Success story

The tale of two Neste scratchcards

“Introducing game campaigns to our marketing efforts has helped us lower our cost-per-lead AND has enabled us to get our app users to use the Neste app more often.”

– Tytti Stranding, B2C Marketing Manager, Neste, Marketing & Services

Neste was looking for a way to gain marketing permissions and increase their app downloads. They decided to start using gamification in their marketing initiatives, and they’ve experimented with game concepts as well as the information that they asked about their customers.

Neste is a forward-thinking energy company headquartered in Espoo, Finland. In addition to providing fuel for cars, Neste is also planning how to fuel transportation of the future; for example, they are conducting research and development for things like renewable fuel for airplanes. Neste is listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. 

About the campaigns

Over a period of six months, Neste ran two Scratchcard campaigns. The results— specifically cost-per-lead — were influenced heavily by what information was asked for on the registration form. By removing the address and city fields in their registration, Neste saw:

  • Reduced cost per marketing permission by 54% from September to March
  • Reduced cost per app user by 69% from October to March


For Neste, their primary campaign KPI is to gather marketing permissions with the ultimate goal being that the permissions turn into Neste app users. In exchange for getting a chance to win a free tank of gas (the prize for both Scratchcards), players filled out a registration form. 

Why Playable works for Neste

Neste already had a data-driven approach to their marketing. This only meant that the Playable platform could help improve the marketing permissions process and indirectly boost app users.  

And because they had an analytical approach, they were able to test and optimize to see what their customers responded mostly positively to AND gain marketing permissions more efficiently. 

“Introducing game campaigns to our marketing efforts has helped us lower our cost-per-lead AND has enabled us to get our app users to use the Neste app more often.”

– Tytti Stranding, B2C Marketing Manager, Neste, Marketing & Services   

Results from the first campaign

Unique Permissions

8,577

New and unique permissions gathered

Budget

40,000 €

Media budget for campaign

KPI

10,000

New marketing permissions

Results from the second campaign

Unique Permissions

6,872

New and unique permissions gathered

Budget

10,000 €

Media budget for campaign

KPI

6,000

New marketing permissions

The results

Neste saw great and interesting results from their two campaigns. In their winter campaign, they had a longer registration form. Even so, they received 8,577 new and unique marketing permissions.

In the spring campaign that they ran, Neste reduced the number of fields in their registration form. Even with a smaller media budget, they ended up exceeding their KPI of 6,000 with 6,872 new and unique marketing permissions. Impressive! 

Takeaways

1. There’s not always a need for a big prize. 

Neste has found that a small prize every day is more effective than one big prize at the end of the campaign. Of course, this depends on the type of business you are, and what your goals are, but it’s a great idea to give out regular prizes rather than ask your audience to wait a month to see who wins the big prize. 

2. Optimize for the marketing permission.

Remember to evaluate the attractiveness of your registration form. What do you offer to the consumer? 

The second way to consider this is to determine what you really need in a marketing permission. For example, Neste chose to stop asking for the address, zip code, and city. 

3. Have the courage to experiment. 

Try different games and optimize aspects of the campaign like the media budget, registration fields, and/or automation messages. This is the best way to find what recipe works for your business. 

Masai Customer Story with Playable
“Game mechanics give us a way to listen to our customers’ preferences and use that information to direct products to the markets that they’ll perform best in. Gamification campaigns have also lowered our CPL and reduced a new customer’s first time to purchase. In addition to all of this, the data we gathered also enabled me to write a brief to our organization about what our audience wants from Masai.”
— Maria Stigsnæs-Eriksen, Head of E-Commerce Sales & Campaigns, Masai Read the success story