How a Women’s Clothing Brand and Home Store Used Instagram to Create Hype Around Their Anniversary Sale

Social media giveaways, like comment to enter and hashtag contests, are quick and easy to run. However, sometimes they can fall a bit flat. The key to a successful social media contest is to let people know about it before it happens. This is just what ROOLEE did, and boy, their results were awesome!ROOLEE has worked hard to build a successful Instagram following for their clothing brand. With a good mix of posts featuring their products, inspirational messages and promotions, they know what type of content their fans love. They created a comment to enter contest as a way to celebrate their seventh anniversary and to thank their customers for supporting them. Learn more about ROOLEE’s contest and how they used it to grow their Instagram following and promote their anniversary sale. 

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A post shared by ROOLEE (@roolee) on Oct 4, 2020 at 7:04pm PDT

Campaign Objectives

ROOLEE is a women’s clothing store founded in 2013 out of Logan, Utah by Kylee Champlin. Over the last seven years, the business has expanded to include home décor and kids and baby apparel and a successful online store. According to Sydnee George, Marketing Manager at ROOLEE, their goals for their birthday week promotion were to “[give] our customers an opportunity to build a better relationship with our brand, increase engagement both on social and our website, and draw attention to the promotions we were running that weekend.”

The Solution

For their 7th Birthday Bash, ROOLEE chose to run a comment to enter contest. Their fans were given a chance to win a $700 shopping spree. To enter, folks simply needed to comment on the post on ROOLEE’s Instagram profile. They were also asked to follow the @roolee Instagram account, like the post and tag someone they love in their comment. Entrants could comment from October 4 through October 13, 2020 to be eligible to win.

  Setting up the contest was easy since all that was required was posting to Instagram. However, for the contest to be successful, ROOLEE needed to bring awareness to it to make sure existing and new buyers would enter. This was an all out blitz. George said they promoted their contest and their anniversary sales on their website via banners and an announcement. They also used social media posts and stories to draw attention to the birthday events. Plus, they sent products that would be on sale to influencers to help “build up hype” around the contest.

ShortStack's winner selection tool   To choose a winner, ROOLEE used ShortStack’s comment import tool. At the end of the entry period, ROOLEE imported all comments on the post to ShortStack. Then they used the ShortStack entry selector to choose a random winner from the comments. Once a winner was selected, ROOLEE tagged the winner in the contest post.

The Results

ROOLEE’s post collected 35,016 comments during their entry period -- that’s over 35,000 entries! The post also received 14,489 likes. Their Instagram following also grew by 2,200 followers over the 9-day entry period. According to George, before they posted about the contest, they “released a schedule of events for the weekend” where the sales and contest were listed. “I believe that [post] helped boost engagement with our website as well as social,” she said. This information allowed their customers to know where to look for the deals and promotions they featured during their birthday celebration.

Promoting Your Social Media Contests Leads to Big Engagement and Success

Social media contests might be simple to set up, but it’s important to remember that the work isn’t done when the post is live. Promoting your social media contest both before and during the contest period vastly improves its success.George mentioned they see the best results for their social media contests when they can use other content to create excitement around the contest. ROOLEE used their seventh anniversary and the associated sales to amplify their comment to enter contest. The engagement from their customers and the new followers they collected during the contest will provide ROOLEE with a captive audience when they release new products or announce sales down the road.