Topps? Facebook and Twitter campaigns propel Bunt app to top spot
By customizing the creative for app installs ads on Twitter and Facebook to specific customer segments, baseball trading card maker Topps drove its Bunt mobile card collecting application to the top of the standings in the baseball app pantheon.
The Fiksu-supported campaign positioned Bunt, a real-time Major League Basesball digital trading card game that engages fans simultaneously in digital card collecting and fantasy baseball, to be named an Apple best new app and see downloads surge 146 percent. The free app, which is monetized through in-app purchases, is an example of how mobile can nourish and sustain engagement in a brand and an activity over a long period ? in this case an entire baseball season.
?One key takeaway for mobile marketers from this campaign is the impact that mobile can have on overall marketing efforts,? said Kathy Pattison, vice president of marketing at Fiksu. ?Mobile allows marketers to track and collect substantially more data than any other marketing channel.
?For Topps, marketing on mobile allowed them to gain insights about their audience they didn?t already know, that they were then able to translate to marketing on other channels to compliment mobile,? she said.
Meeting fellow collectors
In the app, the cards the user owns and collects earn points based on how the player performs on the field each day. The platform not only lets users collect and trade cards but also introduces them to the baseball card-collecting community.
Blending card collecting and fantasy baseball.
After being served a relevant ad, a user would click and be taken directly to the app store where they would be prompted to install Bunt: The MLB Digital Baseball Trading Card Game.
After completing the installation, the user could join the game via Facebook, Twitter or by simply entering their email address. Daily coins were rewarded for coming back to the app and could be used to obtain common, rare or super-rare player cards. Additional coins could also be purchased in the app. The cards users owned and collected earned points based on how real-life players performed on the field each day - adding a modern fantasy sports spin to the tradition of sports collectibles.
With the help of Fiksu, a data-driven mobile ad tech company and Facebook and Twitter API integration partner, Topp increased app downloads by 146 percent.
The initiative also boosted registered users by 141 percent and expanded the number of purchasing users by 33 percent.
And the brand achieved all this while remaining ROI-positive.
Topps? aim was to deploy app-specific ad units on Facebook and Twitter to reach millions of tech-savvy baseball fans while maximizing ROI.
Topps, known as the go-to source for baseball trading cards for decades, could specifically target its audience and exploit the affiliations that fans have with their favorite teams by being able to tap into Facebook?s enormous storehouse of user data.
By isolating certain segments, Topps could customize the creative for a better click-through rate and conversion rate.
Targeting specific users.
On Facebook, Topps was able to target users based on highly specific interests - for example, baseball, MLB, Yankees, Orioles - as well as other demographic information such as gender and location to increase the chance that the users they were targeting with the ads would not only be interested in downloading the app, but would also be apt to engage with it.
Similarly, on Twitter, Topps was also able to be very specific in its targeting around user interests, as well as around more timely topics that users were talking about, such as the All Star Game.
The brand had to find a way to cut through the clutter to efficiently acquire loyal, paying users and find ad networks that cost-effectively delivered Topps? target audience.
Another challenge was identifying specific segments of a broader audience that converted best and could be targeted even further.
????????Topps saw some of its highest returns - in excess of 1000 percent - when targeting interests such as MLB.com and Sports Illustrated.
It had its greatest success targeting unique segments of fans of particular MLB teams.
Campaigns targeting Baltimore Orioles fans resulted in a 260 percent ROI, while campaigns targeting Oakland A?s fans achieved 330 percent ROI.
On the strength of the Oakland and Baltimore results, Topps ran a successful pilot for television commercials in those markets. Topps would not have known those were the markets to target for a more traditional ad buy had it not had success on Facebook first.
Topps also enjoyed success as an early adopter of Twitter?s Mobile App Promotion products. By capitalizing on Twitter?s immediacy, Topps ran successful campaigns around the 2014 MLB All-Star game by targeting handles and interests related to the event in real-time.
Targeting mobile-savvy baseball fans.
Its best performing campaigns realized ROI of more than 300 percent with high purchase rates. Despite accounting for only 32 percent of media spend during this time period, Twitter accounted for 78 percent of all purchases.
Topps is continuing its partnership with Fiksu to promote its other apps, Huddle and Kick.
Factors for success
?There were several factors that led to the success and effectiveness of the campaign,? Ms. Pattison said. ?For starters, Topps had clear goals about what they were looking to achieve.
?Additionally, the unique targeting capabilities that are possible on Facebook and Twitter helped Topps to granularly segment their audience in ways they wouldn?t have been able to do on other networks.
?Fiksu?s optimization tools and mobile expertise also led to the success of the campaign because they were able to figure out which networks, and then which segments within those networks, were performing best and optimize towards them,? she said.
Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter with Mobile Marketer, New York.