Client Overview
Halloween Alley is Canada’s largest independently-owned Halloween retailer, with (lucky number) 13 stores across Canada that open every Halloween. In addition to offering spooktacular costumes, accessories and decorations, Halloween Alley also hosts events and fundraisers in the communities where they operate, creating hubs for local witches and wizards to celebrate their love of Halloween.
The Challenge
As Canada’s go-store store for all things Halloween, Halloween Alley excels at connecting with guys and ghouls of all ages during the spookiest month of the year. As a seasonal company, however, Halloween Alley has often experienced a high rate of follower attrition post-Halloween. As a result, the company was struggling to sustain the followers gained during the season, a problem that kept coming back to haunt them every Halloween.
By outsourcing both their campaign and day-to-day social media marketing to Bluetrain, Halloween Alley was able to significantly boost social media engagement, create viral content and grow their online community by 15,943 new followers in just one year!*
*Period range: September 1, 2023 – September 30, 2024
Our Solution
By capitalizing on Halloween Alley’s unique brand voice and piggybacking on popular social media trends, Bluetrain’s social media strategists were able to create entertaining, must-watch content that would not only get Halloween fans pumped for the upcoming season but drive traffic to their stores. Additionally, Bluetrain was able to further amplify Halloween Alley’s messaging by engaging local influencers and by running ads on Google, Instagram and Facebook.
How did we do it?
In the summer of 2023, with Halloween just a few months away, Bluetrain met with Halloween Alley to determine their goals and learn more about their customers.
Halloween Alley’s marketing ghouls goals were clear:
- Drive in-store traffic
- Boost customer acquisitions
- Create fun content
In addition to their primary goals, the Bluetrain team also learned some interesting insights into Halloween Alley’s shoppers and online followers.
For instance, they learned that Halloween Alley’s younger customers, those in their teens and early twenties, favoured trendy costumes, especially those that could work well as a couple’s or group costumes. (#SquadGoals for the win.)
Another important customer segment? Mummies! Halloween Alley understands Moms to be organized shoppers who plan ahead, and are heavily influenced by their children who want to dress up as their favourite TV and movie characters. Dads, on the other hand, tend to be last-minute shoppers and are heavily influenced by their wives (lol).
With all this in mind, Bluetrain set to work creating content that would get Canadians excited for the upcoming Halloween season, and generate buzz around new store locations.
They started by visiting the Edmonton store to collect photos and video footage that would later be turned into some seriously funny reels, like this one from June 19, 2023, that reached more than 2.8 million people and was watched 4.5 million times!
In September 2024, as Halloween drew near, Bluetrain launched a campaign to engage local influencers to help spread the word about Halloween Alley’s wide selection of costumes, decorations and accessories.
Watch @yegventures recreate movie posters with Halloween Alley costumes
Influencers were also encouraged to promote Halloween Alley’s neurodivergent-friendly shopping day, a special event where customers could enjoy a stress-free shopping experience in a calm and supportive environment. Similarly, influencers also helped boost awareness of Halloween Alley’s Boo-It-Forward costume donation campaign, where community members could donate gently-used costumes to fellow Halloween lovers in need.
Watch @321_blessed_mom explore Halloween Alley’s neurodivergent-friendly shopping day with her kids
Watch @sarah.sociables talk about Halloween Alley’s Boo-It-Forward costume donation campaign
In order to continue building on the successes of the Halloween season, Bluetrain provided ongoing, organic social media management throughout the year, which involved creating and scheduling posts and reels every week and interacting with community members to keep them connected to the brand year-round.
9.95%
average engagement rate
15,943
total followers gained
11,066,066
people reached
Our Impact
As the year progressed, the impact of Bluetrain’s social media efforts became evident in Halloween Alley’s analytics:
- Followers: Not only was Bluetrain able to retain followers gained during the Halloween season, but they drastically expanded Halloween Alley’s online audience.
- Facebook: +142.8K% year-over-year growth in followers (which represented 12,865 net followers over the course of the year versus 79 net followers from the previous year)
- Instagram: 49.72% year-over-year increase in followers (which represented 3,078 net followers)
- Reach & Impressions: Substantial improvements in reach and impressions underscored the entertainment value of the content as well as its effect on audiences online.
- Facebook
- Total Impressions (Organic & Paid): 12,202,430
- Total Impressions (Organic only): 7,805,176
- Total Reach (Organic & Paid): 8,050,130
- Instagram
- Total Impressions (Organic & Paid): 3,554,986
- Total Reach (Organic & Paid): 3,015,936
- Facebook
Thanks to Bluetrain’s savvy social media strategists, Halloween Alley was able to boost brand awareness of their products and events, engage Halloween lovers across the country with compelling content and significantly grow their online community. Bluetrain was able to help Halloween Alley break the “post-Halloween drop-off” curse and continued to build on the successes of the season with consistent, day-to-day social media management.
“Working with Bluetrain has been a fantastic experience for our Halloween store, Halloween Alley! This year, they’ve truly captured the essence of our brand, creating amazing content that has brought our social media to life. From ads that resonate with our audience to creative posts that make us stand out, Bluetrain has gone above and beyond. They are incredibly easy to work with, always communicative, and responsive to our needs while executing our vision seamlessly. Plus, their detailed reporting has kept us well-informed, allowing us to see the impact of every campaign. We couldn’t ask for a better marketing partner!”