Successful digital marketing campaign examples
Digital marketing campaigns are a crucial part of the overall marketing strategy for most companies. As a business executive or marketing manager, you need to know what a great digital marketing campaign looks like to help your brand succeed.
This guide will show you some real-world examples of successful digital marketing campaigns to give you inspiration about how to optimize your existing initiatives or create better campaigns going forward. You’ll learn about the elements that made some of the world’s best digital marketing campaigns so effective — and how to use them in your own business.
This article will explain:
- Airbnb — “Made possible by Hosts”
- UNIQLO — “Uncover”
- American Express — “OPEN Forum”
- Slack — word-of-mouth marketing
- Dived — “Project #ShowUs”
- Lyft — referral programme
- Red Bull — “Red Bull Stratos”
- Sephora — merging online and in-store experiences
- Heineken — “Cheers to All”
- JetBlue — using Twitter to provide instant customer service
What is a digital marketing campaign?
A digital marketing campaign is a strategic plan for promoting your business online. The goal of a digital marketing campaign is to grow your business in relevant online spaces to boost brand awareness, engagement, and conversions with your target audience.
Digital marketing encompasses any method that connects you to your audience via a screen. This includes methods like social media, email, video, blogs, chatbots, display ads, and more.
While there’s some value to traditional marketing like direct mail or billboards, more companies are investing in digital marketing for one simple reason — it works. Digital marketing campaigns are beneficial because they:
- Mesh with digital marketing tools to scale easily
- Are simple to measure and improve lead attribution
- Allow for smart, omnichannel relationships with consumers
- Increase brand awareness
- Are more affordable and accessible than traditional marketing methods
Digital marketing gives your business the freedom to reach consumers in a nearly unlimited number of ways. With so many options, it can be difficult to know which digital marketing strategies will work best for your audience. That’s why it’s so important to study other successful digital marketing campaigns.
Examples of digital marketing campaigns
Some of the world’s biggest brands invest resources into pushing the limits of what’s possible with digital marketing. These 10 examples of successful digital marketing campaigns demonstrate masterful timing, targeting, and messaging that business leaders can emulate in their own campaigns.
1. Airbnb — “Made Possible by Hosts”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA6UaOAaJaI
The 2021 Airbnb campaign “Made Possible By Hosts” capitalized on user-generated content (UGC) in its video “Forever Young.” The slideshow-style video showcases renters having a great time together at an Airbnb, featuring their trip photos on top of a sentimental soundtrack.
Not only did this video highlight the amazing properties and activities in a subtle nod to the Airbnb experience, but it focused on the feeling renters have when they book weekend trips with Airbnb. Without words, the video encouraged renters to book their own “remember that weekend?” trips.
Globally, the campaign brought in an impressive 17 million views across Airbnb’s platforms. This successful social media campaign targeted both hosts and renters, which allowed Airbnb to create an initiative that boosted property listings and bookings.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Invest in video-first content. The majority of consumers want to consume video content, and video makes it easy to tell a more compelling, emotional story.
- Create mute-friendly content that users can watch without subtitles. That’s especially important, considering 75% of people view mobile videos with the sound off.
- Feature real people with UGC. This content served as valuable social proof of the good times renters have at Airbnb properties.
- Lean into sentimental content. Instead of loading the video with facts or stats, Airbnb told an emotional story using a combination of sentimental images and music.
2. UNIQLO — “Uncover”
UNIQLO is a Japanese retail company that sells casual clothes. It wanted an innovative way to spread buzz about its HEATTECH clothing in the Australian market. UNIQLO created an omnichannel experience that encouraged both in-store and online shoppers to participate in a giveaway.
For the campaign, UNIQLO installed digital billboards at 100 locations throughout Australia, as well as similar videos on its YouTube and Facebook pages. The billboards and videos encouraged people to snap a photo of a unique code and upload it to the UNIQLO campaign page.
After educating the consumer about HEATTECH, UNIQLO would display either a free t-shirt deal or an ecommerce discount code. From there, the digital marketing campaign nurtured leads by encouraging them to sign up for the UNIQLO marketing newsletter. The results were also shareable on social media so that participants could encourage their friends to get in on the fun.
The UNIQLO campaign generated 1.3 million video views, 25,000 newsletter subscribers, and 35,000 new customers.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Build buzz with free products and discounts. Giveaways fire up consumers, and UNIQLO free t-shirts certainly got people talking.
- Create shareable digital experiences. Participants could share the UNIQLO campaign with friends, which helped the brand leverage word-of-mouth marketing in the digital space.
- Create a combined in-store and online experience. Digital marketing doesn’t have to happen just on social media. UNIQLO digital billboards brought in-person shoppers into its digital world, generating buzz both in the real world and online.
- Do ongoing digital nurturing. UNIQLO gave out free products, but it also educated leads about its products and encouraged them to stay in touch by subscribing to its newsletter.
3. American Express — “OPEN Forum”
American Express is a large credit card company that specializes in credit cards for businesses. In 2007, the company wanted to position itself as an authority on business to improve SEO and attract more business owners to its web properties. American Express created the OPEN Forum, which invited experts from different industries to create guest posts.
This digital marketing campaign was all about collaboration. It helped American Express quickly create high-quality, expert content on marketing, sales, entrepreneurship, finance, productivity, and more. Since the content was entirely outsourced, American Express didn’t need to invest in producing material internally. The guest collaborators also promoted the content to their networks, which helped the company boost its reach.
American Express is still continuing the OPEN Forum campaign today, albeit under the name Trends and Insights. It’s one of the most effective content marketing campaigns of all time — in fact, it’s the company’s top lead source for new card members.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Outsource content to experts via guest posts. Content marketing is effective, but doing it regularly requires a lot of resources. OPEN Forum shows it’s possible to source high-quality, trusted content by featuring guest writers in niche industries.
- Encourage word-of-mouth content sharing. American Express guest posters were happy to reshare their content once it went live, which helped promote both OPEN Forum and the guests’ content.
- Expand expertise across verticals. The guest posting initiative delivered value to a wider range of readers through outsourced content marketing.
- Build a community. OPEN Forum did more than just position American Express as an expert in all things business. It also created a trusted hub for business professionals to connect.
4. Slack — word-of-mouth marketing
Slack is a popular instant messaging and chat app for businesses. From day one, Slack prioritized customer feedback and user experience to build an effective collaboration platform. With competing solutions emerging from other tech companies, Slack decided to focus its promotion efforts on word-of-mouth marketing.
Slack created “The Wall of Love” digital marketing campaign to highlight glowing remarks about Slack. The Wall of Love is a Twitter account (@SlackLoveTweets) that retweets users sharing their positive experiences with Slack.
While The Wall of Love wasn’t Slack’s only digital marketing success, it shows just how powerful — and easy — it is to collect social proof. This campaign helped contribute to Slack growing to more than 8 million active daily users.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Simplify sharing. Instead of creating a unique platform to collect word-of-mouth content, Slack just used Twitter. This removed barriers and made it simple for users to participate.
- Use customer feedback. Positive tweets about Slack are a form of social proof. But the content also showed Slack’s marketing team which pain points users encountered and which features they loved the most.
- Fulfill promises. Marketing can’t make promises that your product or service isn’t able to deliver. Slack prioritized the customer experience to ensure its experience matches its marketing.
- Highlight visuals on social media. People pay more attention to social media content if it has multimedia attached to it. Not every post on The Wall of Love has an image, but many of them do. That helps brands turn more heads and get more recognition for their word-of-mouth campaigns.
5. Dove — “Project #ShowUs”
Beauty and skincare brand Dove wanted to create a digital marketing campaign that featured everyday women. Since 70% of women don’t feel represented in mainstream advertising, Dove created Project #ShowUs in 2019 to improve representation.
Project #ShowUs was an image collection campaign that generated diverse stock imagery. It sourced female creatives through Girlgaze to ensure the creatives producing the content were represented too.
Today, Project #ShowUs is the world’s largest stock photo library created by women. More than 10,000 photos are available on Getty Images, which reinvests 10% of the proceeds to continue funding Project #ShowUs. The campaign received an impressive 100% positive brand sentiment for Dove, so it was a win both for representation and the brand.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Go for a bigger mission. Sometimes you have to make digital marketing campaigns about something greater than your brand.
- Tackle issues with clever marketing. What big issues can you address in your industry? Whether it’s representation, gender stereotypes, or pay disparities, your digital marketing campaigns have the power to overcome big problems.
- Lean into representation. Airbrushed models and digitally manipulated products won’t cut it. Use diverse imagery to connect with a wider audience base and deepen loyalty.
- Tell stories through visuals. A picture says a thousand words. Lean into multimedia to make a more powerful statement.
6. Lyft — referral program
Lyft is a rideshare company based in the United States. Faced with fierce competition from Uber, Lyft needed to convert its riders into brand advocates. The goal was to mobilize its riders into an affordable, ready-made salesforce that would grow Lyft’s platform.
Lyft’s referral program allowed users to invite riders and drivers via the app, email, or SMS. With a max of $2,000 per week in free rides, the high limit incentivized users to promote Lyft.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Formalize brand advocacy. Many brands overlook the power of formalized referral programs. Lyft showed that it’s easy to add these features to an app and convert users into brand advocates.
- Offer meaningful incentives. Users won’t refer other people if the rewards aren’t worth their time. Make sure you offer valuable incentives that motivate users to act.
- Make referrals as simple as possible. Lyft offered a simple “Share” button that made it easy to share referral codes on social media or via SMS and email. The easier it is to refer, the better your campaigns will perform.
- Track performance. Each referral account should have its own unique code. This makes it possible for your brand to track which users are your biggest advocates. You can reward these top performers with better incentives or leverage them for other digital marketing campaigns.
7. Red Bull — “Red Bull Stratos”
Red Bull is an energy drink brand that’s known for marketing itself through adventure and sponsorship of extreme sports. But in 2012, a Red Bull digital marketing campaign called Stratos really turned heads.
Red Bull live-streamed a video where a man broke the Guinness World Record for freefall skydiving by jumping from space. This campaign was all about surpassing human limits, but it also surpassed the brand’s expectations. Stratos generated an impressive 6.8 million views on YouTube.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Livestream events. Livestreaming creates a sense of immediacy and community. No one knew how Stratos would play out, which only added to the excitement.
- Lean into entertaining content over brand promotion. While Stratos prominently featured the company’s logo, the video itself had nothing to do with Red Bull. Instead, it leaned into the feelings of danger, achievement, mastery, and excitement — which are all part of the Red Bull brand identity.
- Break records. The Red Bull digital marketing campaign succeeded in part because it broke several records. You don’t have to skydive from space, but it’s possible to market yourself while breaking (or creating) world records.
- Tell stories. Stratos not only showed a man skydiving from space — it also built suspense in the story leading up to the main event.
8. Sephora — merging online and in-store experiences
Many brick-and-mortar brands are floundering in the age of ecommerce, but cosmetics brand Sephora is flourishing. Sephora is successful because its digital marketing campaigns focus heavily on omnichannel experiences.
For example, the Sephora app mimics the in-store shopping experience. Its artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) tools allow shoppers to try on cosmetics from the comfort of their homes. The app connects to Sephora’s ecommerce platform, which makes it easy for shoppers to check out with a few taps. Sephora uses application engagement data and geolocation data to customize suggestions in the app to boost conversion rates.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Create rich experiences. Sephora creates interactive experiences that allow shoppers to engage directly with the products they want to buy.
- Invest in omnichannel. Sephora caters to shoppers on Instagram, TikTok, in store, and on many other channels. This gives shoppers more flexibility to engage with the brand on their own terms.
- Personalize with data. If you’re collecting shopper data, put it to good use by personalizing each shopper’s experience.
- Give consumers confidence. Sephora’s AR try-on feature helps shoppers get their hands on products in a digital environment. This removes uncertainty for ecommerce shoppers and ultimately boosts conversions.
9. Heineken — “Cheers to All”
Beer brand Heineken took a similar approach to the Dove campaign to combat gender stereotypes. “Cheers to All” broke stereotypes about gender and drinking. Its “Men drink cocktails too” slogan showed that women can enjoy Heineken beer and men can order cocktails.
This campaign was about beverages appealing to multiple genders. “Cheers to All” subtly promoted Heineken beer to women while breaking down stereotypes and representation issues in the beer industry. The video received nearly 800,000 views on YouTube.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Reverse expectations. Heineken played on the expectation that women order fruity drinks and men order beer. The mix-up made for a fun twist in this digital marketing campaign.
- Keep it lighthearted. It’s easy to go negative with campaigns that subvert gender stereotypes. However, Heineken showed it’s possible to reject these stereotypes in a lighthearted way.
- Create global content. Heineken relied on imagery to tell a story instead of narration. This made it easier for the international brand to share the campaign content across geographic and language borders.
- Upload content natively to social media. Heineken didn’t reshare YouTube links to its other social media feeds. Heineken got more views and engagement by uploading the content natively.
10. JetBlue — using Twitter to provide instant customer service
The airline JetBlue wanted to differentiate itself from low-cost competitors, which were infamous for offering poor customer service. JetBlue leaned into using Twitter as its customer service (and marketing) hub.
JetBlue provides customer service on Twitter, where it tries to quickly reply to every tweet. The goal is to handle customer issues immediately and forge one-on-one relationships with flyers. The ultimate goal of this approach is to build trust and create positive experiences for travelers who need immediate assistance.
Here are some takeaways from the campaign’s tactical approach:
- Create relationships with customers. By replying to nearly every customer comment, JetBlue is able to foster deeper relationships with travelers one-on-one, which makes them feel special.
- Lean into service as a differentiator. More and more companies are competing on customer experience instead of product features. Differentiate your brand by marketing your commitment to service and support.
- Focus on helping, not selling. JetBlue isn’t encouraging people to book more flights — it’s simply focusing on helping customers. Lean into the value you deliver to followers in your digital marketing campaigns.
- Speed matters. Travelers need information quickly, which is why JetBlue answers questions ASAP. Look for ways to speed up customer conversations, whether it’s with AI or scalable marketing software.
Set up your digital marketing campaigns for success
Digital marketing campaigns help brands stand out, and there are many ways to do them. Learn to think outside the box by following in the footsteps of these 10 successful digital marketing campaign examples.
Whether you’re just getting started or are refining your digital marketing campaign strategy, the next step is to evaluate your campaign management solution and process to ensure it gives you the workflow control, data management, and customization you need to develop compelling digital marketing campaigns that increase conversions.
Adobe Campaign makes it simple to visualize customer journeys across all channels to synchronize campaigns into one manageable workflow.
Watch the overview video to see how to build engaging, personalized experiences at scale and improve your brand’s impact with Adobe Campaign.
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