Delightful Dive into the Depths of Direct Response Digital Ads

Madeline Stanionis, Principal + Creative Director, M+R Stephanie Lauf, Director, Digital Fundraising & Supporter Engagement,

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

@MRCampaigns

www.mrbenchmarks.com

www.mrss.com/lab

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TOD

AY

AD EXCHANGE

BUYER SELLERS

2000

s

AD NETWORKS

1990

s

DIRECT

Changes in Digital Advertising

NOW…

✳ More control ✳ Unbelievable targeting ✳ More affordable ✳ Real time results ✳ So much more throttle ✳ and… ✳ Volatile ✳ Complicated ✳ and a teeny bit screepy

It’s totally amazing

Common Ad Terms

✳ CPM vs CPC vs CPA vs CPD ✳ ROI and ROAS ✳ Net Revenue or Net Cost ✳ Display ✳ View-Through vs. Click-Through Conversions ✳ Attribution ✳ Cookies and pixels

Uncommon in any other context

Facebook Custom Audiences

Facebook Lookalike Modeling

Retargeting/Remarketing Who?

✳ Email clickers ✳ Email addresses

✳ Recent donors ✳ Lapsed donors ✳ Emergency donors ✳ Inactives ✳ Unsubscribes

✳ Website visitors ✳ Homepage ✳ Donation form ✳ Any section!

✳ Mailing addresses

Channels and Vendors

Go Big!

Planned Parenthood 2015

2015 PPFA

PPFA Pink Out Day Go big or go home

Digital Ads Overview

✳ Paid Search

✳ Retargeting

✳ Direct Ad Buys ✳ Salon.com ✳ Jezebel ✳ Daily Kos Homepage Takeover

(12/30 and 12/31)

✳ Display Partners

✳ Additional Tactics ✳ Facebook Lookalike Modeling

for Donor Acquisition ✳ CRM Retargeting of Non-

donors & Inactives on Google Display Network

Digital Ads Strategy

✳ Optimized ongoing search, display, and Facebook acquisition ads program

✳ Increased ad spend aggressively throughout December

✳ Successful tests of new vendors and tactics, including direct ad buys on Jezebel and Salon; Facebook lookalike donor acquisition; and Bing paid search

✳ Developed and tested new creative concepts & match-focused creative

Creative Performance: Top Ads

November December January

Stopped serving ads to 4+ hour audience.

Permanently changed creative

Doubled bidding on impressions

Final audience adjustments

Results

In December 2015 alone we: ✳ Drove more than 16X the number of

new donors ✳ Did it at a better net cost per donor: -

$141 in 2015 compared to -$113 in 2014 (yes, again - PPFA raised more money from new donors than it cost to acquire them!)

Results, continued In December 2015 alone we: ✳ Raised nearly 4X as much from paid

search - while simultaneously more than quadrupling the paid search ROAS (return on ad spend)

✳ It was a record-setting year-end campaign for PPFA as a whole, but December 2015 truly set a new benchmark for what the digital donor acquisition program could do for the organization.

What’s next… Go bigger!

✳ Reporting & Analysis

✳ Integration with other programs

Smart growth

UNHCR 2015

Case Study: UNHCR How big can we go?

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Case Study: UNHCR How big can we go?

Case Study: UNHCR Slow, steady

✳ Over 2500% increase in monthly ad spend from March to December, across 18 different vendors/strategies

✳ $2.35 ROAS ✳ Smart implementation (and stepping up

growth slowly) simultaneously grew and improved the program.

How to get the most out of display YOU MUST HAVE sophisticated tracking! ✳ Display conversions are view-through not

click-through. ✳ Consistent tracking, or ✳ …you're not going to be able to evaluate

display on any level. ✳ .

How to get the most out of display

✳ Focused, consistent messaging ✳ Run a significant amount of time (3 weeks-3

months) ✳ Achieve saturation (10-15 impressions per

audience members) (ISH) ✳ Have a focused audience and message.

✳ Prospects: advocacy ask ✳ Donors: monthly giving ask ✳ Etc.

Smart search

Smithsonian

Case Study: Smithsonian Search Sticking with it

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Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

ROA

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Smithsonian Search Spend and ROI

Initial nervousness

Evaluation Period

Experimentation

Summer Shift

Breakeven

EOY

Case Study: Smithsonian Search Sticking with it

Case Study: Smithsonian Search Sticking with it

Case Study: Smithsonian Search

✳ $2.08 ROAS ✳ EOY 2014 to 2015 : doubled donations

Sticking with it

Try this in your search…

✳ Challenge conventional thinking ✳ Aim low? ✳ Change your case

Fuzzy n Cute

Sierra Club Adopt a Wild Animal

Case Study: Sierra Club Gift Giving Program

Sierra Club

✳ Search: dynamic & standard keywords; retargeting

✳ Facebook custom audiences: people who donated last year

✳ Facebook lookalike audiences: people like previous donors/purchasers

✳ Retargeting: AWA site visitors ✳ Facebook and Instagram; static and

carousel ✳ Really Cute Creative

Tactics

Case Study: Sierra Club

✳ $1.30 ROAS ✳ Increased revenue from ads by 341% compared

to 2014. ✳ Our lessons learned:

✳ Develop strong creative (cute animals = success!) ✳ Capitalize on dates & deadlines ✳ Spent ad budget around the biggest gift-giving days

from previous years ✳ Test and optimize:

✳ Carousel ads, exciting! But, meh. ✳ Static ads, meh! But, exciting!

✳ Facebook ads: Great! Instagram ads: Not great.

Gift Giving Program Results

•Formats: Link posts v Offers

•Audiences: Custom, Lookalike, Interest

•Creative: Gorilla v Runners

Freakin Sweet

Facebook Ads

Event Registration

costs $45

We tested ALL THE THINGS:

VS.

Results??

We. Killed.

It.

(not the gorillas)

✳ $33 CPA (cost per registration)

✳ Instant ROI+ ($1.21!!!)

✳ Plus additional donations ✳ Targeting Runners really

worked

What we learned

✳ Event Orgs (especially P2P), Facebook works for past attendees and new people.

✳ Facebook Offers are pretty neat! (Use a discount code for a store or a gift giving program).

We’re running Facebook ads to recruit new email supporters who get moved into a phone-based field program. What’s the impact of requiring phone numbers?

(A Two-Week Test)

Results & Takeaways:

Optional Required

Total Emails 260 222

Total Phone #s 82 221

% w/ Phone # 32% 100%

Email CPA $2.84 $3.32

Phone CPA $9.02 $3.34

The email recruitment drop-off was smaller than expected, for a much bigger return on the number of phone numbers acquired. (TBD if the required phone numbers will be of the same quality).

If you’re looking to do combined email/field or email/TM recruitment, requiring phone number doesn’t have to be scary! (But still test it, obvi.)

CRM Retargeting

Test

Two months Retargeting ads for half

of DM recipients

Multichannel matching gift

campaign

Results

Immediate return?

Eh

Test results? Eh

CRM Retargeting 9/1/14-12/31/14

Audience Size

# Gifts Revenue Revenue Per

Recipient

Control (no ads) 125,381 38,802 $1,315,926 $10.50 Test (ads) 125,533 38,665 $1,322,162 $10.53

We were unable to detect a statistically significant difference in revenue per recipient between the control segment (no ads) and test segment (ads).

NOTE: The service (AdRoll) isn’t able to match all the donors we gave them. They also don’t tell us exactly how many were matched. Very rough estimates seem like: • 20% of donors without email addresses • 50% of donors with email addresses.

What we learned

✳ This type of CRM retargeting – matching and blanketing the full direct mail file with digital display ads – didn’t work for THIS ORGANIZATION

✳ Can we use this tactic with other orgs/audiences? Maybe? ✳ Targeting previous online donors? ✳ Targeting the whole email file? ✳ Targeting recent joins?

Sample Budget For Going Big or Small

Channel Ad Budget*

Search $1,500-$15,000/month

Display for Acquisition $5,000-$100,000/month

Retargeting ~$500 per 100,000 visitors/month

Incentive Programs $10,000-$25,000 per campaign

Dedicated Emails $5,000-$25,000 per campaign

Facebook Ads $5,000-$30,000/month

Non-Profit Community Lead Gen $10,000-$100,000+ per campaign

Other/Experimental $10,000-$50,000/year

* Doesn’t include agency or ad serving fees, which range from 10-35% depending on creative, management, and reporting

Madeline Stanionis, M+R www.mrss.com | @mrcampaigns

Stephanie Lauf, PPFA

www.plannedparenthood.org | @ppaction