The brief
Since being appointed to handle Yorkshire Building Society's digital strategy in 2008, we've looked after the planning, management, optimisation and reporting for all their online media campaigns, including paid-for media and editorial activity.
As a result, we were tasked with promoting and selling their new e-Bond product online - no easy feat at the start of an economic downturn. The objectives were to broaden Yorkshire Building Society's customer base, increase savings balances and optimise their online media spend by improving conversion rates. Success would be judged on the number of accounts acquired and the savings balances generated over a three month period.
The approach
The financial market is a volatile and rapidly changing one at the best of times, let alone during a recession. So the strategy we developed had to offer flexibility and allow the campaign tactics to change with market conditions.
The team identified and analysed all the potential online media opportunities and - through cost-effectiveness and ROI modelling - developed a media plan using only sites that generated the highest estimated ROI in relation to the target market.
By using a number of different media buying methods, including 'Cost Per Click', 'Cost Per Account Opened', and 'Cost per Thousand Ad Impressions', we ensured the chosen media worked as hard as possible.
In addition to optimising the media elements, we optimised the entire customer journey, ensuring users could find the campaign message that they were looking for. We incorporated Pay Per Click to make the marketing message delivered at that time (and the landing page customers arrived on) more relevant to the user.
The result
The campaign generated an increase of 115% against the target for new accounts and, as a result, also achieved an upswing of 112% against the target for increasing savings balances.
By establishing a flexible approach to media buying, the 'Cost Per Click' during the campaign decreased by 16%, whilst the 'Click to Account Opened' rate increased from 8.76% at the beginning of the campaign, to 11.25% at the end.
The monitoring processes we established meant that we were not only able to optimise our messaging and outlets to the user - we could respond to the industry's rapidly changing marketplace and reallocate budget on a weekly basis. This ensured we changed the media we used so we could consistently generate the highest ROI throughout the campaign.
Consequently, we were shortlisted at the prestigious New Media Age Effectiveness Awards for our work.