The Golden Selfie Competition
Recruitment and Employment Confederation
Jobs transform lives, which is why we are building the best recruitment industry in the world. As the professional body for recruitment, the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) is determined to make businesses more successful by helping them secure the people they need. The REC is the largest trade association representing the UK’s recruitment and staffing industry.We are absolutely passionate and totally committed to this pursuit for recruiters, employers, and the people they hire. Only the REC gives recruitment businesses the mark of quality which tells their clients they strive to deliver the right people every time, that they care about what they do and have an unmatched level of professionalism.
National
www.rec.uk.com
Success achieved
How REC sold out on their awards event, engaged more with members and boosted their reputation with a Twitter competition- Project dates
- September – November 2018
Project team
Selfie competition:
- Stuart Kuhan, Marketing Manager
The success of the whole event was a result of the shared efforts of many staff members including:
- Karen Williams, Head of events
- Adam Bolton, Sales manager
- Richard Charnock, Director of product delivery
- Neil McGill, Head of Business Partners
Tools & Systems
- Twitter - the campaign ran pretty much entirely on twitter, besides the initial email campaigns and physical shortlisting packs we sent to set the awareness campaign in motion.
- Google Analytics - to measure and track the audience that were coming to our website
- Survey Monkey - for various surveys
Introduction
Although there have been iterations of this campaign in previous years this year’s was a more concerted effort to celebrate our IRP awards ceremony.
The IRP Awards celebrates best practice and professional excellence in recruitment of our most inspirational members. Its aim is to champion the success of individual recruiters, from apprentices to CEOs, as well as recruitment companies, from companies with under 50 employees to companies larger than 250 employees.
The industry kudos an IRP award affords those who are shortlisted, highly commended and especially to those who win has proven to be substantial. For example: many individual recruiters have been given the confidence to start their own recruitment agencies because of winning an IRP award.
Discovery
We used:
- Google Analytics - to measure and track the audience that were coming to our website, this confirmed our known insights that IRP members are mostly 18-35 year-olds living in the UK, especially in London. We know this group is highly engaged on social media and can spend up to 3 hours on it a day. That’s why we hosted our campaign on our dedicated Twitter handle @IRPawards. Furthermore, the extra information Google analytics gleaned about members outside of this known group helped us cater better to the full spectrum of our membership.
- Social media - we regularly engage with our members on Twitter (@IRPawards and @recirp), Facebook and LinkedIn from which we get a better understanding of their habits. For example, we know our followers are most active between 10am - 12 noon and then again between 4pm - 7pm, across all platforms.
- Survey Monkey - we’ve orchestrated over 20 surveys over the last two years, sometimes with prizes and sometimes just with the incentive of providing a better user journey. All have had a reputable response rate and from them we’ve gained useful insights such as: the preferred method of communication about is a fortnightly email; people value the post nominal letters added to their title that comes with membership and so much more.
Objectives
We wanted to achieve a greater awareness of the IRP awards, better engagement with those who had been shortlisted and, ultimately, more bookings for people to attend the IRP Awards 2018.
Timeline
- 1 June - IRP awards 2018 website made live and entries are opened up to the public.
- 1 July – One-month entry deadline is pushed harder through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and emails, including a live countdown clock counter on the website.
- 1 August – One-month countdown for entry deadline begins, social media promotions and email mentions become more frequent to add pressure.
- 17 September - Shortlist is published – this is when the social media competition begins!
Activities
As part of the rules of entering the ‘Golden Selfie’ competition, participants had to be shortlistees of the IRP awards; all of whom were individually notified by email and physical letter plus we announced this on all social media channels and published the full shortlist on our website.
All shortlisted individuals and companies are sent a physical shortlisted pack in the post which includes a pop out cardboard trophy, a competition guide and a congratulations letter.
The competition is kicked off with our CEO (an excellent sport with social media!) being featured in lots of photoshopped scenes for extreme examples of where the selfies could be taken.
Selfie twitted by one of the shortlisted entrants
We used twitter analytics to track overall popularity of the competition but, more specifically: we instructed all participants to include the hashtag ‘#IRPawards’ and tag us ‘@IRPawards’.
All participants had to post on Twitter. This all meant we could track, record and compare every entry fairly and publicly. We even made a collage of all the selfies posted as part of the competition.
We measured the awareness generated through social media statistics and google analysis and the number of bookings were recorded in our CMS.
Crucially, the shortlistees must book a table at the IRP awards, this was the vital return on investment that monetarily justified the campaign, and to an extent the awards themselves (minus the sponsor contributions and cost of entry).
Innovation
It’s rare to be invited to participate in a social media campaign with a physical letter to begin with, let alone using physical props as part of the campaign.
More than this we included a scrolling presentation of all the entrants to the Golden selfie competition on the night itself with the winner announced towards the middle for the evening. This was unique in the window of celebration it shone on all participants of the competition, further congratulating them and encouraging more engagement in future.
Achievements
We fully sold out the IRP awards 2018 (minus staff and sponsor-reserved tables). That was the main monetary aim of the campaign in aid of and we achieved it fully.
We also increased awareness of the awards and increased engagement with our members.
The campaign was an all-round success!
Targets & Statistics
For the three-month campaign, on Twitter we measured:
- 114,300 total tweet impressions
- 124 new followers
- 550 link clicks
- 117 retweets
- 654 likes
- 60 replies
On Google Analytics we measured:
- 15,077 total page views (10,620 unique) of the IRP awards website (www.irpawards.com)
- 16550.3 total minutes users spent looking through the IRP awards website.
- 1,067 total page views (763 unique) of the booking page; this is the landing page where most promotion was being pushed to during the campaign.
- 2240.7 total minutes users spent visiting / using the booking page
Financials
The part of the costs factored in for the selfie competition totalled to around £500, this is only considering the costs spent on the external design agency we used to create all the collateral used as part of the competition. Otherwise, the campaign took around 100 working hours to set up, run and market.
The revenue generated from bookings can be calculated - table type price of table number sold total revenue:
- Standard - £2250+VAT – 30 tables = £67,500
- Golden - £2950+VAT- 15 tables = £44,250
- Platinum - £4950+VAT - 3 tables = £14,850
- The total revenue earned through bookings was £144,600.
This is an approximate figure based on official pricing of tables, and final guest numbers. There will be discrepancies due to REC/IRP staff tables required for running the evening, tables reserved for sponsors as well as discounts offered on all levels of tables and seating.
Wider impact
We engaged with members much more during this social media campaign. It boosted our reach on social media and online overall and increased awareness about the awards both to our members and non-members alike.
Collage of selfies posted on social media
Increased awareness and prestige of the IRP awards not only boosted the reputation of the REC and IRP but also elevated the professionalism of the Recruitment Industry as a whole.
As a non-profit organization, we exist to improve our members’ professional lives and champion best practice. The more people who are aware of, engaged with and attend the IRP awards, the more this aim is realized
