An 8-day enter-to-win promotion, co-branded with a local OB-GYN practice, gave a Minneapolis TV newsroom a fresh batch of first-party data and gave a healthcare advertiser its name in front of an audience built for it.

Snapshot

• Media company: KARE 11 News, Minneapolis-Saint Paul
• Market size: Large market (Minneapolis-Saint Paul is one of the larger TV markets in the Upper Midwest)
• Advertiser: OBGYN West, an obstetrics and gynecology practice
• Format: Enter-to-win sweepstakes, 8-day flight, timed to Mother's Day
• Product: Audience Experiences
• Channels: Social media, email newsletters, on-air mentions, and an entry form hosted on KARE 11's own website

The Challenge

OB-GYN West needed to reach mothers and expecting mothers, not a broad audience, and KARE 11 needed a promotion that grew its own first-party list instead of just putting a sponsor's logo on a giveaway.

The Strategy

A Mother's Day-themed enter-to-win sweepstakes, co-branded between KARE 11 and OBGYN West, ran for 8 days across the station's own channels.

The timing did the targeting. A Mother's Day tie-in self-selects for exactly the audience an OB-GYN practice wants to reach (mothers and expecting mothers) without KARE 11 having to build or buy a separate list.

The entry form lived on KARE 11's website, not a third-party page. Entrants gave first name, last name, email, and an explicit opt-in checkbox, directly into a form KARE 11 owns.

Promotion ran across every channel the station had. Social media, email newsletters, and on-air mentions all pointed to the same entry form, rather than treating this as a single-channel digital promotion.

How It Worked

1. KARE 11 and OBGYN West co-branded a Mother's Day sweepstakes, positioned as a joint promotion rather than a station giveaway with a sponsor's logo on it.
2. Promotion ran across social, email, and on-air for the full 8-day flight.
3. Entrants filled out a form on KARE 11's site (name, email, and an opt-in checkbox), tying every entry to a first-party record.
4. 23% of participants shared the contest on social media, extending reach past the station's own channels.
5. Opted-in contacts became a shared list for both KARE 11's and OBGYN West's future marketing.

What Each Side Got

The advertiser: OBGYN West put its name in front of an audience already self-selected by the Mother's Day theme (mothers and expecting mothers, the exact patients an OB-GYN practice wants to reach), and came away with its share of the 4,553 opted-in contacts to market to directly.

The media company: KARE 11 added 4,553 opted-in profiles to its own first-party database and drove 3,801 new users to its website, in a promotion it didn't have to fund alone.

Why It Worked

A seasonal hook did the audience targeting for free. Mother's Day doesn't need a media plan to reach mothers; it just needs a prize and a form.

Co-branding split the cost and the value. Neither side had to fund or promote this alone, and both sides walked away with the same opted-in list to build on.

A healthcare advertiser got a healthcare-relevant result. This wasn't reach for its own sake; a local OB-GYN practice reaching mothers around Mother's Day is about as tightly matched as advertiser and moment get.

Owning the entry form kept the data. Because entrants signed up on KARE 11's own site rather than a sponsor's landing page, the station kept a first-party record of everyone who came through, not just an impression count.