redpepper Integrated Ad Agency

Turning one-time shoppers into loyal customers

Kirkland’s came to us with an interesting fact: 75% of their shoppers were customers who only visited once a year, during the holidays. They asked, “How can we get these people to shop at Kirkland’s more often?” Our answer: Glee Spree — a campaign that captured those customers' e-mails for year-round marketing, and encouraged all Kirkland’s fans to pass the word along through various forms of “merry-making.”

In-store tactics

As the highlight of this promotion, the Glee Spree Sweepstakes drove in-store traffic by offering customers the opportunity to win a $2,500 shopping spree. Each store had an associate dedicated specifically to merry-making and to encouraging shoppers to enter the sweepstakes. Shoppers simply filled out a form, then received an instant coupon, good for that day only. Besides adding new e-mails to the Kirkland’s database, this motivated same-day shopping and drove immediate sales.

Creating shareable (and memorable) content

The face of this cheery holiday promotion was the oh-so-lovely, Merry the Gift Fairy. Among other things, this friendly merry-maker surprised Kirkland’s shoppers with free shopping sprees. We captured each shopping ambush on video and posted them to Kirkland’s community site at MyKirklands.com.

Spreading the word via existing fans

MyKirklands.com members were encouraged to pass the holiday spirit on by sharing the shopper ambush videos on Facebook. To prove that giving really is as good as receiving, they were given a Kirkland’s coupon in return. It worked. The Merry-Making videos were shared more than 10,000 times on Facebook and were viewed nearly 33,000 times.

Daily online giveaway

To further engage MyKirkland’s community members, Merry the Gift Fairy also gave away a gift a day. Community members could view wrapped boxes on MyKirklands.com, choose a gift and then enter to win it with a simple click. Members were allowed to enter once a day for six weeks. And enter they did – more than 245,000 times!

Results that kept giving.

Glee Spree was a success worth celebrating, in more ways than one. We collected more than 400,000 e-mails, received more than 500,000 sweepstakes entries, got more than 63,000 Facebook shares and spread a little holiday cheer in the process.