Success story
“A gamification campaign like the Advent Calendar gives us a way to deliver important content in an engaging way.”
— Andreas Brinch, Digital Marketing Specialist, Kræftens Bekæmpelse
Kræftens Bekæmpelse, the Danish Cancer Society, was looking for a way to engage their audience while also fundraising for their mission. They chose to make a daily Advent Calendar so that they could engage with their audience every day throughout the first three weeks of December.
Kræftens Bekæmpelse is a non-profit organization which conducts research, works to prevent cancer, and provides patient support. It was founded over a hundred years ago, in 1904, and consists of 400,000 members.
Kræftens Bekæmpelse’s 2019 Advent Calendar ran for 24 days, and it was an opportunity for their audience to learn more about them and their mission. In fact, it was the first time in the history of the organization that they engaged their audience in this way.
The daily Advent Calendar was always free to play and consisted of 24 questions and 24 prizes, one for each day. If you answered the daily question correctly, you would be a part of the drawing. In addition, they also used the Calendar as a way to fundraise for children affected by cancer. Here’s how it worked: people who answered the daily question correctly saw a page with two CTAs (call-to-action): (1) to become a member of Kræftens Bekæmpelse and (2) a CTA to be entered into a grand prize drawing for a €6,700 gift card towards an overseas trip. The cost of this ‘admission ticket’ into the grand prize drawing was €14. The marketing team wanted to test if players answered the day’s Advent Calendar question correctly, would they then be willing to donate to a good cause.
Reach
+180,000
measured in clicks
Total Leads
51,400
Leads gathered by the campaign
New Leads
25,000
Which were brand new leads
Average Daily Participants
15,000
Participants scratching every day
The Calendar was a huge success for Kræftens Bekæmpelse. It resulted in 180,000 clicks, 51,400 leads (25,000 of which were brand new leads), and an average of 15,000 participants scratching the field each day (!)
They were also able to drive traffic to another important service, the Cancer Helpline. On an average day, the Cancer Helpline gets about 20 visitors to their website. But on a Saturday that Kræftens Bekæmpelse’s Calendar had a question about the Cancer Helpline, their website was visited by 1,872 people. Over that weekend, they also experienced a lot of phone calls.
Kræftens Bekæmpelse promoted their Advent Calendar through a variety of channels, including both owned and paid social media, display advertising, and through email marketing. They also set up a pre-launch campaign where they asked people to opt-in to daily reminder emails about the Advent Calendar. This worked well for them, with about 30,000 of the leads (out of 51,400) opting in for daily emails before December 1st. The daily reminder emails positively impacted the traffic sent to the game, and it resulted in 0 people who unsubscribed from the reminder email or marketing permissions.
With the mission of conducting research, preventing cancer, and providing patient support, Kræftens Bekæmpelse also wants to educate their audience about how many members it has, the most common types of cancer in men and women, and other initiatives held throughout the year.
Gamification helps them do this.
“A gamification campaign like the Advent Calendar gives us a way to deliver important content in an engaging way. Not only can we educate our audience once, but we get the chance to do it for 24 days in a row. Playable’s platform helps us reach our audience in a different and memorable way. And just last year, we were able to gather 51,400 leads from one campaign, which is pretty incredible.” — Andreas Brinch, Digital Marketing Specialist, Kræftens Bekæmpelse
“A gamification campaign like the Advent Calendar gives us a way to deliver important content in an engaging way. Not only can we educate our audience once, but we get the chance to do it for 24 days in a row. Playable’s platform helps us reach our audience in a different and memorable way. And just last year, we were able to gather 51,400 leads from one campaign, which is pretty incredible.”
Using gamification and an Advent Calendar is a great way to engage your audience over a period of a few weeks, and if you choose a content Advent Calendar, it can provide a way to present different kinds of information. Kræftens Bekæmpelse had players guess the correct answers to questions about their history, their board, other initiatives they hold throughout the year, and other services they offer like the Cancer Helpline. Kræftens Bekæmpelse is able to find a balance between communicating their mission and doing so in an engaging and fun way.
“In just a few months of using Playable’s platform, our engagement metrics have multiplied 4x compared to similar campaigns that don’t employ gamification. To us, this means we are definitely on the right track. But perhaps the most impressive thing is how fast our in-house creative team has dreamt up so many different possibilities in the platform. In such a short amount of time, the platform has become a go-to for us. We are looking forward to a future that holds even more gamified campaigns and even greater numbers!”