How Dunkin Is Driving Daily Web Traffic With the Promise of Promos

A good modern promotion integrates both tactile and digital aspects. If you can get people to interact with something on their smartphones or laptops, and then hold onto a product for a long time, that’s a win on multiple levels.

Creating a digital promotion that ends with a physical prize can drive traffic and interaction to your clients’ sites and social media pages, and then you deliver long-lasting brand visibility through the prize. The end-user is the “winner,” since they received the product, but the real winner is your client.

The latest example of this being executed well is Dunkin’s online game to promote its new bubble drink. The “Popping Bubbles” online game will encourages players to “pop” a virtual bubble every day (nice repeat traffic) to try to win a prize.

The grand prize is $5,000 in cash, but it’s the “secondary” prizes that are the ones that will drive brand appeal, like pool floats and bubble kits, keeping the summer theme very much alive.

Even before the pandemic, integrating social media and digital components to a physical release was crucial. Everyone had a smartphone, so things like QR codes and augmented reality were no longer rare. Coming out of the pandemic, though, where things had to focus on finding ways to connect to people any way possible, that social media and online functionality becomes even more crucial.

And now that things are becoming slightly more normal, there's a huge market for summer fun products, like the ones from Ball Park, which included hot dog-themed pool floaties. That one, too, required online interaction through a faux-petition.

The way Dunkin’ framed it by creating a whole month of daily traffic for the chance to win a promotional product is pretty slick, too.