Bracket Bolsters Community, Launches Annual Campaign

by Katharina Doyle Creative Scrapbooker Magazine

Case Study Highlights

  • 1,300+ participants in first month
  • 13,000+ votes in first month
  • 2,200+ opt-ins in first month
  • Turned into an annual campaign
  • Created community of card-making enthusiasts

The Idea

Established in 2005, Creative Scrapbooker Magazine has curated a large audience of paper crafting enthusiasts. Our team at the magazine wanted a fun, creative way to engage with our audience of avid scrapbookers. We also wanted to grow our email database, increase our social media presence, and drive traffic to our website.

One of the most popular crafts of our readers is card making. Our paper crafters are always eager to share their designs and appreciate the recognition of their finished card by other enthusiasts. A people’s choice bracket to find the best card design was the perfect fit to tap into our audience’s passions.

The Execution

Interactive content like brackets had always been something we wanted to explore, but we weren’t sure how receptive our audience would be to them. We decided to use this as our chance to test it out.

We called our bracket Card of the Month – People’s Choice. Running this contest monthly, we’d be able to showcase many readers. Not all of our crafters are creating year round, so this way people could still participate in the future.

Creative Scrapbooker Card-making Bracket

Once we’d decided which crafting project to focus on – cards – we needed a way to gather the card designs from our readers. With a goal of increasing our social media presence, we created a Facebook group specifically designated to our Card of the Month campaign. Beyond encouraging submissions, this group created a fantastic community of our card makers.

Card-making Bracket Creates a Community

Each month, our team narrows the entries into the top 32 bracket contenders. We use the reactions cards received in the Facebook group to help us seed the bracket. With 32 entries, our bracket is split into five rounds each lasting approximately five days.

Card-making Bracket a Win with Audience

To grow our database, we incorporate a simple registration form for voters. Beyond collecting the voters email addresses, we included an email opt-in for our newsletter and asked about each voter’s interests. Next we asked if the vote had read Creative Scrapbooker Magazine, so we can better market a subscription to these voters in the future.

Email opt-ins and Consumer Data from Bracket

We rely heavily on email to promote the Card of the Month – People’s Choice bracket. Incorporating invite emails and reminder emails all within our bracket tool encourages our audience to come back and vote each round for their favorites. We also included the contest in all of our newsletters to our subscribers.

Email Increases Bracket Participation

Since the dedicated Facebook group has been so popular, we also are sure to post there to announce each round. In addition, we post to the Creative Scrapbooker Magazine main Facebook page.

Increase Participation Posting on Social

We also make sure the Card of the Month contest is featured prominently on our website. Not only is it posted on our contests page, but we also have ads for it on our homepage and all our other pages of our website.

Use Your Website to Promote Your Contest

The Results

The response to the Card of the Month bracket has been fantastic! In our first month, more than 1,300 people participated, over 13,000 votes were cast, and we collected more than 2,200 opt-ins towards two of our newsletters.

Our bracket proves to us that our readers are definitely receptive to contests like this. Not only do we plan on continuing this card contest monthly, but we’re also using this as inspiration for new contests and activities for our readers.

After seeing so much success, we’re hopeful to reach out to sponsors in the future to potentially make these contests a new revenue stream for us as well!

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