In a world with dramatically less physical attendances, the smartest organisations want to find new ways to connect directly with their audiences - whether they’re existing fans, one-off participants, influencers or prospects.
Voting is among the most successful drivers of attention and data conversion, but only when you get the formula right. Simply asking for an opinion and sending the audience to a form won’t cut it - you have to create a meaningful and rewarding experience, and here will show you how.
When done right, voting can be a great way to drive attention and data that will continue to nurture your Customer Data Platform (CDP), Single-Sign-On (SSO), Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM). It can be an engaging way in which audiences would be willing to share valuable information that will allow you to build a better profile of who they are and what they want.
Steps for real-time voting success
In our experience, there are eight steps that you can follow to make your real-time voting event a great experience for your fans and audience.
Step 1: Create buzz with an outcome that matters (to the audience, not just to you)
In order to create the buzz and motivation you need to engage large numbers of people, there must be an important decision to be made, that has real-world consequences which matter to the audience. They must care! That doesn’t mean it has to be serious, it just has to be meaningful and you need to identify a topic that they already care about. The reason TV shows like Love Island do voting at the end of the series, is because the audience has built up affinity with the contestants. The reason people don’t flock to (most) opinion polls is because their input has little consequence. Make a drama out of it!
Step 2: Define exactly when the reveal with happen
Set a time, with a ticking clock, and use that urgency in your social, email and real-world Calls To Action (CTAs). “Get your vote in before midnight tonight!”. or “You’ve got 25 minutes left”. The reason so many people vote on the EA Sport Premier League Player of The Month is because fans of players and teams are so passionate about their performances and the Premier League create a moment that matters with a trophy and a big reveal.
Step 3: Give them something in return for registering
Giving users who sign-up extra votes, points, benefits, competition/sweepstakes entries can help to tip those more hesitant users into a “what the heck” mode and get them to register. You can also explain that registration makes the vote more secure, many people will respond to this.
Step 4: Use social sign-in to reduce friction
People are expecting quick ways to input their information, the less barriers to give them the easier will be to complete a subscription, adding Apple and Google Sign-in helps prevent the need for full registration and can increase conversion numbers. Of course, ensuring that the appropriate permissions are sought is important to comply with local data laws.
Step 5: Provide a sharing mechanic to increase reach
Among the most effective ways to drive organic reach from voting is to encourage sharing. Somewhere between 1-10% of all users will share their choice of vote - if you include a link that drives others to come and have their say, you will see your numbers grow.
Step 6: Make it interesting with rich content, video and stats
Voting should not be a task, it should be fun, rich and rewarding. If you want to extend the time someone spends with your brand then make voting into a multi-step process with additional information on the options - add video, other background information, stats, and enrich the whole process.
Step 7: If you value volume over quality of data, make data capture opt-in
Sometimes you may prefer to simply build your email list and skip registration. In this case you can make the provision of personal data optional and skippable. This way you don’t put anyone off, but you still capture opted-in email addresses.
Step 8 Localise with language
By launching your experience in multiple languages you could be multiplying your audience size potential dramatically. If the benefit exists, then it’s often worth the translation effort.
Driving first-party data and registration into your CDP, SSO or Warehouse
When you make it enticing and exciting for your fans to vote they will be willing to share information with you. A well-designed experience will include a good workflow so the data collected can be feed into your data warehouse. The goal here is to add value to your business as you engage with audiences at large.
The steps above will help you set up a real-time voting event that drives fan engagement, and from a business point of view you need to have a strategy in place for how will the data turn into actionable insights that will continue to help you build campaigns that connect with your audience. The Love Island App, for instance, has used real-time voting as a mechanism to attract a larger base of users, enriching the knowledge they have of their audience and transforming it into additional interactive experiences that drive merchandise sales.
Options for building a voting app
You may choose to build your own voting app providing the functionality you need. You will need to design highly scalable, resilient architecture with a range of security measures, content management, and localisation. You will of course need to continuously support and maintain the applications internally. Alternatively, you can adopt The Monterosa / Interaction Cloud™ which provides an array of engagement and audience interaction experiences right out of the box, integrated with your existing tech stack.
Get in touch if you’d like to speak with a sales consultant.
