QTV?s WMN website allowed users to win big trips and pampering packages by collecting millions of points online-no cash required
IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET, YOU need to go beyond television.

This was something GMA marketing president Meckoy Quioge knew.

?Since QTV is a station for women, we thought it would be good if it can have its own website, its own portal for women,? he said.

They put up WMN?Where Women Click! (www.wmn.ph), a website for Filipino women. The site covers topics that concern women?from style, wellness and leisure to home and relationships. It features articles, celebrity blogs, videos, a forum where women can interact with one another, a shopping guide and yes, the web pages of different QTV shows.

Quioge said, ?We promote WMN on television and we promote QTV on WMN. We cross-promote.?

Special auction

A website, no matter how good, is pointless without heavy traffic. Quioge?s team thought of a great way to bring people to the site. ?In order to drive traffic to the website, we thought of a promotion.?

They launched Love to Watch, Love to Bid, a special auction that allowed QTV viewers and WMN users to bid on premium prizes.

Tying up with eight different sponsors, Quioge?s team planned eight special packages that would appeal to the demographic of eight different QTV shows.

Kids on Q and Ajinomoto gave away a trip for four to Hong Kong Disneyland; The Beat and KFC gave away a Hong Kong food trip for two; Fit & Fab and Alaska Slim auctioned off a home gym system; Dare Duo and Cream Silk gave away an adventure trip in Cambodia or bungee jumping in Macau for two; Secrets of the Master and Pond?s Age Miracle gave away fine dining for two every month for every year package; The Sweet Life and Coke Light gave away spa treatment every month for 12 months; Q Tube and Choco Mucho gave away a multimedia package that included a laptop, iPhone and one-year broadband subscription; Fashionistas by Heart and Sunsilk gave away a Store Specialists Purple Card worth P100,000.

The prizes were so exciting that even men joined the promo; never mind that the website?s primary target market was women.

Here?s the best part: The auction winners didn?t need cash to pay for the items they won. All they needed were points. GMA Marketing and GMA New Media devised a way for QTV viewers and WMN users to win points by watching QTV and visiting the website.

42 million points

Marketing consultant Rica Dalmacion said: ?From July 31 until August, those who registered for the promo earned points by doing a lot of things on the website from simply logging on and clicking on ads to answering a quiz and watching a video. There were so many ways to earn points. You even see passwords on TV and if you input them, you get points for that, too.?

Users get 100 points for logging in, 50 points for posting a comment, 50 points for subscribing to the newsletter, 50 points for e-mailing a friend, 150 points for inputting magic keywords, 250 points for clicking sponsor ads, and 350 points for taking a quiz.

The people behind WMN expected users to collect around two to three million points but were surprised to see users with 20, 30 and even 42 million points. That?s because they allowed users to pool their points.

?That?s when we realized that the community was already so active,? Dalmacion said.

They knew Love to Bid, Love to Watch was a hit when they saw the surge of traffic to their website. Quioge shared, ?We knew we had a good promo, we knew our prizes were exciting but we had no idea it would take off this fast, this soon. Our target was to get two million page views by October but we got seven million views as early as August.?

Look at WMN?s statistics, it?s clear that their hits soared after the promo was launched.

Their bounce rates also dropped?that meant people were visiting the website and staying and surfing. ?The average person spends 17 minutes on the site,? Quioge said.

The auctions were exciting. ?People love auctions, they get carried away,? Quioge said.

Excitement

The last few minutes of every auction were especially exciting. ?People would help the highest bidders bid by donating points,? Dalmacion said.

Dingdong Caharian, General Manager and SVP for Business Development and Operations of GMA New Media Inc., shared the excitement of one of the auctions. ?Towards the end, one woman was outbidding herself. I guess inuubos na niya yung points niya.?

Tricce Cuanzon of the Marketing Services Group added, ?Low blood na daw siya.?

The stress was well worth it for that woman who ended up bagging one of the prizes.

And because the people behind QTV and WMN wanted more people to be happy, ?We also gave gadgets to the ten people who had the most number of points after the auction. We also have 300 winners of consolation prizes.?

Making sure their clients were satisfied was also a priority. Dalmacion said, ?We?re a marketing company. To us, satisfying the client is very very important. We created microsites for our clients, microsites that people can visit.?

WMN still has a lot of things in store for QTV viewers and website users. They?ve had the Kelly Clarkson Giveaway Promo, The Body Shop Contest and they are currently running the Big L?Oreal Giveaway which gives women the chance to win L?Oreal packages if they share hair and makeup tricks.