Did you know that Snapchat reaches 41 percent of all 18 to 34 year-olds in the United States. If your blood center isn't using Snapchat, you are missing out on a HUGE opportunity.
Not sure how to start, what you should do, or how you should use it? Take a look at the four items below to learn the impact they could have on engaging your donors.
Snap Stories
The easiest thing you can do to engage your donor base through Snapchat is by crafting daily stories that will inspire your followers to action.
What if you interviewed a blood recipient about the impact your donors have made on his/her life? What if you added a few short videos of your staff so that donors felt more of a personal connection to your blood center? What if you added photos of your donors in the midst of their heroic, life-saving donation and helped give them their 15 minutes (or rather 10 seconds) of fame?
These types of stories can help blood centers call their donors to action in an engaging and authentic way. The best part - it's free!
Verdict: Create an account for your blood center now and start engaging with your donors!
Snap Ads
Snap Ads are 10-second videos that are played for your targeted demographic. You can even give Snapchatters the choice to swipe up and view more, revealing additional video, an article, or mobile website to schedule a donation appointment. The swipe-up rate for Snap Ads is 5x higher than the average click-through rate on comparable platforms.
This is a newer feature and costs vary from campaign to campaign, but it is estimated that pricing for this starts around $1,000.
Verdict: This feature is a bit more expensive, but may give you access to a larger group of your target market in a fun and unique way.
Sponsored GeoFilters
GeoFilters are images that can be stamped on Snapchat pictures based on the location the photo was taken in.
There is a huge opportunity in this one for blood centers. How many people play on their phone while donating blood? It seems like all of them are on their phones, and I would bet a larger percentage of them are interacting with their friends on Snapchat.
So what would it look like for your blood center to use a GeoFilter? You could set up a special GeoFilter for each of your donation locations so donors can clearly show their friends what they are doing and where they are donating. It works even better if you set up the image to go with a special theme, maybe National Blood Donor Month or a celebration of saving lives. So many blood centers try to engage their donors with the selfie boards, but this brings the selfie board to to the donor in a place where they are eager to engage.
While this option does cost money, it is a minimal expense for high engagement and accessing new donors. For as little as $5, your blood center can get in the Snachat game.
Verdict: Try it! This is a low-cost way to engage your donors and spread the word about blood donation.
Sponsored Lenses
Have you ever done a FaceSwap? If you haven't, please download Snapchat right now and try it. I promise you'll get a laugh from it.
Gatorade sponsored a Snapchat lens during the Superbowl where Snapchatters could appear to be dumping a bucket of Gatorade over their head. This garnered the brand 165 million views and an 8% increase in purchase intent.
In terms of its application for blood centers, sponsored lenses are much tougher to produce and much more expensive to sponsor. The ideas are endless, but since our budgets are not, it doesn't look like blood centers will be sponsoring Snapchat lenses in the near future.
Verdict: This feature is extremely fun, but probably too large of an investment for most blood centers.