Interactive – The Power of Communication

Hershey Foods Success Story

Case Study
Hershey Foods
“Interactive delivered ahead of time, delivering more value than we expected, especially on the creative/consulting side. The results surpassed our expectations.”
– Rick Rocchi
Hershey Foods Corporation
 
“Interactive’s team was great to work with. We appreciate the number of resources you dedicated to the project. We will definitely be doing more work with Interactive.”
– Mark Potera
Hershey Foods Corporation
 
Client Since: August 2001
 
Products used:
Interactive® Direct Marketing™
Interactive® Data Warehousing™
Send to Friend/ Forwarding
 
Number of Emails processed:
500,000 Email messages a month
 
Service Solutions:
Business Intelligence Support, Workflow Analysis, Direct Mail and Strategic Planning, Creative Design Support.

Company Overview: Hershey Foods, known throughout the world for their chocolate products, was founded by Milton Hershey in 1894. Now a market leader in the US candy business, with annual sales of $4,221.0 million in 2000, Hershey distributes to over 2 million retail outlets in North America and exports to over 90 countries.

Hershey’s makes well-known brands as Hershey’s Kisses, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Pay Day, Whoppers, and Jolly Rancher, York Peppermint Patties, Almond Joy and Mounds. Hershey Foods chocolate-related grocery products include baking chocolate, ice cream toppings, chocolate syrup, cocoa mix, and peanut butter.

Before Interactive: Hershey’s e-Commerce goal is to become the North American leader in selling and branding confectionery on the Internet. Hershey’s e-Commerce team, in conjunction with sales and marketing identified opportunities to sustain its leadership position in the confectionery market through the proactive management of emerging e-Commerce, consumer-relationship and business-partnership opportunities afforded via the Internet. However, first, they needed to determine what would drive sales and activity on the web site. What would their customers want from a Hershey’s web offering?

The Interactive Deployment: Hershey’s, working with Interactive launched a web site for a Halloween Sweepstakes Giveaway at Trickortreats.com. Its purpose was to determine via a web survey if Hershey’s customers were interested in establishing a dialog or were only interested in the sweepstakes. Approximately four weeks from initial concept, trickortreats.com launched in Mid-September.

After Interactive: For six weeks, Interactive hosted the contest with a corresponding survey designed by the Interactive creative team for Trickortreats.com. During the contest, more than 15,000 people signed up, with 81.8% of the contestants completing the survey. Over 95% of the contestants were over the age of 13. Nearly two thirds of the contestants chose to opt-in for more information about Hershey’s and over 50% sent an Email about the contest to a friend.

At the end of the contest on October 31, Interactive utilized a random selection engine to determine the 10 contest winners. To announce the winners, Interactive executed a direct marketing campaign. The campaign results were a low bounce back rate of (3%), an unsubscribe rate of (0.6%) and a 12% click through rate to the Hersheys.com web site.

Types of Services Provided:

  • Survey form generation
  • Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPA) Compliance
  • Sweepstakes Random Winner Selection Engine