Online Marketing Campaigns to Make Your Life Easier in the New Year

Admit it. At the end of the holiday marketing season, the last thing you want to do is more marketing. I know I can speak for our team when I say we all need a glass of champagne, a foot rub and two weeks away from our computer screens! Unfortunately, the reality is, our marketing can’t just stop once the holidays are over. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t choose smart options that make things a little easier at the beginning of the year.Enter continuous marketing campaigns. These long-term campaigns range from set ‘em and forget ‘em landing pages to recurring, low-maintenance contests that keep your customers engaged. Below you’ll find five ideas for continuous campaigns to try in the new year.

Product recommendation using personality quizzes

Indecisive customers? Help them figure out exactly what they need. Ask your customers to answer a series of questions, then provide a recommended product or collection of products they would be interested in. You can even use a form to collect leads before results are displayed, giving you a wealth of customer data for future remarketing opportunities.While this type of landing page might sound difficult to set up, we have a template that makes it a cinch. Our Personality Quiz template offers a built-in wizard so you can easily add questions, answer choices and outcomes, in this case, your products. We also offer a handy guide with step-by-step instructions.

ShortStack's Personality Quiz templateView and Create Your OwnView Guide

Weekly comment to enter contests

Comment to enter contests are simple to set up and run. However, our customers see the best success with these contests when they are promoted in advance. That’s why weekly comment to enter contests tend to be the most successful -- folks know when and where you’ll be posting your contest, no need for additional contest promotion. You can plan out your post content far in advance, so all you need to do is post on the right day and collect the comments.For example, WED2B posts a weekly comment to enter contest on their Instagram profile. Entrants answer questions like, “Are you are going for long or short bridesmaid dresses?” and “Who will be your ring bearer?” to be eligible to win a free dress. This allows WED2B to engage with future brides and show off their products. Plus, the content for the posts are simple enough that they can be planned well in advance.ShortStack’s social import tool makes collecting comment entries easy. After the entry period ends, you’ll choose the post you want to pull in comments from. Then, you’ll use our random entry selector to choose a winner. Check out our guide to learn more about running comment to enter contests in ShortStack.

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Long-lasting giveaways

Is growing your email marketing list your number one priority? Try a long-term giveaway. Depending on the prize, giveaways that allow people to enter once a month or year to win can be easier for marketers than changing out content more frequently. Just be sure that the prize is worth the wait.For example, the pregnancy blog What to Expect (yes, it’s based on the book) hosts a monthly giveaway for parents-to-be. I ran across this giveaway while learning about my little one and just had to enter, and my coworker remembers the same giveaway running when she was pregnant. The relatively large prize of $1,500 for baby gear and the monthly drawing makes the contest attractive to most new parents. Plus, What to Expect collects lots of information about their target market to push out related offers down the road.Other long-lasting giveaways might run over the course of the year. Those prizes might be even bigger, like a decked-out bicycle, an all-expenses paid trip, a hefty check or even a car. Our platform has a bunch of sweepstakes and giveaway templates to choose from, as well as a random entry selector for you to choose a winner when the time comes.

ShortStack's Giveaway templateView and Create Your Own

Weekly trivia challenges

Customers like to flex their knowledge of topics about brands they love. Take sports fans for example. Ask them a question about their favorite team, and they’ll tell you more than you need to know. This trivia challenge from the Green Bay Packers is a perfect example. Each week, a new question is posted for fans to guess the answer to. The previous week’s answer and the winner are also revealed.Try a weekly trivia contest of your own. Whether the questions are related to your brand (like the Packers), to your industry (maybe you’re a car dealership asking classic car questions) or to pop culture, the premise is the same -- weekly questions with weekly winners will get folks coming back time and time again. You can even plan out your questions in advance, and put your campaign on autopilot.

Branded Instagram galleries

Social media platforms like Instagram are changing the way many brands interact with customers. Your customers and fans can be powerful brand ambassadors. Harness this potential with branded hashtag galleries. Check out what West Elm does with their branded gallery. Customers post their interior design projects complete with their West Elm finds and tag @westelm.You can do the same thing using ShortStack’s Instagram hashtag feeds. Ask your fans to post to Instagram and to include a branded hashtag. Then, feature posts from your customers or create a gallery of submissions on a ShortStack landing page. Learn more about creating feeds in our guide.

ShortStack's #ShortStack Swag gallery[button size='medium' style='white' text='View Guide' icon='' icon_color='' link='http://hashtag-contests-guide.www.shortstack.com/nV8MMM' target='_blank' color='' hover_color='' border_color='' hover_border_color='' background_color='' hover_background_color='' font_style='' font_weight='' text_align='' margin='0 0 10px']Continuous campaigns are perfect for those times of the year when you don’t have a specific marketing promotion to push, but you want to keep your customers engaged and your email list growing. Kick up your feet and give one of the ideas above a shot. If you have any questions, our team is here to help. Just shoot us an email: theteam@shortstacklab.com.

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