Winter Wonderland Wrap Up

WINTER WONDERLAND CAMPAIGN RESULTS

The Winter Wonderland Campaign held from 30^th March to 13^th June 2015  was designed as a marketing campaign to build awareness of the Central South Morang opening.

This Winter Wonderland event was designed to position the shopping centre as a place where customers can find ongoing events and activities as well as to build awareness of the shopping centre and build on the opening events that occurred in March 2015.

A complete campaign summary will be posted to you for your reference in the next week.

Activities Undertaken

• Sales Promotion
  • Free gift with purchase – valued at $20
  • Entry into a competition to win a $42,000 prize
  • Note
    • The first event had a gift valued at $3 and a competition prize worth $1000.
    • The first event also saw sales promotions from Tasman Meats with a year worth of meat being given away
    • The first event also had many specials and deals being conducted at Tasman Meats, Woolworths, Central Fresh Markets which we did not see as many offers for this event.
  • Entertainment
    • Performances from 4 groups were scheduled
    • Jumping Castle
    • Kids Craft Zone
    • Face painter
    • Balloon Twister
    • Note – the entertainment for the first event included face painting and balloon twisting plus roaming Easter Bunny.

 How we promoted the event

• Direct Mail
  • 26 June – 80,000 fliers delivered to letterboxes in the South Morang area
  • The fliers advertised 6 retailer offers although this service was available to all stores
  • Note
    • Central South Morang distributed 25,000 fliers distributed for the opening event in March
    • Retailers distributed their own fliers during the first event including Woolworths, Tasman, Bubba Pizza
  • Newspaper Advertisements
    • 26 June – ¼ page advertisement in the Whittlesea Leader distributed to 52,000 homes
    • 2 June – ¼ page advertisement in the Whittlesea Leader distributed to 52,000 homes
    • 3 June – Full page advertisement in the Northern Star Weekly distributed to 53,000 homes in South Morang
    • Note – Central South Morang only advertised one quarter page advertisement in the March opening however there were 5 Full page newspaper advertisements from retailers during this first campaign.
  • Outdoor Advertising
    • Real estate board out the front of the centre
    • One Open Now balloon provided by Red Rooster
    • Note:
      • the first event we were illegally placing a electronic sign out the front of the centre – this campaign we were not allowed to do this due to council regulations. We also had one additional retailer balloon from Bubba Pizza during the opening event, however this store found this did not increase his sales so he did not run another balloon for this event.
      • Woolworths also committed to running external advertising in the form of motorcyclists with mobile ads, however this advertising was not conducted.
      • During the first campaign we ran an outdoor poster campaign that did not seem to get results, so it was not conducted during this event.
    • School Advertising
      • Paid advertising in two local school newsletters
        Note – this was not conducted in the first event as we relied on schools promoting us for no cost.
    • Digital Marketing
      • Social media posts
      • Website posts
      • Email to our customer database
      • Online Event listings in the City of Whittlesea
      • Note – We did not run any emails to our database in the first event in March , as we did not have one, and our social and website visitations were half of what they were for this event.
    • In Centre Advertising
      • Posters in your store
      • Your word of mouth
      • Customer Service Desk Set up

QUICK RESULTS

• Estimated 8000 visitors to the shopping centre over the weekend.
• Competition entries from 30^th May – 13^th June
  • 1250 – Entries total
  • 129 – Online Entries
  • 1121 – In-Centre Entries
• This competition was run at three other shopping centres that are well established in the marketplace. One of these shopping centres has over 70 retailers. Central South Morang had 29% of entries into the competition. This is a great result for new centre with 17 stores.
• This is a positive sign that people are entering the centre to engage with its promotions and our retailers
• $89 was the average dollar value spent – a great indication that people may have heightened their purchases to gain additional entries.
• Woolworths had the most competition entrants coming from their store followed by Tasman Meats and Beauty Platform.
• A majority of competition entrants found out from in-centre promotional materials (63%) with the CSM website being the second highest medium (12%).
  -We will utilise this feedback and perhaps advertise in centre earlier to give the regular shoppers maximum opportunity and exposure to participate in our promotions. The CSM website is a cost effective medium and a great communication device to share information.
• 80,000 flyers were distributed to local homes in the area – with 100,000 people living within our secondary and primary trade areas this should have been enough to reach everyone (most households have more than one resident).
  5% of competition entrants came from letterbox flyers – a surprising figure considering a 21% response rate when 25,000 were delivered for CSM’s initial launch. The GPS tracking and map are being followed up with the company.
• Three newspaper ads were inserted into both the Northern Star Weekly and the Whittlesea Leader –totalling 157,588 newspapers in circulation during the promotion with our advertising included. (52,064 circulation of Whittlesea Leader and 53,400 in circulation of the Northern Star Weekly)
  Similarly this proved surprising results when initially there was a much more positive response to Newspaper advertising with only one insert (10% of subscribers/entrants for initial launch compared to 3% for Winter Wonderland).
• Whittlesea Council added an event listing and write up in their newsletter
  Free PR valued at $200
• Real Estate board was designed and erected on the vacant block next to CSM to advertise to customers driving into the carpark.
  Central South Morang made a $163 saving on this board.
• Free event listing on Kidspot ‘What’s on’ section
• Over 120 parents and their children were encouraged to come to the centre to perform or participate in their weekly class – many learning where Central South Morang is and the convenience of it to their club/school/group. This was a positive community relationship building activity, helping small groups while also introducing local families in the community to the centre.

We received feedback that the main foyer space was too busy and crowded – next time we will endeavour to have better crowd control management systems in place and utilise the outdoor areas in better weather.

• Over 300 Balloons were handed out
  300 printed advertisements getting walked around our centre, outside in other areas and in the homes of our shoppers.
• Central South Morang hit 500 likes on Facebook, A milestone which CSM has reached quickly.
  Rivergum shopping centre – a local competitor we analysed last time is still sitting on 83 likes. Our Facebook community is interested in the CSM offers, deals and promotions.
• Social media engagement over the two weeks of the promotion was heightened.
  Engagement is a difficult thing to achieve in social media – getting others to interact with your brand is important and increased engagement (fans liking, sharing and commenting on posts) is a positive sign people are interested in the centre and its retailers.

• CSM advertised the Winter Wonderland event and competition in two school newsetters – Findon Primary school and Lalor Gardens Primary School.
  While it was affordable to place the ads – it seems there was only a few people who came to CSM and entered the competition as a result of this advertising. Others may have come for the activities and not the competition however.
• Central South Morang email database increased by almost 450 people to 1,253 subscribers.
  This is also extremely positive – over the last two campaigns it has become evident that a surprisingly large portion of shoppers at the centre do not have email addresses or are internet savvy. To be increasing our database by this amount is fantastic.
  In comparison – Collins234 (A Melbourne shopping centre which has been operating for 15 years) has 4000 on its database – CSM has been operating 3 months.
• Food tasting by Woolworths, Blue Fin and the Red Rooster chicken were great engagement techniques by retailers – great work.
• Received a phone call from a parent whose child performed with Findon Calisthenics

• “Our girls had a really great day with the balloon twister and the craft activities, they really enjoyed themselves! Thanks so much for having us”
  This proves that the event was successful in building positive, feel good relationships with the community and the centre/ CSM brand. Positive experiences encourage people to return and shop with Collins234.

Limitations

• The weather – one of the first weekends of Winter.
  The jumping castle had to be placed inside and could not be seen.
• No advertising signage or boards can be set up Within the city of Whittlesea – had to cancel the planned VMS board which would let street traffic know we had an event (Real Estate board was a last minute addition)
• Children’s local sporting activities take place Saturday and Sunday Morning/midday – we will keep this in mind for future events.
• Retailers who originally offered to host activities and didn’t
  -Tasman Meats: KIIS FM and BBQ
  -Bubbas Pizza: Slice tent with charity donation
• Casual Leasing people could not pull through with the Ice Skating Rink – decided too small at the last minute
• Media company missed putting the first advertisement in the Whittlesea Leader (two weeks prior)
• Following up with the flyer distribution company for GPS and Map tracking to ensure all local areas we specified were distributed to.
• Retailer offers and participation were lacking compared to previous campaign