 ‘Tis the season for special deals and offers, and for the resulting advertiser dilemma: how to be visible when consumers are inundated. Overcoming that hurdle with room to spare, Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. and PostRelease today announced that a holiday-themed rebate offer for Pioneer In-Dash Navigation models achieved a 60 percent click-through rate by targeting automotive enthusiasts in online forums. Pioneer Electronics turned to PostRelease to help promote its holiday rebate offers for their new flagship AVIC-Z110BT and AVIC-X910BT navigation systems. The two companies crafted a sponsored forum post which included product images, direct links to the product web pages and the rebate page on Pioneer’s website. The campaign ran as a sticky post – meaning the post remained in the lead position in the forum discussion category – in 55 automotive-themed forums, from Nov. 2 to Nov. 9. The post is clearly marked as from PostRelease and Pioneer and, once unstuck, moves down the page as a regular forum post would. It remains part of the forum content for the life of the forum. “The most effective way to make an impact with your message is to target it directly to those consumers who have a passion for your products,” says Ted Cardenas, director of marketing for the mobile business group of Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. “We’ve been using PostRelease to reach automotive enthusiasts in online forums for the past year, and it consistently delivers response rates far higher than any other channel.” “People on product-related online forums are ripe audiences for product-specific messages and offers – as our results prove time and again,” says Justin Choi, founder and president of PostRelease. “Consumers visit these types of forums expressly to discuss products, so they’re open to relevant sponsored messages and they’re more likely to respond.” The top five forums to generate the most clicks and reads for Pioneer’s holiday campaign were ClubFrontier.com, Camaroz28.com, DuraMaxForum.com, Z06Vette.com and 300CForums.com. PostRelease has a network of more than 130 participating forums. PostRelease helps companies reach targeted audiences in online forums, at the point where opinions are being formed and buying decisions made. PostRelease is automated but audited – all posts are reviewed to ensure the content is relevant to the discussion topic. Posts can include text, pictures, hyperlinks and links to video. The posts are archived as forum content, so they continue to generate responses long after a campaign ends. According to an analysis of PostRelease results over the past year, the effectiveness of individual posts increases over time — with response rates growing as much as 70 percent six months later — because people can discover those posts directly from search engines. | ||
