How Geofilter Exclusivity Drives Engagement

Let me tell you a story about two music festivals.

Festival A: a sold-out three-day event featuring dozens of high-profile, musical acts, big-name corporate sponsorships, and an extensive list of VIP attendees hosted in the downtown region of a tourist destination city.

A regional business hired my services for an all-encompassing campaign lasting the entirety of the festival. This business wanted to promote their product on-site at the event, and I tailored a geofilter campaign that would be relevant to both the brand and the event.

Festival B: a single-day event featuring three total musical acts, some of whom are fairly relevant on the national stage. Local sponsorships, few if any VIP attendees, and no-sell out crowd in a rural region of the Mid-Atlantic.

For Festival B, my services were contracted by the Festival itself rather than a 3rd party advertiser. The geofilter campaign would exclusively promote the festival, and would also last the duration of the event.

Which campaign do you think performed better?

Festival A:

Swipes: 15,543

Uses: 398

Views: 16,152

Festival B:

Swipes: 608

Uses: 445

Views: 24,923

The clearest takeaway is in what I like to call the “Engagement Rate” (Uses/Swipes). This indicates what percentage of people on-site that discovered the geofilter actually decided to use it. The difference in Engagement Rate between these two Festival campaigns is telling to say the least.

Festival A: 2.56% Engagement Rate

Festival B: 73.1% Engagement Rate

Festival B outperformed Festival A by 2,850% in Engagement!! How could such a vast difference in Engagement occur?

The geofilter campaign at Festival A was 1 of at least 6 sponsored geofilters active at the festival. The competition for screen real estate between these different filters almost certainly impacted the engagement as well as total impressions generated from the campaign.

In addition, as a 3rd party ad campaign, this geofilter could not be expected to compete with the Official Festival Geofilter, which attendees are most likely to use when sharing their experience with their friends.

On the other-hand, the Festival B campaign benefitted from less hype and exposure, a rural location, and a smaller scale event. It did not compete with any other geofilters on-site, and it offered greater appeal to attendees as the Official Festival Geofilter, rather than a 3rd party advertisement filter.

This is not to say that Festival A was not a successful campaign. 30,000+ impressions is nothing to sneeze at, especially in light of the amount of competition.

However, the success of Festival B illustrates the value of exclusivity in geofilter marketing.

While high-profile and high-traffic events are still great targets for geofilter campaigns, recognize that with the intuitively-beneficial publicity and hype comes increased competition.

By capitalizing on niche events, you are less likely to run into competition in the form of other sponsored geofilters, and on-site Snapchat users are more likely to engage with your campaign.