The landscape of marketing strategies continues to evolve, with influencer campaigns emerging as a force in the digital realm. This compilation unveils the strategies, measurement metrics, and strategic rationales offered by various lotteries. From collaborations with regional influencers to explorations of product-specific messaging, lotteries are poised to leverage influencers to enhance brand awareness and engagement.
Arizona Lottery
“Collaborations with regional influencers who embody what it means to be uniquely Arizonan have proven to be an effective tactic for expanding reach beyond the brand’s organic social media following. This is especially true for bringing campaign messaging to life.
“In 2024, the Arizona Lottery will continue to develop valuable insights that will drive future activation opportunities across a variety of executions, including:
- Brand Ambassadors to help raise overall awareness in the marketplace and grow followers through brand-level storytelling
- Campaign Activations to encourage audience participation, overall engagement, and sales
Gives Back Efforts to help tell real stories about the Lottery’s impact on its communities.”
—Imani Keith, Public Information Officer, Arizona Lottery
Connecticut Lottery Corp.
“No, we have no plans at this time. We ran four influencer campaigns in 2021 and 2022, to promote our Holiday, Keno and our 50th anniversary campaigns. We had great success with our numbers and performance metrics, but it was hard to measure actual results from the campaign in regard to sales. We did generate some buzz as we contracted Grandma Droniak early on in her celebrity career for a few of our campaigns – now, she is an internet celebrity with 2.3 million followers! We also had Joe Moravsky from American Ninja Warrior.”
—Linda Tarnowski, Director of Advertising, Connecticut Lottery Corp.
Florida Lottery
“Yes, we are planning to continue with influencer initiatives as we’ve seen success in the past with our Education-focused initiatives. In 2024, we will be testing a product-specific message for the first time with the X The Cash campaign where we will leverage an established sports personality with local ties to raise awareness about the new X The Cash family of games while also encouraging tune-in to the X The Cash ad in the Super Bowl. We will measure the success of this campaign by looking at impressions, reach, total engagements, and engagement rate.”
—Amber Seale, Deputy Secretary of Marketing, Florida Lottery
Hoosier Lottery
“We are planning to continue to leverage influencers. We are always looking to evolve our influencer strategy and identify new opportunities to engage the community. We like to identify partners that share in our sense of community, authenticity and culture.
“In 2024, we will strengthen our collaboration with community micro-influencers across different interest areas (Lifestyle, Sports, Art, Music, Food, Entertainment) who authentically align with our brand values. We are seeing a substantial number of younger audience members aged 18-24 engage with our brand through these influencers.
“We measure success through various influencer and social metrics – impressions, reach, clicks, engagement, etc. We look for influencers that are creating meaningful stories, help foster a sense of community and enhance engagement and trust with the Hoosier Lottery.”
—Brittany D’Haenens, Senior Director of Marketing, Hoosier Lottery
Illinois Lottery
“No plans to run an influencer campaign in 2024.”
—Nicole Schaefer, Media Manager, Illinois Lottery
Kentucky Lottery Corp.
“Yes, we plan to run paid influencer campaigns for multiple product categories in 2024 with additional organic influencer partnerships to support smaller initiatives year-round.
“Measurement Tactics:
- For eCommerce products, we have been able to leverage our existing meta pixel and compare to our ongoing paid social content.
- We also have used spaceback units in the past to leverage these influencer assets in other placements such as display.
- For retail-only products, we look mostly at engagement and user sentiment in response to these campaigns.
Additional giveaway promotions tailored to each influencer have allowed us to capture lead data and measure the effectiveness of individual influencer’s content and appeal.”
—Edie Frakes, Vice President of Marketing, Kentucky Lottery Corp.
Maryland Lottery
“While influencer marketing is something we have considered in the past and something we would certainly be open to in the future, we currently do not have plans to pursue influencer marketing in 2024.”
—Barbara Jones-Frederick, Senior Advertising Manager, Maryland Lottery
Minnesota Lottery
“We use influencers as a tactic to support a majority of our campaigns and this strategy will continue in 2024. It is a great way to reach new audiences with an authentic voice and viewpoint. We use a variety of KPIs to measure influencers’ results including reach, engagement, and views.”
—Vicki Holets, Dir., Sales & Marketing, Minnesota Lottery
Missouri Lottery
“No, I currently have our advertising agency doing some research and providing us with a point-of-view on utilizing influencers.”
—Rhonda Fehr, Advertising Manager, Missouri Lottery
New Hampshire Lottery
“We recently worked with a local, well-known New Hampshire artist from a percussion band. Loves our product, loves to gamble, has an incredible following here in New Hampshire, huge personality, tons—and I mean, tons—of energy, great guy yet I had one serious request during the Facebook Live promos we engaged with him in – PLEASE, watch your language. He swears, swears a lot, just part of his vernacular and although we’re okay with some, not to the extent he delivers and when subsequently reminded, you can see him trying to hold back on our behalf and in the end, it’s not his brand or image to have that restraint placed on him. So through the rest of the year, we’ll regroup and give this more thought. Most influencers have reach well beyond the state of New Hampshire and since our focus is strictly, in state, we do question the value. Although we do have some serious talent from New Hampshire to tap – Adam Sandler, Sarah Silverman, Seth Myers, Triple H (Paul Levesque), Mandy Moore, Steven Tyler from Arrowsmith, etc.”
—Maura McCann, Director of Marketing, New Hampshire Lottery
New Mexico Lottery
“We do not have an influencer campaign planned for this fiscal year in New Mexico. In December, we conducted an advertising survey and most of our respondents do not follow influencers (83%) in addition to 8% reporting not knowing what a social influencer was, and only 9% reported following any influencers. These numbers indicate it is not time to jump in on influencer advertising at this time.”
—Wendy Ahlm, Dir. of Advertising & Marketing, New Mexico Lottery
Ohio Lottery
“We are using Influencers for our Keep It Fun Ohio responsible gambling campaign. We have a mix of sports-related personalities and sites, and up-and-coming regional entertainers. We have been using Sir Yacht for the last two years, and he was recently featured on ABC News for his wide-reaching, engaging content. With the rollout of sports betting, micro-influencers help remind their audiences that gambling should be a fun, safe activity.”
—Tom Ackerman, Deputy Director, Office of Marketing, Ohio Lottery
Oklahoma Lottery
“We have begun planning the launch of a dynamic creator campaign in 2024. Our approach is to dive deep into the creator landscape, identifying those influencers who are not just popular but truly align with our mission and values and showcase the fun and entertaining value of the Oklahoma Lottery. We’re exploring innovative ways to engage with our audience through these influencers. The campaign’s effectiveness will be measured by a mix of traditional and novel metrics, ensuring we capture the full extent of our brand’s expansion and audience engagement.
“Our influencer program will focus on core tenants of our strategic marketing plan, including product promotion, positive brand sentiment and explore new experiential tactics that leverage influencers and their unique ability to connect with their audience online and in person. We will be measuring a number of metrics, but overarching marketing goals in 2024 are to increase social media followers, increase social media engagement and monitor OK Lottery app downloads/usage.”
—Abby Morgan, Director, Marketing & Product Development, Oklahoma Lottery
Oregon Lottery
“We’ve dabbled in some influencer and micro-influencer collaborations over the years (especially with our sports betting product) but haven’t found a great fit with someone who has an Oregon-focused audience that aligns well with our products/brand over a more lasting business relationship. So, while we’re always looking for new and better ways to amplify our brand initiatives, we have no immediate plans for any influencer elements in 2024.”
—Shad Barnes, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, Oregon Lottery
Pennsylvania Lottery
“Yes, we will be planning a 2024 campaign for our Holiday Influencers. This campaign will be measured through impressions, reach & engagement. We challenged our influencers in our 2023 campaign with a specific theme, ‘Celebrate Like You Mean It’ where we asked them to show us, through their concepts, how that would come to life within their brand. Each influencer created 1-2 Instagram feed posts and/or 2-4 story posts. We boosted the influencers’ content as well for 30 days. In total, we worked with 12 influencers. (Attached include images of our Influencer Content).”
—Kelly Cortez, Director of Marketing, Pennsylvania Lottery
South Carolina Education Lottery (SCEL)
“No influencer campaign for us.”
—Josh Whiteside, Director of Marketing, SCEL
Texas Lottery
“No, not in FY 2024, however, the Texas Lottery is considering influencer support/programs as part of our scratch ticket packages for next fiscal, FY 2025. As we consider marketing support packages, influencer programs are moving up the list. They can bring authenticity to your message and help amplify winning experiences in a shareable way.”
—Andrew Leeper, Brand Strategy Coordinator, Texas Lottery
Virginia Lottery
“The majority of our top-level, state-wide campaigns involve influencers. Our media agency, Two Tango, works with a vendor called Pop Shorts to review a selection of applicable accounts which we narrow down and then provide content for their videos and posts. Generally, this is for product campaigns, so the influencers record themselves engaging with the product while generating content specific to their channel. For instance, a how-to video on how to dress to go out country line dancing while talking about and showing the Luke Combs games. We generally use influencers in 3-5 campaigns a year.”
—Lindsay Yowell, Brand & Advertising Manager, Virginia Lottery
Washington’s Lottery
“We are excited to start exploring influencers this year with our Department of Imagination Campaign. We hope that by creating more natural feeling content we can continue to appeal to a wider range and more diverse audience within our younger demographic. The overall hope being that we will increase engagement in every step of our customer’s experience with us.”
—Randy Warick, Assistant Marketing Director, Washington’s Lottery
West Virginia Lottery
“We do not have any influencer campaigns planned at this time.”
—Danielle Snidow, Deputy Director, Marketing & Sara Harpold, Advertising Manager, West Virginia Lottery