The State of California was searching for new avenues to increase revenues. One way was to increase the number of games available to play. They realized, however, another key ingredient to success was to make the many lottery offerings easier to understand and to play. A secondary objective was to support retailers who were offering Lottery products and make it easier for customers to find the nearest retailer. California Lottery's previous Web site did not possess the functionality to accomplish these tasks.
Mercati developed a more comprehensive California Lottery Web site that would be information and data rich, while being easy to navigate and use. Because of state law, the only feature not available on the Web site was the ability to actually play the games online. The Web site provided easily read information on the games, winning numbers, a search function to find the nearest retailer, personalization options that allowed the user to track their success, tips on playing, and data on the amounts of current mega jackpots. This was connected to a Short Code Messaging (SMS) campaign that instantly sent results to customers. Customers were also given the option to sign up for e-alerts about winning numbers, new games, and jackpot sizes to be delivered to their mobile devices. The California Lottery's Facebook page and Twitter accounts were also leveraged to spread the news about the new features. This provided an excellent means of measuring the effectiveness of the Lottery initiatives. Facebook "Likes", Web traffic statistics and Twitter followers immediately experienced a lift. Facebook "Likes" by 21%, Web traffic by 16%, and Twitter followers by 14%.
The results of the campaign were quickly quantified. The California Lottery immediately experienced an increase of 12% in weekly lottery purchases. This resulted in an ROI of 43:1. Because of the retail support that the new Web site offered, the number of retailers selling lottery products rose by 11%.
