As TV watchers, moviegoers and readers increasingly consume entertainment with tablets and smartphones at their sides, the potential for marketers to connect with them via another screen becomes more and more enticing.
Enter GetGlue, which wants to become the social hub for entertainment. Members can check in to let friends know what's currently keeping them entertained, like the latest episode of "Parks and Recreation" or the trailer for a movie like "The Muppets." In return, members are sometimes rewarded with a perk from the show, most typically a virtual sticker. Once a month, users can request real-word copies of those stickers.
"GetGlue users are diverse, but the thing that unites them is a passion for entertainment content," says Alex Iskold, founder and CEO, noting that new members often discover the site by seeing friends' stickers on Facebook or Twitter. "Our users have an emotional connection with their favorite movies, music and television shows that they want to express."
The great majority of GetGlue’s 2 million users fall within the 18-to-34 age demographic. Broken down by gender, the user base is 55% female and 45% male, and users checked in to the site more than 75 million times in 2011. The site has a database of 225 million+ check-ins, ratings and reviews. In October 2011, for example, there were more than 16.2 million check-ins, up from the all-time high of 13.4 million check-ins in September.
At this point, users are essentially on an honor system when they check in—there’s no real way to know if they're actually watching a show in real time or if they really went to see a movie on opening weekend. But, Iskold says, the possibility that users are checking just to get a cool sticker, even though they might not have really experienced the show/movie/book/etc., isn't a major concern.
"We’ve actually found that check-ins on GetGlue are closely correlated to third-party ratings system like Nielsen’s," he says, noting that many people are using the site as a recommendations engine—an appealing scenario for entertainment marketers.
"We use the data that users supply by checking in to suggest new content that they might enjoy, so there is an incentive for users to check in only to the entertainment content they actually consume," Iskold notes.
One particularly successful campaign was for the Fox sci-fi series "Fringe." GetGlue partnered with Fox to reward fans with actual props used on the show, with a resulting 400% uptick in check-ins.
GetGlue has partnerships with 40 television networks, including HBO, Showtime and ABC, promoting over 350 shows. Ten movie studios—including Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and Universal Studios—have promoted 90+ movies on the site, while five music labels feature over 80 artists. The site's first international partner (E4 in the U.K.) began in the fall, as did the first retail partnership, Gap.
For the Gap promotion, Entertainment Weekly’s website EW.com curated a list of must-see fall TV shows. EW readers were then encouraged to check in to these shows as they aired to earn stickers. Once a user earned one of four stickers (Walk-On, Sidekick, Star and Showrunner), he or she unlocked instructions to receive a bonus reward of 40% off on a regularly priced item at participating Gap stores.
The ultimate goal, says Iskold, is to create a deeper engagement beyond check-ins and stickers. The site's "Interesting Conversations" feature uses proprietary filtering technology to reduce social noise and surface only the most relevant comments on GetGlue and Twitter, in real-time. "In this context, the check-in becomes a doorway to spur additional conversation and engagement on GetGlue and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter," he says. "Since the launch of new real-time conversations, replies and votes are up 50%."
Metrics that marketers using GetGlue receive include the number of check-ins, the number of stickers unlocked, and the social reach of the campaign through not only GetGlue itself, but Facebook and Twitter—where users can automatically share with friends what they've checked in to or what stickers they have received.
Through Facebook and Twitter, the daily reach of GetGlue is more than 130 million people.
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