Category: Case Study

Driving Leads Through Consumer Education for Finance Brands

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi partnered with a financial services brand to develop an education-based approach to lead generation using downloadable guides for home buying, auto financing and growing a business.

Highlights

240,227
Impressions

0.079%
Conversion Rate

Challenge

Making the decision to apply for an auto loan, mortgage, or even open a new checking account requires a significant lift on the consumer in terms of research and compiling information. Many institutions lean towards offering financial incentives for opening an account or emphasizing low interest rates. 

While offers such as receiving $200 for refinancing or opening an account can act as a compelling call-to-action, the consumer needs to be educated on the process ahead of receiving this messaging for it to be effective. Offering monetary incentives to an uneducated audience can lead to abandoned applications and a higher cost per lead. Educating your target audience with branded collateral positions your brand as an industry thought leader. This also builds trust with your audience and leads to greater conversion activity, and ultimately higher customer lifetime value. 

Solution

This financial services client regularly offers e-books on various financial topics. They observed the benefits of this educational approach to campaign messaging. This client promoted guides on home buying, auto financing, and growing a business. Coegi adjusted their target audience based on the topics to ensure relevancy. 

The campaign uncovered that paid ads related to e-book downloads outperformed campaigns focused on monetary promotions. In Q4 2021, their Fall Homebuyers ad was given a quality ranking by Facebook and served more frequently than its counterparts. Users were 125% more likely to download the guide and request more information compared to messaging offering a discount. This campaign positioned the client as an expert in their industry and built trust among their target audience. 

Messaging Homebuyer Guide Closing Cost Discount
Impressions 240,227 14,417
Conversions 190 5
Conversion Rate .079% .035%

Education-based advertising is often viewed as an upper funnel marketing tactic utilized to build awareness and inform potential users. However, this campaign showcased the down-funnel impact educational materials can have on conversions. Our client was able to use educational guidebooks to empower their customers when making financial decisions. It was effective in building trust among the core audience and leading them to request more information.  Brands in the financial services sector should prioritize educational materials to create trusting consumer relationships and efficiently nurture leads.

Snapchat Swipe-Up Ads for Retargeting Teens

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi developed a social strategy for a higher education client using Snapchat swipe-up ads to target potential students. Despite tactical challenges of targeting restrictions, this social campaign resulted in benchmark-breaking performance.

Highlights

1.88%
Peak Swipe-Up Rate

0.91%
Avg. Swipe-Up Rate

6,345
Total Swipe-Ups

Challenge

For colleges and universities, advertising to potential students can be a tactical challenge. Most social media platforms allow targeting of individuals under the age of 18, but some severely limit advertisers’ ability to retarget to this key demographic. Potential students spend their time across several platforms. So determining where to most efficiently invest marketing dollars for this age range is not always clear.

With these challenges, higher education advertisers often pivot to target parents instead. While this can be effective, our client wanted to reach the students directly. 

Solution

After completing a strategic review of our options, we determined that Snapchat was the best option for two reasons. First, the platform allows advertisers to retarget the under 18 demographic, removing that tactical hurdle. Secondly, the target audience for our higher education clients are highly active on Snapchat. Beating out TikTok and Instagram, 35% of teens say Snapchat is their favorite social media app. With 87.3 million US monthly users, almost 30% of total internet users and 69% of teens and young adults, Snapchat quickly became the clear choice for this consideration campaign.

Snapchat swipe-up rates were the primary KPI. The benchmark for success was a swipe-up rate of 0.5%. With a budget of $3,300, the campaign generated 6,345 swipe ups, for an average rate of .91%. At its peak, the campaign generated a remarkable 1.88% swipe up rate. 

Part of this success was due to our use of lookalike audiences. This allowed us to scale and reach a broader audience and achieve a swipe-up rate of 1.05%, once again outperforming the 0.5% benchmark. 

Takeaways for Snapchat Swipe-Up Ad Success

An analysis of these high-performing campaigns leads us to believe that a significant portion of the success is attributable to the tactical strategy. The ads were being served to the right audience, at the right place, with the right technical execution. Both campaigns had different approaches to their creative design. This leads us to believe the visuals contributed less to performance than tactical execution. We hypothesize that with optimized creative strategy, similar campaigns would see even greater success.

To get started with Snapchat campaign optimizations, we recommend the following: 

  1. Focus on strong, front-loaded storytelling to hook the attention of the viewer. 
  2. Keep videos short. Snapchat recommends 0:03-0:05 seconds long. 
  3. Place your branding, offer and CTA in the first few seconds to ensure it is seen.
  4. Catch viewers’ attention with movement at the beginning of the video. 

 

Using Non-Media Data for Agile Tourism Marketing

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi collaborated with sister agencies, RADaR Analytics and True Media, to create a proprietary tool that allowed our tourism client to shift marketing dollars in real-time based on COVID-19 infection rates and consumer reception to travel. This offered our client a unique data set to inform marketing decisions – maximizing their dollars and promoting safe travel.

Highlights

124MM
Impressions

3%
Lift in New Website Visitors

20%
Lift in Time Spent on Site

Challenge

COVID-19 had a substantial impact on the travel and tourism industry, including one of Coegi’s tourism marketing clients. Spring and summer, historically their largest promotional period, came to a rapid halt as COVID-19 rapidly spread in 2020.

The tourism client’s ongoing objective is to support the travel and tourism industry throughout the state. However, as a government-funded organization, they also had to avoid promoting unsafe travel that could contribute to the spread of COVID-19. As a result, they tasked our team with developing a targeting strategy that continued to grow the industry in a responsible and innovative way.

Solution

We collaborated to create a proprietary tool that responded in real-time to both the COVID-19 pandemic and consumer interest in travel to allow for effective decision making and dynamic campaign adjustments. The end result was the COVID-19 Scoring Model. This model crossed weekly CDC level data regarding COVID-19 (case levels, 7 day rolling averages, death rates) with real-time interest indicators (Google trends data, website activity, on-site conversions). This gave each county in the state a score from 1-4 that indicated the level of opportunity in each market. 

Using this tool, we had a unique data set to inform decisions regarding geotargeting, messaging, and frequency to ensure the strategy aligned with likelihood of travel as well as safety. Coegi and our traditional media sister agency, True Media, collaborated to automate information collection and efficiently apply it to our digital media buys.

We were able to continue our omnichannel approach and expand awareness against a general traveler audience, as well as passion audiences based on preferred activities in the state. We also placed location data on top of our persona targeting in lower-funnel campaigns to ensure we were not reaching users who were strictly isolating.

Despite these challenges, we were able to drive strong results for our clients in the second half of 2020, fluidly shifting audience, geographic, and messaging strategy as data became available. Our campaigns cumulatively delivered over 124 million impressions, 61% above initial projections. We were also able to achieve a 3% increase in new website visitors and a 20% increase in time spent on site. 

Driving Marketing Results for Cryptocurrency Brands

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

A cryptocurrency brand challenged Coegi and our partner, Wachsman, a communications-based strategy consultancy, to drive segmented audiences to register for an online event. Primary KPIs were event site visitations, measured on-site clicks, and ticket purchases. The main challenge was to identify and capitalize on the appropriate social media platforms to align with the brand’s niche audience segments.

Highlights

4,720
Site Views

.96%
Click Through Rate

757,279
Impressions

Challenge

Emerging fintech brands, especially those in the crypto space, face unique challenges not commonly found in the traditional finance sector. There are ever-changing societal, economical, and psychographic trends along with advertising regulations. Fintechs can often struggle with not only identifying and garnering the interest of niche customer segments, but also in harnessing the power of digital advertising.

Solution

Due to digital advertising restrictions set on crypto brands by a variety of social media platforms, Coegi and Wachsman were not immediately able to leverage the platform most widely used by the brand’s audience. Through internal research and creative strategy, we were able to narrow down to Facebook and Instagram – with Reddit as an added opportunity for topic-based targeting. With Facebook and Instagram, we leveraged interest targeting, retargeting, and look-a-like audiences. Each targeted ad was backed up by months of research and brand exercises completed by the Wachsman team, and supported by Coegi.

The campaign performed above average, concluding with 4,720 site views and a .96% CTR, compared to our .3% industry benchmark. In addition to strong social media ad engagement, the target audience proved further interest in the brand. The site experienced 191 on-site action clicks. 183 of those clicks were attributed to the “Get Tickets” button denoted on the social media ads. This was achieved while maintaining an average CPM of under $4 and CPC under $3.

During the campaign, the addition of a website retargeting and look-a-like audience improved the overall performance. We drove a CTR 41% above the campaign average and the highest on-site conversion rate at .028%.

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Growing Omnichannel Retail Solutions for a Wine Brand

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi helped a wine brand grow both its online and in-store sales by executing an omnichannel digital campaign. Leveraging strategic micro-targeting, paid social media, and grocery delivery app relationships, the campaign achieved impressive ROAS, along with increased purchases and store visits to retailers in the wine brand’s distribution network.

Highlights

5X
Return on Ad Spend

4,500
Direct to Consumer Purchases

9,700
Store Visits

Challenge

A “healthier-for-you” wine brand came to Coegi to expand its omnichannel retail presence. In 2020, they were facing the challenging effects of COVID-19 on shopping behaviors, as well as growing consumer demand for online alcohol sales. Our client needed to provide a convenient way for consumers to shop online while still growing brick-and-mortar sales.

Solution

Coegi helped our wine client create an omnichannel retail solution using digital media.

First, we leaned heavily into Facebook to support online sales using a social commerce ad along with a dynamic retargeting catalog ad. Throughout 2020, these two campaigns alone drove over 4,500 DTC purchases with an exceptional average ROAS of 6.76x. 

We also built a precise shopper marketing campaign on Facebook using co-branded retail carousels to target major DMAs on a national scale. The click-through URL showed consumers a list of nearby stores. We then deployed a foot traffic lift study, which attributed nearly 9,700 store visits to these campaigns.  

To build on this success, we partnered with grocery delivery providers, Drizly and Instacart. With Drizly, we ran a co-branded Facebook campaign to increase awareness of the brand’s availability on this platform. This allowed us to track delivery purchases attributed to the campaign to understand short-term ROI. Instacart in-platform ads were also a major success. In the final months of the year, the team saw an average ROAS of 5.9x with nearly $83,000 in attributable sales. 

Together, these campaigns increased overall brand equity while also driving an increase in omnichannel sales revenue. 

How to Increase QSR Market Share and Awareness

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

A QSR client was faced with uncertainty as the pandemic hit the United States in March 2020. Coegi was tasked with coming up with a flexible media strategy to address the new dynamic.

Highlights

32%
Increase in Delivery App Purchases

$5MM
Incremental Attributed Sales

Challenge

Most of this QSR’s franchised-owned stores had a 50%+ decrease in traffic and sales in the second half of March 2020. With a limited challenger brand budget, we needed to boost market share while addressing the shift in consumer behavior.

 

Solution

We focused specifically on growing market share among loyal customers. Initially, we drove them to make delivery purchases and later to in-store. To do this, we leveraged existing first-party data that was tied to point-of-sale. 

The outcome was a proprietary scoring model, dubbed “The Crave Score.”  This custom scorecard analyzed brand lift attributes, visitation, and point of sale data to dynamically align budget allocation and creative strategy. It also allowed us to segment based on store visit frequency and share of wallet.

For high share of wallet customers who hadn’t visited recently, we focused on high frequency with ads promoting top-selling sandwiches. We focused spend on areas with high pre-COVID brand recognition, knowing that consumers would be more selective during this time.  

Then, as stimulus checks were distributed, we applied lookalike modeling against the strongest customer segments to identify high potential new consumers. 

These were the key results: 

  • 32% increase in delivery app purchases in 6 key markets.
  • $5MM in incremental attributed sales in the Q2 post-COVID period
  • Positive press write ups in Bloomberg and Restaurant Business

The Power of Creative in Building Brand Awareness

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi partnered with a powerhouse creative agency to launch a full-funnel digital campaign, building brand awareness as well as sales for a high-growth wine brand.

Highlights

10.6%
Lift in Standard Ad Recall

1.8%
Lift in Unaided Brand Awareness

1.4%
Lift in Purchase Intent / Consideration

Challenge

The brand tasked the team to produce a campaign that was not only effective in building brand awareness and emotional connection in a very cluttered, complicated category, but also drove trial and consideration across a broader set of consumers. 

Solution

The team executed a performance branding study on Facebook to evaluate brand lift as well as conversion lift for key website events. By comparing control and exposed audiences, incrementality was able to be evaluated. This blended approach allowed for valuable insights into multiple stages of the consumer journey, from brand awareness to purchase intent. 

The study showed positive lift across brand categories, surpassing CPG benchmarks. Ad recall was particularly pronounced, signaling that the creative was successful in driving memorability and that the selected audience resonated with the messaging approach.

Using TikTok Ads to Reach Potential College Students

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi used TikTok ads to help a higher education client drive better results in their marketing campaigns. Our client is a private college located in Kansas City, Missouri which recently lowered their tuition costs. They were looking to boost brand awareness among potential students and encourage them to research more about their institution.

Highlights

82%
Higher CTR than Snapchat

$3.53
Cost Per Page View Conversion

Challenge

A younger audience can be hard to reach effectively in the right place, especially on social media platforms. Reaching a potential college student was top of mind for the team. In the summer 2020 planning stages, it became clear TikTok was the right platform. The app was rapidly becoming one of the most popular apps among high school students. However, the platform was unproven in terms of in feed advertising, as it was a fairly new capability from TikTok.

Solution

The team took a risk and proposed TikTok ads in tandem with Snapchat and Instagram to reach their target audience of high school students.

Snapchat and Instagram were set up as conversion campaigns driving users to complete a form fill or research the brand as a whole by visiting pages with information on campus visits or majors.

The TikTok campaign began as an awareness campaign. It was optimizing towards video views as this aligned with the organic user behavior on the platform. Ads were shown in-feed on TikTok, where users spend the majority of their time on the app. 

Targeting started off relatively broad, reaching potential students interested in education across Missouri and Kansas. The platform only narrows to state level geographic targeting.

The ads focused on key competitive advantages of the college such as optional standardized testing and lower tuition. These were both major decision factors for potential students in light of the pandemic.

The TikTok awareness campaign was so efficient in terms of CPM and results after just one month that the objective was adjusted from video views to driving site visits and actions. 

The TikTok platform saw extremely strong results, driving a 82% higher CTR than Snapchat and 688% higher than Instagram. Users on TikTok were also more efficient to convert at a cost of $3.53 per page view conversion tracked. 

Driving Retail Traffic and Sales for a Beauty Brand

Posted on by Coegi

The brief

Coegi created an omni-channel campaign to drive in-store retail traffic and attributable sales for a beauty client during a key sales period.

Highlights

$0.25
Cost Per Store Visit

4.6M
In-Store Conversions

Challenge

Coegi’s beauty brand client sells skin and lip care products online and in retail locations across the US. In-store retailer purchases drive the majority of their revenue and were the priority for our marketing strategy. 

However, it can be challenging to track and measure the impact of paid media on in-store purchases. Coegi needed to show how this campaign drove sales and purchase consideration during the holiday season.

Solution

Coegi used three core audiences to target this campaign – Eco Consumers, Millennial Moms and College Consumers. Additionally, we used high-intent holiday shopping audiences to maximize the time of year.

We activated these audiences across display and video campaigns, optimizing for reach and completion rate to drive in-store traffic. This was reinforced through retailer-specific creative to ensure shoppers knew where the brand was available. A foot traffic study was also implemented using mobile app ID data to correlate ad exposure with store visitation. 

We took a test and learn approach, using traffic and purchase data to determine top performing retail locations. We then reinforced those top stores in key geos, further building upon sales momentum. This campaign drove over 4.6 million store visits, with an average cost-per-store-visit of $0.25 across all media and millions in sales. This was highly efficient for driving brand consideration compared to the $3-7 product price point. 

Q4 sales reports indicated that the strong revenue numbers were directly tied with efficient cost-per-visit metrics. Analysis of foot traffic conversions also helped identify top markets for the brand. This campaign displayed the importance of combining advanced measurement studies and non-media data to determine the incremental impact of digital media on driving retail traffic and sales. 

Driving Action from a Niche B2B Audience

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi helped to drive leads from a highly niche B2B audience by pairing LinkedIn’s on-platform lead generation with the clients onboarded first-party data. The results exceeded client expectations and established foundational data for future campaigns.  

Highlights

292
New Leads

$36.55
Cost Per Lead

0.41%
Click Through Rate

Challenge

Our client needed to drive leads from a niche B2B audience – but they meant niche niche. They were only interested in reaching European film, gaming, and television licensing professionals who were in-market to connect with American content owners. They hosted a magazine and website portal where global licensing professionals could make connections and discover new opportunities. The client challenged Coegi to provide a solution to drive this audience to their website, where they would be prompted to share their email address to access the portal. 

Solution

We recognized this request necessitated using an audience-first approach to inform our channel strategy. LinkedIn proved to be the channel with the widest reach of second-party data. Historically, the fewer steps to conversion asked of your audience, the higher the ROI. Knowing this, we used LinkedIn’s on-platform Lead Generation creatives to encourage our audiences to share their contact information without needing to visit the site.

Our client offered two products: an industry magazine and a website portal. The media objective was to drive 150 new email contacts over three months. 

Prioritizing budget on LinkedIn allowed Coegi to craft a strategy that balanced the need for some awareness while focusing on the lead goal. Pairing LinkedIn’s data, lead generation objective and creative, and the client’s first-party data allowed us to nearly double the goal of 150 new email contacts. 

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