TechSmart Taco Holder

A Fake Product Campaign Delivers Real Engagement on April Fools' Day

An education in humor: As a staff writer at Groupon, I had the fortune of working alongside immensely funny people. The company's editorial department even had an official Humor team. It's no surprise then that Groupon celebrated April Fools’ Day each year with an elaborate prank offer, service, or product.

Will it translate? By the spring of 2017, I had left Groupon and was overseeing the digital marketing for a large B2B manufacturer. With April Fools’ Day on the horizon, I wanted to develop a prank campaign for my new employer. My primary goal was brand awareness, but I wanted to quantify the goal in four tangible ways:

• Goal 1: Increase web traffic
• Goal 2: Engage inactive email subscribers
• Goal 3: Increase social engagement
• Goal 4: Direct people to an actual new product release

“Finally, a cup holder for tacos”: I knew I wanted the core of the campaign to be a fake automotive product. We kicked around several ideas but settled on a taco holder (a cup holder for tacos). We quickly envisioned what the taco holder would look like (a foam base that fit into a cup holder) and then researched how to create the fake product on a $0 budget. I ultimately borrowed the actual taco tray that you see in the final video from a nearby Mexican restaurant (yes, I returned it).

Bringing the idea to life: On the Content side, I scripted the video and filmed the “testing” shots. The very talented Jose Ojeda created the animations (which create all of the laughs) and assembled the video.

On the Website, I created a faux product page and embedded the product video. On the bottom of the page, I included a link to the actual new product release to help achieve our fourth goal.

For the Email campaign, I worked with the very talented Charlotte Droney to create a re-engagement campaign for our TechSmart list of 20,000+ people. Many had never even opened an email. Before we scrubbed our inactive subscribers, we wanted to give them one final reason to open, click, and learn about our brand.

How did we do? On April 1, 2017, we kicked off our campaign with our email blast and social posts. Here's how the campaign performed across two days with minimal ad budget:

• Our email prompted 206 subscribers to open a TechSmart email for the first time. 58 of those subscribers clicked for the first time.
• Overall, our email generated 482 sessions (425 new users) to our webpage. Nearly 10% clicked through to our second page.
• Across four Facebook posts, our video received 2,300 views, 219 reactions, and 310 clicks.
• On YouTube, our video received 539 views, 20 shares, and an average percentage view of 85%—37% higher than the channel’s average view time.

Bigger picture: The Taco Holder video was part of a year-long content and digital marketing initiative that also included the Standard Pro Training magazine. What’s more, our April Fools' Day email campaign was part of a larger mission to optimize our email communications. I led an email marketing initiative throughout 2017 that significantly improved upon from the previous year’s efforts. Here’s the year-over-year comparison:

Takeaway: By implementing a strategy that maximizes segmentation and a "less is more" mentality, we were able to send more targeted emails that improved engagement and decreased spam-related metrics.

Starting a content or email campaign for your business? If you have questions, feel free to shoot me an email.