The very first Inorbit mall was inaugurated in Malad, Mumbai in the year 2004. Inorbit mall is a subsidiary of the K. Raheja Corporation that has many malls running in different parts of India. Inorbit has malls in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai with plans to open more. Inorbit houses many brands that deal with fashion, entertainment, lifestyle and food.
Inorbit mall was one of the very first malls opened in India in the year 2004 when Mall Culture was not as prevalent as it is today.
Business Objectives
The business objective of the company was to have high engagement on Twitter about the campaign. The company wanted to achieve maximum number of Inorbit app downloads through the campaign.
Inorbit Mall’s Strategy
Twitter as a social media channel is very successful across the world and India is no different. Most of the major brands have a Twitter account where they communicate and engage with their followers. Inorbit mall also has a Twitter account which allows them to interact with their followers.
Inorbit did their analysis and found out that some of their Twitter followers were influencing a lot of people regarding food, dining out and shopping choices with their tweets. Inorbit then planned to leverage on this by involving these super influencers. Inorbit decided to launch a major campaign where they would collaborate with these super fans to execute it.
Inorbit launched a contest in October 2014 which they named ‘The Great Inorbit Hunt Contest’. The contest was designed to play out like a ‘virtual treasure hunt’. People were required to download the Inorbit app from App Store and Google Play and then try to solve clues by exploring different sections within the app. The app had a feature called ‘Shake and Win’ which was used to release the cues. The ‘Shake and Win’ feature was a very innovative one which would allow a customer to favourite a mall and then receive a special offer by shaking the phone. This would give them a chance to win gift vouchers worth Rs 25,000.
Inorbit identified some of the key followers who were big influencers on Twitter. Inorbit connected with these followers via Direct message (DM) on Twitter and invited them to be the ‘Contest Jockeys’. These jockeys were responsible for announcing the opening of contest and introduce it to their friends and followers on Twitter. These Super fans were also provided with the contest details.
The social media team of Inorbit provided technical support to the fans who were unable to download the app.
Results achieved by Inorbit Mall
The innovative way to promote the contest generated quite a healthy interest from Inorbit’s fans on Twitter. However, the results that were to be followed exceeded the expectation of Inorbit. Inorbit’s fans started tagging their friends to the contest post and took it upon themselves to announce the contest and explain the rules of playing it. A tweet about the contest by one of the fans was retweeted 2200 times.
Collaborating with fans to promote the campaign proved to be very effective as it helped the contest to reach out to a large number of people. The contest was only live for two hours but it received a combined reach of 1 million impressions and 730,000 mentions. There were 2,200 retweets within that time. Inorbit made 168 tweets which received 483 retweets. The retweets received overall 365,000 impressions as fans were tagging Inorbit on their tweets. The fans were using the hashtag of the campaign to announce it.
Within a few hours of this campaign about 1000 Inorbit apps were downloaded and app pictures were posted on Twitter and Facebook pages of Inorbit. Inorbit got 170 new followers on Twitter and 114 fans registered for the contest.
Learning
This was the first time ever in India that a contest was announced by the fans of a brand on Twitter. Fans were retweeting live about the contest after the contest was launched which helped the contest to reach out to a record number of people in a matter of few hours.
This marketing campaign is a classic example of engagement. It shows what can engagement do to a brand when it comes to marketing. Inorbit manually analysed 5,300 of its followers to know about their tweets quality, follower count and affinity and influence towards brand Inorbit. They identified a number of followers who were major influencers on people’s shopping choices and targeted them to run the contest. This was a major turning point because Inorbit on its own would never have been able to achieve the results it did at the end of the contest.
Mr Punnet Varma, General manager of Marketing, Inorbit malls has acknowledged the fact. He said, “The response to The Great Inorbit Hunt Contest has been overwhelming and phenomenal. This could not have been possible without our fans on both Twitter and Facebook. We are grateful to all our fans that actively promoted and encouraged all their friends and followers to participate and win in this contest”.
‘Power of Engagement’ is the most important learning from this contest. Inorbit identified fans who could promote the contest and engaged with them directly. These fans had nothing monetary to gain from it personally but the sheer responsibility they had been entrusted with made them feel valued. This tells us why it is important to always communicate with fans and followers and make them feel valued. It has been seen that ‘word of mouth’ plays a very crucial role in a social media campaign. Inorbit malls tried to capitalize on it by relying on their loyal fans to deliver their message to a larger market that they had no access to.
References: Socialsamosa, Webnewswire, Desiworldlings, Inorbit.in, Wikipedia, Sandiego.
Very interesting case study. Mobile apps are now very easily accessible. People can participate, download, view etc on the go. This saves a lot of time and definitely leaves a deep impression in the participant’s as well as their friends mind. Inorbit used this strategy and were successful in gaining popularity.