Peanut Butter Brand ManiLife Using Alexa Voice Commerce to Run Contest for a Year’s Supply
British peanut butter company ManiLife has begun a contest for a year’s supply of its product using Amazon Alexa’s sales conversion program. Those who buy peanut butter using the voice assistant will be entered to win the prize while expanding the brand’s voice commerce footprint and upping the sales conducted using Alexa.
PB&Alexa
Alexa device owners can ask the voice assistant to open the ManiLife skill and learn about the different products available. The voice app is connected to the Alexa shopping cart, where any purchases will be set aside. Doing so also enters the user in the year’s worth of peanut butter competition. Once the user has finished making selections, the app switches to Amazon, which will confirm what the user wants to buy and complete the transaction. The ManiLife skill then picks up the conversation for any further questions or additional purchases. The skill is only available in the United Kingdom where the brand of peanut butter is sold.
“At ManiLife we make the tastiest peanut butter on the planet. Nothing else,” ManiLife explains in the Alexa skill description. “Just ask Alexa to open ManiLife, follow the steps and you will be in with a chance of winning.”
The voice app and the Alexa skill are managed by ManiLife’s partner voice marketing company VozLab. The two set up a similar contest through Alexa last year, but that didn’t include the voice commerce portion. The campaign earned a Drum prize for voice marketing this year, paving the way to redo the contest with all of the extra commerce tools now available.
Alexa Commerce
The sales conversion through Alexa is still in beta, debuting in July, and VozLab is one of the initial companies able to access it. It’s the same tech used by Bayer Consumer Health’s Berocca campaign that debuted in February. The company introduced an ad format for Alexa aimed at upping sales of the Berocca Boost vitamin tablets using audio ads dynamically inserted when listening to the radio through Alexa. The ad offers listeners the option to activate the company’s Alexa skill and purchase the vitamins via existing Amazon shopping account details.
Alexa and its partners are attempting to stay on top of what is expected to be a massive rise in voice commerce in the near future. A recent Juniper report estimated that voice assistants will handle $19.4 billion in transactions by 2023. That 320% growth from the expected $4.6 billion this year is tied both to greater accessibility to voice assistants and people getting more comfortable with making purchases. Peanut butter and vitamins are ideal examples of potential purchases too. Multiple surveys have found groceries and household supplies to be the most popular voice commerce purchases. How people feel about voice commerce appears unaffected by their purchases, with satisfaction hovering around 60% of people regardless of product type, but clever contests and marketing by peanut butter companies and their partners offer a good introduction to the concept.
“It will soon be essential to have a marketing channel through voice. Brands who do it this year will position themselves at the forefront of an innovative experience for their smart speaker users, and this will make many people happy,” VozLab wrote in a blog post about the general power of voice commerce earlier this year. “Marketers and brands need to continue thinking about creative voice experiences that facilitate the communication with their audience. It is important businesses focus their efforts to boost marketing activities, and meet the surge in demand of voice users. This is what consumers want”
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