Firefly uses data on spending habits to boost Valentine’s Day shoppers for Give as you Live

Valentine’s Day is big business for UK retailers – in fact, they make millions (£595m at last full count in 2014) during this time of year. Our client, Give as you Live, is an online shopping website with a heart through which shoppers can donate to charities without spending a penny extra.   Raising awareness during retail peaks helps convert online shoppers to Give as you Live users, and as they buy something for their special day or special someone, they also make a donation to a charity of their choice.  It’s doubling the love.

Using Valentine’s Day as a hook was both a challenge and an opportunity for Firefly. The challenge was competing with many companies, including major retailers, looking to piggyback the day and sell their products. The opportunity was that this day is firmly on the media’s agenda.

With these points in mind, Firefly crafted a campaign that would stand out from others and tie into Give as you Live’s objective of increasing sign-ups. Firefly worked with Give as you Live to commission independent market research to reveal how many people are purchasing gifts, how much people are planning on spending and how far in advance they are planning gift buying. Online shoppers are spread all over the UK, so Firefly ensured that the research could be able to be split by the UK’s top cities in order to target regional titles.

These findings provided Firefly with a wealth of data to approach national, lifestyle and regional media with different story angles to generate coverage for Give as you Live. For example, the Daily Mirror reported on the news by listing the most romantic cities in the UK based on average spend on Valentine’s Day, whilst the Daily Star highlighted that we spend more on Pancake Day than on Valentine’s Day.

Wringing every ounce from the market research, Firefly targeted media in all 19 cities targeted during the research, achieving results in the likes of Edinburgh Evening News and Nottingham Post.

Firefly was able to elevate Give as you Live from other retailers looking to hijack Valentine’s Day by weaving in Give as you Live’s USP – which is a donation to the shopper’s favourite charity using the commission paid by the retailers linked to the site.

Never wanting to miss an opportunity, Firefly also knew that retail is a key audience to reach and used these findings, with a different angle, to target retail media. Give as you Live is connected with over 4,000 retailers and is always looking to grow this figure. Give as you Live featured in retail titles like Talking Retail, maintaining its presence and awareness amongst this cohort.

Firefly and Give as you Live use tools such as Google Analytics to track shoppers that reach the site as a result of PR. We know that during the campaign shopper traffic rose by 11% and transactions have increased substantially from last year. Charitable donations are still being calculated as the money flows through, but we can already see that the shopper revenue targets have been smashed due to an uplift in organic search – people typing ‘Give as you Live’ in Google – as well as massively increased sign-up conversion rates. Cupid's arrow hit the financial targets this year!