Month: November 2022

Charitable organizations launch some of their biggest donation campaigns during the holidays, but the need for mission-driven marketing persists all year round.

With 18% of annual donations happening in December—the holidays, in particular, present brands with the chance to embrace impactful innovation, which drives fundraising and encourages giving (Blackbaud Institute, 2022). The fundraising formula is ripe for modernization as new digital initiatives are popularized for differentiating campaigns during the holidays and beyond. 

For the 2022 holiday season, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital launched a cozy, cheerful, donation-driven virtual experience through the Obsess virtual store platform. The St. Jude Winter Village proved to be an ideal illustration of how Obsess can power a virtual hub for mission-centric messaging and consumer-led donations.

Explore the intricacies of St. Jude’s virtual winter wonderland, and see how the brand powered donation efforts by creating an accessible donor journey, discovery-driven navigation, and an immersive gift shopping experience.

Donation Through Exploration

The St. Jude Winter Village allows visitors to virtually explore a cozy and festive 3D environment including the Ice Shop, the Ferris Wheel of Hope, and the Donation Station. Visitors can use the map to easily travel from one area of the experience to another. Similarly, users can follow the branded signs within the store for a guided, discovery-driven trek through the snow.

The Winter Village’s map and signage both encourage exploration—ultimately leading to multiple calls to donate to St. Jude. Each call to donate is accompanied by immersive 3D visuals and powerful storytelling to illustrate the brand’s mission. 

The experience also makes it easy to donate thanks to the persistent donation button in the bottom navigation menu. No matter where a user travels within the virtual experience, they can always access the donation portal by clicking on the hand and heart icon.

Bringing Patient Stories to Life

Placed throughout the virtual experience are several pieces of artwork from real St. Jude patients. Each piece of artwork is clickable and unveils the artist’s unique story.

For example: when clicking on a giant, 3D replica of patient Coraliz’s art, you unlock the story of her journey with osteosarcoma. The story reveals how St. Jude helped Coraliz overcome the disease, and eventually regain strength and mobility in her leg. A separate artwork spotlights the story of a patient with a rare form of eye cancer, who practiced art to occupy himself while recovering from a life-saving surgery provided by St. Jude.

After reading these inspiring stories and viewing each patient’s artwork in virtual reality, users are prompted to donate art supplies or other gifts to children in the hospital. Adding context and content to the 3D visuals further immerses users in the stories of St. Jude patients, and makes brand interactions more purpose-driven and meaningful.

A Multilingual Experience

The St. Jude Winter Village was created through a lens of personalization for a diverse set of audiences.

The brand wanted to make the store accessible for multiple markets, beginning with both English and Spanish-speaking locales. The store’s translation feature can be found in the upper right-hand corner of the virtual experience.

At any point, the Winter Village can be translated from English to Spanish, or vice-versa. All donation buttons and virtual signage in the 3D environment are readily available in both languages, enabling a larger population to understand and support the St. Jude mission.

Accessibility for All

St. Jude ensured that their virtual store was easy to navigate for users of all abilities.

For instance: all donation buttons within the store are accompanied by descriptive text, which allows for users with screen readers to easily access the donation portal. Likewise, the full Winter Village experience can be accessed either via mouse click or keyboard on desktop. 

By increasing accessibility and navigation options, St. Jude embraced inclusivity, and in turn—increased overall donations from their virtual store.

Gamification and Livestreaming

Immersive giving takes on a whole new meaning in the Winter Village, with the addition of AI-powered gaming and livestream shopping.

On Giving Tuesday 2022, five different St. Jude celebrity ambassadors hosted a live stream via video chat directly from the virtual experience. The livestream functioned to raise additional awareness and support for the hospital.

The general public was able to join these live sessions through a unique URL, which transported them directly into the virtual showcase. Users were able to listen to ambassadors in real-time, while simultaneously exploring the Winter Village. Live chat for Q&A with each celebrity was open throughout the duration of the livestream, enabling real-time interactions for up-leveled brand engagements.

The Winter Village also employs always-on gamification features for increased interactivity. The experience features a massive Connect 4 board that users can play to unlock shipping discounts.

Integrating E-commerce

In addition to serving as a fundraising platform for direct donations, the virtual experience also functions as an extension of St. Jude’s e-commerce experience—doubling down on its donation power. Users can purchase merchandise and memorabilia that ultimately benefit the children of the hospital, helping fund future treatments and research. 

Just like the St. Jude e-commerce site, the gift shop within the Winter Village displays product details, sizing, and pricing for all of the brand’s not-for-profit merchandise.

Amplifying Brand Mission through Virtual

By creating an immersive, discovery-driven, fantastical, and highly accessible experience—St. Jude was able to create an interactive destination for donations and brand engagements.

St. Jude’s virtual store included a variety of features that any mission-based brand can add to their virtual campaign playbook. For instance, organizations taking a stance against climate change can leverage virtual storytelling and e-commerce integrations to build awareness for their cause and increase education on their sustainability efforts. The same is true for any other brand that wants to amplify its mission using the Obsess virtual store platform.

To learn more about how Obsess virtual stores can inspire more donations and bolster your brand’s mission, contact our team at contact@obsessVR.com. 

Citations

Longfield, C. (2018, February). Charitable Giving Report: How Fundraising Performed in 2017. Blackbaud Institute. www.institute.blackbaud.com

Virtual stores serve as a new commerce channel for your brand. And as with any new selling channel, more promotion leads to more awareness—which is why it’s so important to promote your virtual store as part of your regular marketing mix. Based on data from 150+ virtual stores, we’ve compiled a list of the top marketing channels to promote your virtual store in order to increase traffic and drive up ROI. 

Generally, visual channels outperform text-based channels when it comes to virtual store promotion. Visual channels provide an opportunity to insert a video or an image of a store and set user expectations from the onset. Between social media, press, email marketing, offline marketing, and more—there are a number of visual marketing channels that Obsess customers have used to market their virtual stores.

1. Social Media

Social media is a great platform to introduce new users to your virtual store. There is a lot of potential to reach new and existing shoppers, as content is constantly created and shared. With so many different platforms, brands have plenty of creative freedom to decide how to promote their stores—from organic Posts and Stories, to Paid Ads and Influencers.

Obsess partner Stephanie Gottlieb used Instagram Reels to promote her Gem Palace virtual store, driving awareness at mass scale. She continuously engaged her impressive IG following via Stories and Reels—providing intel into new games, special promotional codes, and guaranteed early sale access.

In her Reels, she used the Instagram Green Screen feature—which allowed her to input photos and videos of her brand’s virtual store into her social background. While Stephanie included a series of images that emulated the look and feel of her virtual store, other brands have opted to provide their viewers with a tour of the full virtual experience using the Green Screen feature. 

Disney Music Group was another brand that utilized the Green Screen feature, with posts featuring content creators that walked viewers through a video demo of their virtual experience. The brand housed all of their virtual experience posts on their Disney Music Emporium social account, which linked out to their experience directly from their account bio.

Social content creators allow for credible commentary and opinions on store usability, feature functionalities, and detailed in-store highlights that others can refer to before entering the store.

2. E-Commerce Site

Promote your virtual store on a platform your customers already visit with the intent to buy or browse: your existing e-commerce site.

From a dedicated landing page to promotional banners that span the length of your site, there are many different ways to utilize your e-commerce site to promote your virtual store. 

Using an auto-play video or a GIF on your website homepage will catch your audiences’ eyes and entice them to enter your virtual store. These visuals also help to shape your shoppers’ expectations of a virtual store and give them a better sense of how and why to navigate the space. 

You can also promote your virtual store in your site’s navigation bar for easy consumer access. On the American Girl website, the brand lists their virtual store alongside their physical store locations—so shoppers can easily find virtual experiences when searching for boutiques. Even when consumers are not physically close to a retail store, the AG virtual store is always readily available.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing tends to perform well for virtual stores because the target audience is already familiar with your brand and they are more likely to be loyal shoppers—making it easier to convince them to engage with new content on a new channel.

Many Obsess customers send dedicated email blasts about their virtual stores—typically around store and new feature launches. Some brands also include always-on promotional callouts for their virtual stores in their regularly scheduled emails. 

Maybelline sent their mailing list an email dedicated to the virtual experience, complete with GIFs that showed the interior of the store, and links to specific rooms within the store. In the banner section, they strategically placed a GIF of the store’s entrance and highlighted the game directly below.

Emails are a great way to engage your most dedicated audience, showcase your virtual store through imagery and video, and guide potential customers to the experience. Email marketing can also increase the longevity of your virtual store by reinforcing messaging to revisit different sections of the store.

4. In-Store Promotions

One of the best assets to promote your virtual presence? Your IRL retail locations.

As part of their virtual store marketing strategy, Ralph Lauren used physical stores to help drive digital traffic. With brick-and-mortar stores in prime shopping locations such as SoHo in New York City, Ralph Lauren was able to use their existing IRL footprint to capture online shoppers. 

Ralph Lauren included a QR code on their retail displays, which led to the virtual twin versions of their retail stores. The QR codes allowed Ralph Lauren to retarget customers through virtual after they left the IRL experiences—prolonging customer communications and relationship management.

5. Offline Marketing

Offline marketing can drive buzz at scale for virtual stores.

Prada Beauty expanded beyond digital with the addition of billboards to their virtual store marketing stack. The billboards were a way for the brand to generate mass awareness and interest around the virtual store and products.

From IRL to URL, potential customers could find billboards and posters plastered around the world—each containing a QR code that led shoppers to the Prada Beauty virtual experience.

Ralph Lauren also opted to include some offline channels in their virtual store marketing mix, such as print ads, to raise awareness around their various virtual stores. The ad introduced readers to the virtual experience through vivid imagery of the interiors of each store.

6. Press

Many brands use press as a way to market their virtual stores. Press is used to generate interest surrounding an initial store launch, or launches of new products and features. Press articles efficiently summarize the benefits and core features of a virtual store—plus, they serve as a backlink to improve SEO. Quality backlinks can increase virtual store ranks on search engines by building credibility.

For example, when WWD covered Crocs’ holiday store launch, Crocs effectively introduced their virtual store to WWD’s reader base while increasing their own online credibility and authority with a reputable backlink. 

The more regularly you promote your virtual store, the more familiar your potential customers will be with the concept. There are many ways to take advantage of marketing to raise awareness around your virtual store, set user expectations, and increase traffic. It’s critical to test a variety of channels, and then optimize toward the channels that your audience responds to best. 

Our advice to you: test and learn, show lots of visuals, and take advantage of storytelling to set the tone of your virtual store.

If you’re interested in learning more about raising awareness and improving the traffic of your virtual store, contact the Obsess customer success team at contact@obsessVR.com.

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