Building overall brand awareness and increasing market penetration are two key goals for Bimi® broccoli – the brand name used for Tenderstem® in mainland Europe and Scandinavia.
Driving higher customer engagement through awareness of the brand requires the communication of a strong, consistent message to key target audiences in the most effective ways.
To increase market penetration in Finland, Bimi® devised summer and autumn campaigns in 2020, focussed on reaching key target markets. The campaigns used carefully selected individual channels to reach out to these would-be Bimi® buyers in a coordinated and highly targeted way that would collectively optimise the reach of the campaigns within a particular segment.
Approach:
In July, Bimi® placed a half page advert in Yhteishyvä magazine – the high-quality magazine sent to customers of SOK, which is Finland’s biggest retailer. The magazine has a readership of 2.2 million and its demographics closely match the brand’s target audience. Our messaging was amplified through SOK’s associated website and social media channels.
Alongside the magazine advert, Bimi® decided to run a direct email campaign in early August to two groups of SOK customers who subscribe to the retailer’s customer database: 1) a control group – trendy customer segment with a preference for the convenience of ready-made meals and 2) a quality-driven customer segment who favoured cooking from scratch at home with fresh ingredients.
At the same time, Bimi® ran a campaign in collaboration with the other major Finnish retailer, Kesko. Using the retailer’s grocery retail channels, including their website at k-ruoka.fi, digital newsletters to customers, in-store magazines and the retailer’s own mobile app, Bimi® was able to target content about Bimi® growers, recipes, adverts and advertorials to a key target market.
Impact:
The advert in the Yhteishyvä magazine had a direct and immediate impact on sales. Weekly Bimi®customers increased by 14%.
The direct email campaign reached a total of 30,000 unique customers. Of these, 18,603 opened the email and 692 clicked the content. The main message achieved an open rate of 37.8% and a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 2.0%. These results compare very favourably with industry benchmarks and other similar commercial campaigns.
A reminder email was also sent through a week after the main message to those who hadn’t clicked on the first email. Traditionally regarded as inactive consumers, this tactic also produced remarkable results, with an open rate of 71.9%. This open rate translated into sales too. A week after the email reminder was sent, Bimi®customers increased by 10%. The growth in volume sales matched the number of email customer converts.
Overall, the campaign resulted in strong conversion rates among the target audience who grew their spend on Bimi® significantly compared to their pre-campaign spend. The results from the Quality-driven customers performed better than the Trendy group.
The Kesko campaign had similarly striking results:
- An article about a Bimi® grower resulted in more than 600 click throughs to the store’s website
- A social media post on Kesko’s Facebook page led to more than 600,000 impressions
- More than 375,000 digital newsletters were distributed to customers in July, achieving an open rate of more than 19%
- An article available through the K-Ruoka mobile app led to more than 1,600 click throughs to the article
- Advertorial on Bimi®, a full page advert, a recipe and a banner advert – which were featured in consecutive issues of the store’s customer magazine during the summer and autumn – reached 1 million customers.
Conclusion:
These campaigns illustrated the effectiveness of devising highly focussed integrated marketing campaigns with targeted communication to key target consumers. By harnessing the power of a magazine advert together with direct email and follow-up, Bimi® projected a strong, consistent and persuasive message in a carefully coordinated way using a variety of platforms to ensure the brand hit the right spot. Collaborating with two major Finnish retailers (Kesko and SOK) across various platforms and channels during consecutive months enabled awareness to build through consistent yet eye-catching and informative assets. As a result, brand awareness grew, customer engagement rose and sales increased.
These integrated marketing campaigns, which put customers at the very heart of the strategy, enabled Bimi®to get across a compelling message using different yet relevant channels and mediums. The campaign messages resonated with the target audiences – selected on the basis of their preferences, needs, attitudes and interests – and the campaigns translated into sales.
If you want to find out more about how we use integrated marketing campaigns to boost awareness of brands and drive customer engagement and sales, contact us HERE.
