Votemo helped a sub festival of Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival 2022 (HÕFF) to engage their audience through voting for their favourite films and Q&A-s. The festival was mostly hosted in an
in-person format with a small online extension of some films being available for watching on-demand on HÕFF's online platform.
Event Film Festival | Audience 2500 visits | Engagement rate up to 50% | Show In-person, Online |
As any other year, HÕFF was giving out audience awards. The starting point of our collaboration was running the voting digitally. They had previously tested on-paper voting and also digital voting but as the digital voting they had run previously had low participation rate, they were now open to look into alternative options.
Votemo was used at HÕFF for digital voting, collecting participants contacts for PÖFF's newsletters, and for Q&A-s with the filmmakers.
“Votemo voting interface worked out well for us. The participants number was much higher than what we’ve reached with digital tools before. Participants were also willing to leave their contacts much more, than we dared to expect.“ — Jaan Leppik, Development Project Manager
Up to 50% of the audience participated in the voting
Voting was available for both onsite and digital audiences
On avg. 1/5 of all the visitors gave their votes, with some films reaching close to 50%
50% of the participants left their contacts
These were the reasons why Votemo was chosen as a tool for HÕFF and the learnings from the collaboration:
Emotion based voting gave better insights
Using Votemo opened up more ways to define the film than evaluating on a numerical scale. Numerical scale is most often not a fully accurate way to evaluate films, especially considering horror and fantasy films which are meant to evoke strong emotions.
Instead of a numerical scale, characteristic-based options such as scary, cute and sad were used. If the film was well received by the audience or not was something that came out from comparing the size of the audience to the number of votes that were given. If an audience member does not like the film, they are also not likely to vote as the aim of the voting at the festival is for defining the favourites. Having a two-dimensional voting also gave festival a chance to give out audience rewards in different categories. After voting, the audience also had a chance to leave questions for the directors which is a nice extra value to having a digital solution for audience engagement.
Lead generation helps festivals to build their community
Lead generation is something that the marketing teams of festivals are constantly working on. Being able to combine voting with lead generation was therefore a great bonus for the team.
Giving audience multiple entry points leads to success
The festival built multiple entry points for the audience to vote. Each film had its unique QR code for voting that was printed on electronic and PDF tickets and placed as a widget on the film's landing page on HÕFF's online programme. A QR code directing to a list of films with direct links to voting was shown at the cinema hall before the start of each film and also printed and placed inside the venue.
If you'd like to know more on how Votemo can help you to increase the value of your event through audience involvement, lead generation and branding options, set up a consultation here.