Second Act Scores with Fantasy Football Campaign

Company Profile
Founded in 2003, Second Act features great deals on brand-name consumer electronics. Providing consumers with a hassle-free shopping experience, the online retailer offers low prices by focusing on closeout, overstock, open box and factory refurbished merchandise. Every item comes complete with a factory warranty, and virtually all HD televisions come with an in-home warranty.

The Challenge
Football season, when fans are likely to want to upgrade to HDTV, is one of the busiest times of the year for Second Act.  It's also when company employees traditionally played in an internal fantasy football league. During the season, employees select which team they think will win each match-up, and receive a point for each correct pick. The person with the most points on Super Bowl Sunday is declared the winner.

Second Act had so much fun with their fantasy football league that they wanted to be able to share the experience with customers. And in doing so, they hoped to build brand awareness and loyalty and increase Web site visits. Complete with a free television giveaway to the top scorer in the league at the end of the season plus assorted prizes and discounts along the way, the Second Act Fantasy Football League was thought to be a strong branding opportunity.

“We wanted to extend our fantasy football league to our customers by using it as an acquisition tool to grow our database,” said Mark Redetzke, chief operating officer of Second Act.

But it was also expected to be complicated and time consuming to manage.

Second Act would have to keep track of hundreds (or thousands) of players' team picks and points totals, and then communicate upcoming games and point standings to players on a regular basis. What started out as a fun employee activity had the potential to turn into a full-time job for someone.

The Solution
“After receiving training on how to use the sophisticated features of the Silverpop solution, Matt O'Laughlin in our marketing department felt pretty optimistic that he could use the product and database to keep score for the league,” Redetzke said.

Second Act sent invitations to join the fantasy football league to everyone on their master list.  Participants who opted-in were sent an email with a link to a landing page that lists the week’s games and allows players to select the teams they think will be winners.

“We also encouraged participants to invite friends and family to join the fun, and we sent invitations to a variety of football chat rooms,” Redetzke said. “The focus of the campaign was to interact with people, not necessarily try to sell them something. It’s about having some fun, connecting with people and talking to them about something they are passionate about—football.”

The Results
Each week of the league, Second Act added, on average, 100 new participants, helping the company grow a database of loyal fans. Weekly emails that contain the individual players’ standing typically have open rates of about 65 percent.

Second Act has also seen an increase in revenue linked directly to the fantasy football promotion. “While we're not selling any products in the emails, click rates from the emails to our Web site average 65 percent. And those people are making purchases,” O’Laughlin said. “On average, we get about one conversion a week as a result of this campaign.”

Judging by the participation rates and the added bonus of increased revenue, Second Act deems its Fantasy Football League a big success. However, successful guessing is the key to winning this league, so who does Redetzke predict will win the Super Bowl?

“I’ll say New Orleans and New England, with New England taking the win,” he said.

Second Act
http://www.secondact.com

Silverpop
www.silverpop.com