How BeThrifty Positioned Their Business for European Expansion with an UpViral Giveaway Campaign

How BeThrifty Positioned Their Business for European Expansion with an UpViral Giveaway Campaign

BeThrifty is a vintage clothing e-commerce company based in Austria. They also take part in local clothing events in Germany, Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia. The company’s mission is to combine fashion with sustainability. BeThrifty’s website describes their business as “selling unique clothing, jewelry and one-of-a-kind pieces in different sizes and styles to shoppers wanting to escape the boring uniformity of big fashion chains.”

The company has two lines of business:

- An ecommerce website featuring designer and popular brands

- Pop-up in-person events where shoppers pay by weight of their purchases instead of per piece.

Since BeThrifty is in the process of expanding their clothing events to new European markets, they want to increase brand-awareness, grow their email list and attract more social followers to spread the word about their two business lines.

Spreading the Word: BeThrifty's Plan to Connect with More Fashion Lovers

After having some prior success with giveaway campaigns, BeThrifty’s marketing expert, Georg, created a giveaway event with a prize of two tickets to the Frequency Festival. The Frequency Festival is a popular annual event in Austria, featuring German, Austrian bands and top international acts.

BeThrifty discovered UpViral had everything they needed in a viral marketing software to make the giveaway a tremendous success. Their 60-day campaign results were nothing short of spectacular.

The final campaign results included:

  • Total leads collected: 9,056
  • Direct leads 6608 (31% conversion rate)
  • Referred leads 2448 (36% conversion rate)
  • WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger shares (4.4k)
  • Instagram visitors: 2k
  • TikTok visitors: 1.4k
  • Instagram shares on stories: 1.2k

Now let’s analyze what made this campaign so effective, starting with the target audience.

Music and Fashion: A Perfect Match for BeThrifty's Audience

Based on experience with previous giveaways, BeThrifty knew their customers had a strong interest in both music and fashion. Vintage clothing stores like BeThrifty often attract music fans interested in putting together a one-of-a-kind look to attend festivals.

Normally UpViral founder Wilco de Kreij cautions against giveaway prizes that aren’t based on a business’ core offers. The reason is that these types of giveaways often attract people who sign up for the contest, but have no genuine interest in your offers.

But in this case, Georg knew their giveaway prize was perfect for their target demographic. He was confident that tickets to the Frequency Festival would generate a lot of social buzz for the BeThrifty brand and help grow the company’s email list rapidly.

Now let’s check out the campaign specifics.

Grabbing Attention: Designing an Irresistible Landing Page

The landing page was simple yet followed best UX practices.

The headline “Get a Chance to Win Two Tickets Worth €400 for the Frequency Festival in St. Pölten” spelled out exactly what the giveaway prize was. A short descriptive paragraph below the headline told how to enter the contest, and also the festival dates.

Short bullets below the paragraph gave further details on the prize, and also the date the winner would be announced.

The form field was well above the fold, especially important for those who enter the contest on a mobile device. If mobile users have to scroll to find your entry form, they soon become frustrated. Many will simply give up and bounce off your landing page.

Last, an additional graphic below the form added a sense of urgency by reminding the audience of the prize and draw date.

Georg says:

It’s always important these days to have something really catchy, not just graphic wise, but also with the text. It has to be broken down to the most crucial information for the visitor. For example, like the title ‘Get a chance to win two tickets worth €400’.
People instantly know what everything is about. And the graphics just add to it. Like what is the Frequency Festival contest? When does it end? And what is the value of the prize? So that's just crucial information. People don't get confused about what they have to do to enter.

After entering their information into the landing page form fields, giveaway entrants were taken to a share page that leaned into some of UpViral’s best features.

BeThrifty's Secret Sauce for Share Page Engagement  

The share page featured UpViral custom actions to encourage sharing on the social platforms where BeThrifty’s audience hangs out the most. Custom actions allow you to award extra points to contestants who complete actions you specify, like following you on specific social media platforms.

Everyone who had someone else sign up for the giveaway with their link received 50 points.

BeThrifty then used custom actions to award additional points for following them on WhatsApp, Instagram or TikTok, and also for sharing the giveaway via Messenger or in an Instagram story.

Social engagement was exceptional with Messenger and WhatsApp leading to 4.4k shares, and 2k visitors from Instagram and 1.5k visitors from TikTok. There were also 1.2k contest shares on Instagram stories.

What makes this even more remarkable is the long duration of the contest. Most giveaways last between 14-30 days, so to keep up this kind of engagement for 60-days is exceptional!

You might notice that Facebook is missing as a share channel, but that’s not by accident.

Georg noted:

However, custom actions weren’t the only UpViral feature used on BeThrifty’s share page to drive engagement.  

Game On! BeThrifty's Leaderboard Fuel a Friendly Competition

Georg also gamified the contest by adding a leaderboard. Leaderboards help to increase engagement and help build brand-awareness and customer loyalty.

People love friendly competitions and leaderboards help drive people to share more than they might otherwise. When users see their friends on the leaderboard, it gives them more incentive to join a contest and compete against them.

Another benefit to a leaderboard is they provide all-important social proof for your contest. Seeing the leaderboard helps to reassure people who aren’t familiar with your brand that your contest is legitimate and safe to enter.

BeThrifty's Share Image Speaks to Young Fashionistas

The share image features an attractive young woman dressed in trendy clothing staring out from the page.

Humans instinctively focus on faces, so using this image was a sure way to grab attention in a busy news feed. This image mirrored the exact demographic BeThrifty wanted to reach for the giveaway, a youthful fashion-forward audience who demanded sustainability.

When prospects see someone who looks like them in a share image, it helps to build an instant connection with the brand. That translates into a desire to check out the contest and the sponsor’s website.

The headline on the share image “Get a chance to win two tickets worth €400 for the Frequency Festival in St. Pölten” was the same one used on the landing page. Reusing the same text and images on different touchpoints in the campaign was one reason this campaign was so successful, and a key to BeThrifty’s low-cost Facebook ad campaign.

BeThrifty's Facebook Ad Success Story

Besides organic contest shares, BeThrifty drove traffic to the giveaway with Facebook ads. The giveaway ad was straight-forward, yet eye-catching.


Emojis and a different font from the rest of the Facebook newsfeed makes the ad stand out from the rest of the Facebook newsfeed. The text is concise and simply states the prize, how to enter and the date winners will be notified. The ad image featured nearly identical information.

To create congruence between the ad and the landing page, the same image was used for both.

Using the same image on both the ad and the landing page is smart marketing. It avoids any confusion people might feel when they click through from an ad to a landing page that looks completely different. If people feel confused, they also get worried your offer isn’t legitimate. When this happens, they won’t sign up for your giveaways.

The simple ad converted well, with 16,673 link clicks on an ad spend of €2345, or an average of only €0.14 per-click.

The same image was also featured on Instagram Reels and Stories to keep up the continuity between the image and the landing page.

Still, no matter how successful a Facebook ad campaign may be, seasoned marketers know that collecting leads is only the start of the marketing process. The real challenge is to get the new leads to open your emails after the giveaway ends so you can continue to market to them.

BeThrifty’s email marketing strategy pulled this off incredibly well.

Keeping Connections Alive: BeThrifty's Sky-High Open Rates and Newsletter Strategy

BeThrifty sends out three newsletters a week; two for their e-commerce store and one for in-person events. For BeThrifty, this is a perfect mailing frequency to keep their audience engaged without overdoing it.

It’s a real balancing act to email your audience enough so they don’t forget you, get not so often that your subscribers decide to hit the unsubscribe button,

BeThrifty got it right with 67% post-campaign open rates that rose to 70% among female subscribers.

After the campaign ended, BeThrifty saw an increase of 5% to 7% in sales.

Georg attributed this to the increased number of subscribers. Because of the two separate business lines, it was difficult to attribute exact revenue numbers to the campaign.

After noticing that several emails collected in the campaign bounced, Georg suggested that UpViral users always turn on the double opt-in feature.  

Inbox Delivery Matters - Don’t Make This Mistake

UpViral allows users to enable or disable the double opt-in feature.

Disabling the feature makes for a more seamless user experience, as there is no need to take any further action after submitting their email and personal information.

But that seamless experience often comes at a price.

A small percentage of entrants will submit fake email addresses to avoid being marketed to during and after the campaign. That means these emails will bounce (not land in the inbox.)

High bounce rates threaten your sender reputation and this means your emails can land in junk folders, or worse, be blocked altogether.

So take care to enable double opt-in. Double opt-in means that entrants must verify their email addresses before they are added to your list.

Keys to BeThrifty’s Giveaway Success: Consistency and Understanding the Audience

There are three major takeaways to learn from BeThrifty’s UpViral giveaway campaign:

1. Prospects must see and/or hear about your offer multiple times before they are ready to buy.

BeThrifty was smart to reuse the same images and copy over-and-over in their campaign–from the ads, landing page, share page and social share text. Everything must be familiar to your prospect before they trust in your brand enough to share their email address.

2. BeThrifty’s campaign success owes much to having their customer avatar nailed down.

The company knew that their Generation Z and late-Millennial audiences want to purchase from socially responsible companies that offer sustainable choices that align with their values. They reject fast fashion and appreciate the quality of vintage clothing. Gen Z in particular wants to wear one-of-a-kind items, which makes them big thrifting fans.

Read more: How to Conduct Audience Research That Helps Focus Your Giveaway

3. Make Connections between Your Audience and the Prize Offered

Georg was smart to notice that many of BeThrifty’s buyers were also into music festivals. Festivals are places to be seen and stand out, perfect for epic Instagram selfies. The high number of social shares and exceptional email open rates prove that tickets to the Frequency Festival were a perfect fit for BeThrifty’s audience.

Now that Georg and BeThrifty pulled off this remarkably successful campaign, the question is would they use UpViral again?

BeThrifty’s UpViral Experience

So would Georg and BeThrifty use UpViral in future campaigns? Definitely!

Georg says:

When you’re ready for increased revenues, thousands of new subscribers and social shares for your offer, plus email open rates that are through the roof like Georg and BeThrifty, you’re ready for UpViral!

Take UpViral for a 14-day trial run for only $1 now.

Table of Contents

Start Using The World's Most Complete Viral Referral System

Generate traffic, grow your list and convert subscribers into customers.

Viral Sweepstakes

Whip up a frenzy of social shares and new referrals with UpViral’s fully - featured sweepstakes.

Viral Rewards

Host giveaways to create a huge buzz and generate leads on demand, with no need for paid traffic.

Viral Waitlists

Get the ultimate edge with a viral waitlist that builds your customer base before you launch.

Getting Started Is Easy.

3 simple steps and your business is ready to go viral.

01

Design

Your Business. Your Way.

UpViral gives you the flexibility to create the right contest for your business goals.

And the campaign wizard will walk you through process with ease.

Your Funnel. Optimised.

Choose from templates that've generated millions of leads and millions of dollars in sales.

Then make simple customisations to match your offer.

02

Template

03

Publish

Your Leads. Anywhere.

We can host your viral campaign or you can embed it on your own site.

When you're ready to start collecting leads, press publish.

GABE SCHILLINGER Testimonial Image

42,000
Leads!

"Because of UpViral, we were able to pull it off and did over $200,000 in sales! Which helped me realize that the ceiling on what I thought was possible in our industry is actually so much higher."

GABE SCHILLINGER

Abdel Mussa Image

"Upviral Has Easily Paid For Itself!"

"Before buying UpViral, I didn’t know what to expect, too many marketers promise big and under-deliver. I purchased UpViral and tried it out. UpViral has easily paid for itself. If I compare its results to what I would have had to pay on Facebook to get those same leads! Definitely a good investment."

ABDEL MUSSA

United Kingdom
Michael Cooch Image

29,478
Responsive Leads

"UpViral has proven to be the simple, effective and affordable viral contest app we were looking for. It helped us build a responsive 30,000+ list in a new market in less than six months."

MICHAEL COOCH

Judy Jong Image

"I'm A Newbie At This!"

"I had the privilege to be on of the beta testers of UpViral... So far I've already added 450 leads to my account... This may not seem like a lot, but I am a newbie with this by no means a Facebook guru... Getting 450 from my small niche websites is a LOT harder, so I will definitely continue building my list using UpViral!... You have a fan Wilco and I am sure other people will love UpViral too... Keep up the good work!"

JUDY JONG

The Netherlands
Steven VD Peijl Image

"740 Organic Leads in 2 Weeks!"

"UpViral has a huge impact on 2 of my projects! On the first project I used it to build up an early bird list which got us 740+ leads in just 2 weeks (all organic) with a 289.2% compound conversion rate!... When applying the same strategy to our second project it generated 1000+ leads!... I highly recommend using UpViral in your business. Wilco's products are always top-notch!"

STEVEN VD PEIJL

Arthur Jansen Image

"The Results Are Amazing!"

"UpViral is a wonderful tool that enables you to reach skies of online marketing. The results are amazing!"

ARTHUR JANSEN

The Netherlands
Paul Kutilin Image

"9000 Leads in 2 Weeks!"

"We used UpViral to promote our congress (local event) and the results were... shocking. We got more than 9000 leads through this tool in two weeks! We will definitely use UpViral for our other projects in the future. Thanks a lot for this tool!"

PAUL KUTILIN

Austria
Faruk Barber Image

"Viral Referral Marketing At Its Best!"

Thanks yo Wilco, even guys like me can start building huge lists!

FARUK BARBER

The Netherlands
Nikolai Leuveld Image

"UpViral Rocks!"

"UpViral Rocks! We spent a little less than €200 on ad spend to promote our UpViral giveaway, resulting in 4,339 subscribers and €16.320 in revenue within 6 weeks (and from there it kept on going). Been using it ever since!"

NIKOLAI LEUVELD

Aldo Novak Image

"I HAVE To Tell You How Impressed I Am!"

"After one of your videos I decided to give it a try. The results? Well, 10 minutes after publishing the link at Facebook, I received 20 new leads. Now, I have got 718 leads with ONE campaign! Wow!! THANK YOU!"

ALDO NOVAK

Brazil
Travis Luedke Image

"Well Over 15,000 Leads!"

"I have found UpViral is more effective than any other giveaway software/platform I've tried... It's my "go-to" lead collecting tool for all my giveaways. It's so versatile, with so many options, I'm still playing with it to learn new ways to use it. To date, I've collected well over 15,000 leads with UpViral."

TRAVIS LUEDKE

Brazil

More Case Studies

Silvia Llop

Silvia Llop's UpViral Campaign Generates 2934 Referred Leads in Just 30 Days

MAX RHYMES

Changing Children’s Lives One Story at a Time: How Max Rhymes Went from Zero to +7,800 Leads

Bianca

Bianca’s Success with UpViral: 35,773 Leads and 1:1 Referral Ratio