Success Story
Søstrene Grene, a renowned Danish retail chain founded in Aarhus, Denmark, has gained widespread recognition for its distinct store design and unique ambiance. The stores, shaped like captivating labyrinths, create an immersive shopping experience for customers. Søstrene Grene is known, amongst other things, for its extensive range of products, including Scandinavian design pieces, home accessories, kitchenware, gifts, stationery, and interior furnishings.
Søstrene Grene were interested in incorporating gamification as part of their marketing activities to boost their new customer acquisition strategy. However, they had two major concerns that needed to be addressed.
Firstly, they were cautious about the potential trade-off between generating a large volume of leads and maintaining the quality of those leads. They feared that marketing gamification might attract primarily ‘treasure hunters’, in other words, individuals solely driven by winning prizes rather than becoming potential clients genuinely interested in Søstrene Grene’s products and offerings.
Another concern was ensuring that gamification would seamlessly integrate with the core brand values of Søstrene Grene. The retail chain has built a strong brand identity centered around storytelling, specifically the captivating tale of the two sisters, Anna and Clara, the official hosts of Søstrene Grene since 1973. The fictional sisters feature in all written narratives about Søstrene Grene. So, the marketing team at Søstrene Grene worried that gamification would not align well with the intimate and narrative-driven brand image they had cultivated.
Søstrene Grene teamed up with Playable to explore the potential of gamification in their marketing strategy and work through their concerns. They were pleasantly surprised to discover that playable marketing encompassed a range of formats beyond luck-based games, including quizzes, personality tests, and Christmas calendars. Intrigued, they decided to test the ROI of gamification and enlisted Playable’s expertise to create an engaging Christmas calendar for their audience in December 2022. Within the Christmas calendar, participants had the opportunity to unlock a daily quiz question specifically crafted around the Søstrene Grene brand. This creative approach not only added an element of storytelling to the playable experience but also allowed them to align the experience with the core values and narrative of the brand.
The results of the Christmas calendar surpassed their expectations, with 263,239 participants registering (44,585 unique registrations), which was 69.78% of all visitors. Participants spent a total of 4,226.4 hours engaging with Søstrene Grene through the various gamified elements, demonstrating strong interest and engagement. The campaign successfully resulted in 30,544 new subscribers within a month, with 15% of them transitioning into customers. These outstanding outcomes demonstrated the power of gamification in generating high-quality leads and acquiring potential customers for Søstrene Grene, paving the way for further integration of playable campaigns in their marketing efforts.
“The Christmas Calendar was a good test making sure that the investment would be effective. The results made it evident that gamification is a true alternative to other lead forms.” René Tingskov, Media & Martech Manager at Søstrene Grene
“The Christmas Calendar was a good test making sure that the investment would be effective. The results made it evident that gamification is a true alternative to other lead forms.”
After the success of their first gamification campaign, Søstrene Grene decided to incorporate Playable as part of their marketing strategy. With plans to expand their webshop into new countries, they wanted to use gamification to generate new leads and drive traffic to the new webshops. Adopting a “Globally local” approach, Søstrene Grene ensured that their marketing initiatives were not only easily replicated across different countries but also adaptable to the unique cultural and linguistic nuances of each specific market. The Playable platform played a pivotal role in enabling this approach, allowing them to create game templates that could be efficiently tailored to suit the specific requirements of each country while also being easily copied and used in each new market.
Søstrene Grene also has the goal to reduce reliance on data from external platforms like Meta and Google. They aim to become the ones that know the most about their customers. Through their partnership with Playable, they discovered that playable campaigns proved to be a tool for gathering specific data points and gaining a deeper understanding of their customers’ preferences and interests at Søstrene Grene. With this valuable information, they were able to craft tailored and personalized emails to their audience, resulting in an increase in their email marketing conversion rates. To help with this, Søstrene Grene is integrating the Playable platform with Salesforce, their CRM system, ensuring a streamlined and cohesive experience on their end.
We are mainly using the data we collect right now to do magic with email marketing. But, we are also using it with Google and Facebook- they are very dependent on the data we can share with them, so the more data we have about our customers, the more effective we can be on both Google and Facebook. René Tingskov, Media & Martech Manager at Søstrene Grene
We are mainly using the data we collect right now to do magic with email marketing. But, we are also using it with Google and Facebook- they are very dependent on the data we can share with them, so the more data we have about our customers, the more effective we can be on both Google and Facebook.
Søstrene Grene have learned that gamification can be used to create awareness, generate high-quality leads, learn more about their customers, and ultimately, increase brand loyalty and sales. Playable has proven to be a valuable asset in Søstrene Grene’s martech stack to help drive customer leads.
“In the month following a playable campaign, participants are much more engaged. We see higher open rates, click rates, and conversion rates also. Converting 15% of the leads into customers is exciting. That is something very hard to re-create using any other marketing activities.” Mikkel Skov Søgaard, CRM Specialist at Søstrene Grene
“In the month following a playable campaign, participants are much more engaged. We see higher open rates, click rates, and conversion rates also. Converting 15% of the leads into customers is exciting. That is something very hard to re-create using any other marketing activities.”
“By ways of merit alone, Playable is now placed alongside Facebook and the other channels we usually use. To be honest, I am surprised by this turn of events, but the results speak their own clear language.”