3 interesting ways to differentiate your Easter promotions

For many, Easter is the first seasonal holiday of the year. It’s also the point when winter finally gives way to spring, and many children (and their families) get some time off school.

These factors all combine to make Easter a great time for promotional campaigns. Brands run Easter promotions to boost sales and increase brand awareness. But it can be tricky to create an Easter campaign that appeals to everyone.

Firstly, not everyone celebrates Easter. And secondly, not everyone is going to be interested in chocolate and candy. To make an Easter campaign that appeals to as many people as possible, you need to think of ways to differentiate your promotion.

In this blog post we’ll run through three simple campaign formats that will help you differentiate your Easter promotions. 

Many countries don’t traditionally celebrate Easter. But cultural exports like the Easter Bunny and chocolate eggs have spread around the world. They gave rise to Easter egg hunts, which are a quintessential Easter activity enjoyed by millions. 

While Easter egg hunts are primarily a children’s activity, there are plenty of ways to turn them into something adults can enjoy too. You can easily set up your own Easter egg hunt promotional campaign using geofencing. Geofencing allows you to create promotions that vary depending on your customer's location.

To set up this campaign, follow these steps:

This campaign offers a great opportunity to create an engaging easter-themed promotion. But consider the following:

• The size, location, and quantity of your geofences

These factors will all impact the accessibility and overall success of your Easter egg hunt campaign. You’ll want to have a number of easter egg locations dotted around an area that’s easily accessible for as many potential customers as possible. These could be at famous city landmarks, or even at your stores.

• The rewards you allocate at each location

Rewards are the most crucial part of the campaign. You can allocate badges at each of the geofence locations, with a discount at the final one. Because the financial reward is less accessible, this approach may be better suited towards a brand awareness or customer loyalty campaign.

Or you could give a series of progressively larger coupons at each consecutive location (€0,50, €1,00, €1,50, €2,00, €5,00, etc.) If you allow these coupons to be redeemed on the same cart, this promotion offers a nice financial incentive for all customers. This way they can still get a small reward, even if they don't want to commit to the rest of the Easter egg hunt.

Free gifts are a simpler option that will still help you engage your customers around Easter. What you offer your customers as a free gift is up to you. You could choose Easter-themed items, like chocolate eggs. Or you could tailor the gift for individual customer segments.

To set up this campaign, follow these steps:

Free gifts are a great way to encourage purchases, with little additional cost to your business. This type of campaign is easy to set up, and it can altered to achieve different goals. However, you should consider the following if you do decide to set up a free gift promotion:

• Pick relevant free gifts/rewards

You may want to give customers a physical, Easter-themed gift, like a chocolate egg. Or, you may decide that an online coupon code with a small discount works better. Either option is sure to attract customers in different ways. But you should conduct prior research to work out which will be most appealing for your different audiences.

• Customize for different audiences

To make your Easter rewards more effective, customize them for different audience segments. You could do this by offering customers a choice of gifts, or you could use customer data to offer more relevant gifts automatically. If you have a loyalty program already set up, customization and personalization will be even easier. You can change the gifts you give out depending on the customers’ loyalty tiers or purchase preferences.

• Publicize your promotion

Make sure your promotion is well publicized. Too few participants and it won’t be worth the investment.

Random prize coupons are another Easter campaign format that can capture your customers’ attention. There are a number of ways to distribute random prize coupons. If you’re aiming to increase sales, the best approach is to allocate the random prize coupon after customers complete their purchase.

To set up this campaign, follow these steps:

Often, random prize draws will give out some prizes with no reward. For example, many game pieces in McDonald's Monopoly are effectively worthless. But, with a pool of randomly allocated coupon codes, customers will be encouraged to shop knowing that they’re guaranteed something in return. In fact, random rewards are a big incentive.

If you’re considering running a random prize campaign, consider the following:

• Set requirements for coupon allocation

You'll probably want to set a cart total for prize coupon allocation. Without this, customers could technially spend €5 and then get a coupon that's potentially worth €50.

• Offer worthwhile incentives

With this type of campaign, customers won’t receive any reward until after they’ve completed their purchase. This is a bigger risk for them, so you should offer a bigger incentive to ensure they participate.

• Do you want to limit the coupon pool or not?

You can either set a volume limit on the pool of coupon codes, or limit the promotion by date. Both of these approaches have their own advantages and drawbacks. If you limit the coupon pool, you don’t have to worry about ensuring that the coupons are distributed evenly. But you will have to end the promotion once the pool has been used up. If you limit by time, you can get more participants, but you need to ensure customers have a fair chance of getting the highest value coupons across the lifetime of the promotion.

• Make sure customers trust your promotion

Many customers are understandably skeptical about their chances of winning random prize competitions. To combat this, you need to make sure that they feel they can trust your campaign. Be up front about the workings of the campaign, the variety and quantity of prizes available, and the redemption options available to them.

There are plenty of ways to make an Easter promotional campaign more accessible and interesting for your customers. It doesn’t matter what age they are, what demographic they belong to, or what preferences they have. There are so many ways to differentiate your campaigns. The key is to think outside the box and offer something different.

If you choose to run one of the campaigns mentioned above, remember the following: