was able to attract a large number of participants to the in-store operation.

2. Engaging in-store audiences with interactive kiosks

In-store marketing operations can also be designed to liven up the point-of-sale and engage customers and encourage them to make a purchase (or increase their average shopping basket). Marketing contests, offered via interactive terminals displayed in store allows you to :

• generate more interaction with customers,
• maintain their interest through fun activities,
• strengthen the relationship with the brand, in particular through the possibility of winning an attractive prize.

For Mother’s Day, Galeries Lafayette offered its customers a 100% winning one-armed bandit. Accessible via interactive terminals installed for 3 days in 6 stores in France, the aim of this marketing campaign was to energize sales outlets during this commercial highlight.

The marketing game was also available in mobile format in all stores of France via a QR code displayed on site. This omnichannel strategy enabled the brand to increase the engagement and reach of its campaign. It was able to animate all its stores with particularly attractive prizes (Relais Châteaux stays, bouquets of flowers, gift cards, promotional codes, etc.).

These rewards also enabled the brand to target a second conversion objective. By offering generous value gift cards, this brand strategy boosted sales and collected qualified leads, which could then be reactivated with offers at the end of the game.

3. Build customer loyalty and increase in-store re-purchase rates

Last but not least, in-store marketing events can help to reinforce a sense of belonging to a brand community and build customer loyalty.

Galeries Lafayette has once again relied on gamified animations to reenchant its in-store loyalty program. By organizing a Wheel of Fortune, the company was able to increase the visibility of the Galeries Lafayette Mastercard, through a post-purchase activation.

The Mastercard campaign was based on the Gate Code principle, whereby participants had to enter a code received after an in-store purchase (by email) to access a game of instant wins, and thus gain a chance to win gift vouchers. The campaign met its retention targets with over 2 codes entered per participant (and as many in-store purchases made with the card).

Conclusion

Organizing in-store marketing events is an innovative and creative way to captivate and engage customers. Inspired by the Galeries Lafayette use case, you can boost traffic and sales in your stores. Discover our catalog of gamified sales animations and customize them to suit your objectives and brand universe.

Christmas is a magical time when we want to please our loved ones and ourselves. Consumers are 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. It is therefore crucial to create distinctive Christmas marketing campaigns to capture audience’s attention and boost their sales.

In this article, we’ll be sharing 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.

They are inclined to spend online and to plan their purchases so as to spread them over several months. They also want to take advantage of the promotional periods that precede this time (such as Black Friday).

For brands, this means anticipating marketing campaigns as far as possible. They can multiply the points of contact with their audiences, and the opportunites to make purchases on the website (or in-store).

The highlights leading up to Christmas (Halloween, Black Friday, etc.) are opportunities for collecting leads. Companies will be able to activate them by creating marketing campaigns that are effective in converting prospects.

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

To create a Christmas campaign, it’s important to take account of your audience’s expectations, and market trends. Whether linked to advertising, marketing or new habits, these trends will enable companies to 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. Brands can capitalise on this trend to offer competition prizes that are 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 and refine their customer knowledge.
• Influence marketing remains a powerful lever for engagement. Consumers are sensitive to partnerships between brands and content creators. These campaigns are effective to generate new conversions.
• Short content is recommended to effectively captivate your audience. Companies need to take account of consumers’ attention spans and offer animations that will encourage users to stop scrolling.
• Native advertising (i.e. that respects the format and codes of the channel on which it is broadcast) is crucial to optimise your presence. It makes for a smoother, more immersive experience.

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

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

An engaging speed game to boost brand awareness

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

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

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

SFR Réunion also relied on this mechanism for its Christmas campaign. Focused on lead generation, this was a great success during the recruitment, thanks 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. And with more than 7 games played per subscriber and a playing time of over 3 minutes, this activity generated support for the brand.

2. Instant win for Christmas coupons

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

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

This animation is 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 to purchase a Maxi Best Of menu in participating restaurants. This was a way of 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 incentives to buy with their audience.

This is what brands can do by implementing an omnichannel Christmas campaign. Companies will deploy a marketing game (such as the Shopping List ) across their communication channels. Adictiz’s customisable form can be used in 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 their channels, multiplying interactions to convert prospects and boost their Christmas sales.

Conclusion

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

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

Marketing gamification is an effective lever in order to revitalise cultural venues and experiences, but also to improve visitors’ experience. Integrating game mechanisms into areas such as leisure, culture and tourism can make customers’ experiences more fun, interactive and memorable.

Thanks to interactive marketing experiences, visitors to a cultural venue are no longer just passive spectators: they are immersed in the history of a place or cultural movement, right from the moment they get in line. They are captivated by the world they are discovering, but they are likely to retain the information that is being passed on.

In this article, we’ll be looking at the ways in which gamification can be a solution to discover a heritage site or museum. We’ll explain how you can use gamification to stand out from the crowd. You’ll also be able to improve 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 widely used in marketing, but also in education and vocational training.

It’s also a trend among cultural institutions. They visitors have the chance to rediscover a place or a piece of history through gamified experiences (challenges, competitions, treasure hunts).

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

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

Interactivity can be a powerful pre- and post-visit strategy. For example, it can be used to prepare for the visit (by sharing information 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. Then, the data can be used to propose similar 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 fun and memorable.
• Enabling consumers to reappropriate cultural content.
• Multiplying interactions between visitors to federate communities around a cultural institution.

Whether it’s an interactive game, a treasure hunt, an augmented reality digital tour or a photo competition, operators have no shortage of ways to gamify and improve 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 product or in the queue at an event. It is  used in certain sectors where consumers have to wait in a waiting room (particularly in the medical world).

The aim is to optimise the user experience and to make the most of customers’ waiting time. This time can be used to display information prior to a visit. But above all, wait marketing can transform this tedious moment into a pleasant and entertaining one.

Before the event begins, the cultural institution can 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 sporting event. The campaign engaged the public and recruited leads with an entry form for a competition involving attractive prizes (goodies, etc.)

Geocaching: turning a walk into a treasure hunt

Geocaching is a practice that combines treasure hunting with new technologies. It offers an entertaining way to explore a territory or cultural site.

Using a smartphone and a series of clues, participants have to find ‘geocaches’ hidden along a footpath, a neighbourhood or a town. This game is a way of enhancing the value of your location, revealing 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 receive. It’s a way of encouraging them to return or share their experience with friends and family.

Interactive tours to attract young visitors to the museum

Interactive tours can be experienced physically and online. In addition to a guide, visitors interact with a digital device through which they take part in a game.

The Royal Museum of Mariemont in Belgium has set up a video game called ‘The Ferryman’. Designed for the yougest, this game showcased the museum’s Egyptian collection. Children had to find hidden objects, solve riddles and complete levels. This format was ideal for introducing them to Egyptian mythology in an entertaining way.

Outside museums, digital walks also combine education and fun. Mobile applications can 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 animations in key places. It’s an excellent way to visit and to remember important information more easily.

Conclusion

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