Snapchat Swipe-Up Ads for Retargeting Teens

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.

1.88%
Peak Swipe-Up Rate

0.91%
Avg. Swipe-Up Rate

6,345
Total Swipe-Ups

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. 

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.