g8wave, in partnership with The Times newspaper, devised a fantastic new idea for a DVD giveaway promotion.

The promotion:

Collect 7 Classic Children's series DVD's - Free with The Times!

How did it work?

Readers collected the first DVD free with the Saturday Times. They could collect each individual DVD by texting in each day, or opt to text in for the whole set at the end of the week.

Readers were asked to text in with the trigger, followed by their name, address and postcode - this eliminated the inconvenience of transcribing the records and counting the coupons that would otherwise have been sent to the handling/fulfilment house. We were able to give stats to The Times on a real-time basis, so they were constantly aware of how much stock was needed and how successful the promotion was in its early stages.

The Results

Just over 100,000 readers sent in a text for this promotion (comprising readers who ordered the full set of DVDs, as well as those who were just after individual copies they had missed during the week).

On the Sunday, we had the highest number of orders between 1pm and 9pm – proof that readers are late risers at the weekend!

Monday saw the largest volume of orders occur in the morning (8-10am) then during lunchtime (12noon-2pm) and lastly teatime (5-7pm).

The only time readers were not responding was between 2 and 4 am!

The Issues

The two common errors highlighted by readers were 1: Incorrect formatting 2: Non readable text

For erroneous text messages sent in, the reader would receive a bounceback requesting them to send their details again. This was sent FREE of charge!

If we look at the number of messages received vs issues encountered whilst running this week-long promotion, we will see there was an error rate of less than 1% - a phenomenally low figure.

Media Guardian: The first newspaper promotion allowing readers to order a free DVD film via text messaging generated more than 100,000 responses.
"It was an experiment and it worked," said Simon Bell, the Times Newspapers Marketing Director. "We try to embrace new technology across the board and that includes promotions"

"We are constantly trying to get close to our consumers and understand their changing behaviour and text is a more convenient medium for consumers. This would encourage us to use such a mechanism again," he said. The promotion was a joint venture between DVD supplier The Communications Practice and g8wave, which devises mobile phone strategies for newspapers.

Contact us for more details on what g8wave can do for you.

Or text: g8wave (space) your name / company to 81800 and we'll contact you!

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