Webtrends Discovers Route to Double Success Metrics for Kettle Foods' "Passport to Flavor" Campaign

C A SE STUDY 851 SW 6th Ave., Suite 600 WebTrends Discovers Route to Double Portland, OR 97 204 1.503.294.7025 Success Metrics for Kettle Foods’ fax: 1.503.294.7 1 30 “Passport to Flavor” Campaign WebTrends Sales 1.888.932.87 36 OVERVIEW: sales@WebTrends.com Kettle Foods began blazing their all-natural snack-making trail back in 1978, and Europe, Middle East, Africa they’ve been delighting customers with their distinctive potato chips (and other + 44 (0) 1784 415 700 treats) ever since. In addition to making award-winning snacks, Kettle Foods is emea@WebTrends.com known for their dedication to sustainability and commitment to “chipping in” to For offices worldwide, visit: the community with generous donations of time and products. www.webtrends.com CHALLENGES: Kettle Foods was gearing up to embark on their third annual People’s Kettle doubled Choice campaign. For two years, customers had been sinking their teeth vote conversion into the promotion by actively choosing the company’s next potato chip rates from the flavor. The objectives were to engage people in the Kettle Foods brand, increase sales and build awareness. beginning of the campaign. The 2007 “Passport to Flavor” web site was constructed in Flash to provide a richer, more immersive experience. But when the campaign launched, many users were ending their journeys without casting votes and email registrations were lower than the Kettle team had expected. RESULTS RECAP: • Increased email registrations by 107 percent from previous year • Doubled vote conversion rates from the beginning of the campaign • Prompted 34 percent of voters to leave comments on the site • Blogs, advertisements and the viral send-to-a-friend feature garnered the same amount of traffic and party pack sales as last year’s campaign, in one third of the time • Generated significant media attention and praise for the campaign METHODOLOGY: WebTrends quickly implemented a strategy to measure and improve the Passport to Flavor experience. Because this year’s campaign site was Flash-based, Kettle Foods needed a different approach to data collection and analysis because key visitor activities were no longer tied to a page view. With this in mind, WebTrends helped Kettle determine the web site’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the valuable metrics that gauge the performance of a site’s main processes and objectives. Together, the teams from Kettle Foods and WebTrends identified the KPIs to be: • Number of unique visitors to the site • Completed “events” such as voting, email registrations, send-to-friend and leave a comment actions • Sales of party pack samplers from the web site • Referring URLs Using WebTrends Marketing Lab 2, Kettle Foods was able to quickly and easily implement tracking for the new Passport to Flavor site. From there, the company used WebTrends 5-Point Scenario Analysis and Navigation Analysis reports to zero in on a core issue: they were missing out on a significant percentage of votes as compared to beginning of last year’s campaign. With insight into where visitors were dropping out or failing to enter the voting process, the Kettle design team deduced small but critical alterations they could make to the Flash site. These changes included adding a strong “Vote Now!” call to action and increasing the prominence and visual appeal of the party pack sales message. 2 The optimized Flash design doubled conversion rates with more prominent calls to action. With the new design in place, WebTrends found voting conversion rates doubling virtually overnight and email registrations getting a boost, too. Marketing Campaign Tracking And Analysis WebTrends tracked campaigns and referring URLs, which revealed how much traffic was coming from advertising and blogs. Kettle was able to tell which banner ads drove traf fic to which parts of the site, making it possible to gauge the success of their advertising/ PR campaigns. Some individual blogs linking to the campaign site drove as much traf fic as advertisements, clearly demonstrating the value of this type of viral traffic promotion. WebTrends reports gave the Kettle team immediate insight, particularly into the visits driven by referring sites, which demonstrated the value of blogs and viral marketing. 3 During the campaign, 44 percent of site visitors provided an email address, and the total votes increased by 7 percent over the previous year’s much-longer campaign. Party pack sales also matched the previous year, with 18 percent of voters making the purchase. In addition, 34 percent of visitors to the site lef t a comment, demonstrating a high degree of consumer engagement. Comment boards helped create a sense of community on the site. “For the first time, we were able to tell what efforts were successful in driving visitors to the campaign and what their experiences were like when they got there, which proved to be extremely valuable,” said Garrett Gonzales, senior graphic designer, Kettle Foods. Future Flavors Thanks to the insights gained using WebTrends Marketing Lab 2, Kettle Foods was able to ensure that Web 2.0 strategies like the interactive Flash site were delivering the results they needed. Plus, they could make continual improvements to their campaign site to enhance the user experience, and they’ll be able to confidently apply these learnings to future People’s Choice campaigns. Michelle Peterman, vice president of marketing for Kettle Foods said, “Going forward, we’ll continue to focus more on mechanisms to both push and pull visitors to the campaign, and WebTrends will allow us to make smarter investments, as well as better tailor our sales messages and promotion plans for our overall marketing ef forts.” About WebTrends Since 1993, WebTrends has provided the market with web analytics solutions that help marketers measure and improve web sites and online marketing. Today, WebTrends Marketing Lab delivers comprehensive analytics, dynamic advertising optimization and deep visitor intelligence to drive customer engagement and power targeted marketing. Thousands of leading global organizations have chosen WebTrends solutions and proven client services expertise to optimize their marketing initiatives, including General Mills, IKEA, Microsoft, Reuters and Ticketmaster. For more information, visit www.webtrends.com. WebTrends Marketing Lab™, WebTrends Analytics™, WebTrends Score™, WebTrends Visitor Intelligence™, WebTrends Marketing Warehouse™, WebPosition®, WebTrends Dynamic Search™, WebTrends® and the WebTrends logo™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of WebTrends Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. CS10953KF © 1996-2007 WebTrends Inc. All rights reserved.