A Branded Jigsaw Puzzle Contest Helped One Financial Institution Collect 15K Entries Fast

Do you reach for your phone every morning to spend a couple of minutes solving Wordle or maybe grab a pencil to do a Sudoku every Saturday? Puzzles are both a challenge and a stress-reducer, and they give folks a sense of accomplishment when completed. They can also be an effective marketing tool.Interactive content is increasingly popular in online marketing due to its ability to improve business results. Sixty-six percent of marketers who used interactive marketing reported increased customer engagement, and 81% said it grabs more attention than static content. Puzzles increase people’s familiarity with a brand. Using a jigsaw puzzle to reveal a logo, mascot, or product can increase brand recognition and awareness.At ShortStack, creating a puzzle for your next marketing campaign is easy. Our Puzzle template lets you upload the image you want to make into a puzzle. You choose the number of pieces to break the image into and the length of time people have to solve it. Participants must complete the “jigsaw puzzle” to unlock the entry form within the allotted time.

SeaComm Federal Credit Union is a regional credit union operating in six counties in New York and three counties in Vermont. They often run contests on their social media accounts. However, they decided to shake things up around St. Patrick’s Day. Find out how they used a jigsaw puzzle to collect leads.

Campaign Objectives

SeaComm Federal Credit Union has nine branch locations and currently serves over 51,000 members. Ten visionary employees of the Chevrolet Aluminum Foundry of GM Corporation initially formed the credit union out of a toolbox (yes, a box for tools).

Each March, SeaComm Federal Credit Union runs a campaign featuring their St. Patrick’s Day mascot, Plunky O’Swoosh. Plunky returns every year “to cause some mischief, challenge our fans, and give away his $500 pot o’ gold.” “Our goal for the campaign was to increase fan engagement, promote brand awareness, and grow our Facebook community. Also, it allowed us to build stronger relationships with our members and potential members,” explained Chantel Johnston, Senior Marketing Multimedia Specialist at SeaComm Federal Credit Union.

The Solution: A jigsaw puzzle contest

Each year the SeaComm Federal Credit Union team uses Plunky in a different type of contest. This year, they decided to challenge their audience with daily digital jigsaw puzzles. The Pic-to-Plunky contest ran from March 7 to March 18, 2022. A new jigsaw puzzle was revealed every day at noon. Participants had 45 seconds to three minutes to solve the day’s puzzle, depending on the puzzle's complexity. Puzzles had between nine and 25 pieces. Folks who completed the puzzle could enter to win the $500 grand prize.

Participants were not required to be SeaComm Federal Credit Union members. Instead, anyone 18 or older who legally resides in SeaComm’s charter area was eligible to participate in the contest. “This strategy allowed us an opportunity to interact with both potential members, as well as existing members,” mentioned Johnston.The SeaComm team created 11 puzzle campaigns with different puzzle images. To make the process simple, they used ShortStack’s Puzzle template. The Puzzle template made setup easy. To create a puzzle, the SeaComm team just uploaded an image, chose the number of pieces they wanted to break it into, and indicated how much time visitors had to complete the puzzle. In addition to each day’s puzzle page, the SeaComm team created a contest landing page. The contest landing page served as the hub for the contest. Participants simply visited the landing page and clicked the link to access that day’s quiz. By using a single landing page, the SeaComm team could share a single URL for the contest instead of trying to share a different URL for each day’s puzzle.

The SeaComm team boosted a post on Facebook that linked to the campaign to promote the contest. The post targeted “people who live within our charter area, which includes six counties in New York and three counties in Vermont,” said Johnston. She explained, “As a credit union, one must live, work, worship, or attend school in one of these counties to be eligible to become a member and open an account.” They also sent an email to their members. The campaign also used word-of-mouth promotion with a refer-a-friend option. After submission, entrants could refer-a-friend to earn two more points toward winning the grand prize. The referrer earned two bonus points each time one of their referrals completed the puzzle and submitted an entry. The ShortStack refer-a-friend feature made it a breeze to add this functionally.  

The Results

There were 15,660 entries to the Pic-to-Plunky contest. Of those entries, 5,924 were form submissions. Johnston mentioned, “The result that surprised me the most was the number of refer-a-friend entries we received.” It was an impressive result! Entrants earned 9,736 bonus points through the refer-a-friend option—the ShortStack refer-a-friend feature generated over 4,860 form entries (82%) from referrals.“Our new leads collected, in terms of Facebook followers gained, will help us build stronger relationships and promote our products and services through our Facebook channel,” said Johnston. They also noticed their Facebook following ticket up a bit, with 82 new Facebook Page likes during the campaign period.

Puzzle contests make lead collection fun

SeaComm Federal Credit Union’s daily puzzle contest challenged participants and gave them something fun to share with friends. Interactive marketing campaigns, like puzzle contests, grab your prospects’ and customers’ attention, increasing their familiarity with your brand. In turn, it’s more likely that a customer will remember your brand when they make a purchase in the future.  Are you interested in running a puzzle contest of your own? Get started with our Puzzle template. Questions before you get started? Set up a call with our sales team.