How Sabaton created an interactive fan experience with Sonikit

🎯 The Mission: Turn 25 Years of Music Into an Epic Fan Experience

For their 25th anniversary, metal giants Sabaton didn’t want just another retrospective. Known for their military-inspired albums, war-time storytelling, and heroic anthems, Sabaton’s team—Nuclear Blast Records and Wayward Creative—wanted a campaign that put fans inside the battlefield.

They turned to Sonikit to help power an immersive digital experience where fans could explore Sabaton’s legacy while streaming their catalog and pre-saving their upcoming release.

🕹️ The Experience: An Explorable 3D Warzone + Fan Challenges

This wasn’t your typical pre-save landing page.

Fans entered a first-person 3D world, inspired by Sabaton’s lore. They navigated through trenches, bunkers, and war rooms, completing challenges that brought the band’s music and history to life:

• 💣 Band trivia to diffuse bombs

• 📡 Decoding radio transmissions with clues from lyrics

• 🪖 Guiding a tank through a virtual minefield

All while streaming Sabaton’s full catalog directly via Spotify and Apple Music, seamlessly integrated into the background of the experience.

The mission? Complete all the challenges, unlock exclusive content, and be automatically entered to win Sabaton swag, vinyl, merch, and military-themed gear.

⚙️ How Sonikit Powered the Pre-Save and Fan Journey

At the heart of this campaign was a custom Sonikit pre-save embed, engineered to act as both the entry gate and data capture engine behind the scenes.

✅ On-Site, Multi-Platform Pre-Save

No more sending fans away to a DSP-specific page. The Sonikit embed let fans pre-save on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, TIDAL, or Deezer—all directly on the interactive site.

This eliminated drop-off and friction, particularly for mobile users or international fans.

🧩 Seamless Design Integration

Because Sonikit’s pre-save tool is fully customizable, the embed was styled to match the war-time visuals of the site—dark, gritty, and immersive. No generic buttons or iframes here. Just total creative control.

📈 Conversion Tracking & Retargeting Made Simple

Since pre-saves happened within the same website, the marketing team retained full ownership of analytics, retargeting pixels, and ad attribution.

This meant smarter ad optimization and the ability to retarget pre-saving fans with merch drops, tour announcements, or new videos.

📲 SMS Fan Collection for Long-Term Engagement

Every fan who pre-saved was prompted to enter their phone number (with consent) to receive mission updates and prize info. This allowed the team to build a valuable SMS list of super-engaged fans ready for future campaigns.

🔍 Real-Time Fan Insights from Sonikit Analytics

The Sonikit dashboard gave Nuclear Blast detailed campaign intelligence, including:

• Top platforms for pre-saves

• Demographic and location data on fans

• Traffic sources (social, search, ads)

• SMS opt-in performance

• Conversion rates per challenge level

📊 The Results: Engagement That Lasted Beyond Launch Week

The campaign was more than just a novelty—it was a growth engine. Here’s what happened:

• 🚀 Massive surge in pre-saves across all major DSPs

• 🔁 Fan time-on-site tripled compared to standard campaigns

• 📱 Thousands of SMS opt-ins from high-intent fans

• 📈 Significant follower growth on Spotify and Apple Music

• 🎯 High conversion rates from ads due to embedded tracking and retargeting

• 💬 Fan feedback that described the campaign as “the most epic pre-save ever”

💡 What Artists and Marketers Can Learn From This Campaign

This campaign is a blueprint for artists and labels looking to go beyond the static landing page. Here are three key takeaways:

1. Immersive storytelling drives pre-saves and fan loyalty

2. Custom embedded pre-save = better design, better data, and more control

3. Owning your audience via SMS unlocks long-term monetization and engagement

With Sonikit, the tools you need to launch these kinds of experiences are accessible to teams of any size—not just global labels.

🔧 Want to Launch an Interactive Pre-Save Campaign Like Sabaton?

Sonikit powers advanced fan engagement tools for artists, indie labels, and marketing teams—without sacrificing creative freedom.

✅ Multi-platform pre-save (Spotify, Apple Music, and more)
✅ Custom site embeds that match your brand
✅ SMS opt-in and messaging tools
✅ First-party data tracking and analytics
✅ Seamless ad retargeting integration

🎸 Whether you’re gearing up for a major album drop or just want to grow your fanbase smartly, Sonikit gives you the tools to turn your release into an experience.

👉 Explore Sonikit Now