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Hollard Solver Case study – Campaign Optimisation
A RABID BITCH MORE THAN DOUBLES THE SIZES OF A SALES CHANNEL
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Objective
Hollard wanted to increase the effectiveness of its leads-based sales channel:
More Leads = More Quotes = More Business
The rate at which someone visits a website and then asks for a quote was our key metric – the conversion rate.
What We Did
amorphous developed a rapid-fire experiment. Copy, design and media were repeatedly tested to find optimum combinations.
What Happened
- Overall cost per lead – down 75% (over 5 months)
- Number of site visitors asking for quotes (that conversion ratio) – up 60%
YOU COULD STOP READING HERE ‘COS YOU’VE GOT THE ESSENCE BUT CARRY ON – IT GETS MORE INTERESTING. PROMISE.
The product – pet insurance for dogs and cats – is much the same as your hospital plan, only furrier.
Hoping to tap the niche, Hollard Solver released its product to an unsuspecting market of pet owners, so education became one of the primary tasks. Naturally.
The major objective was to bring down the cost of sales, specifically in this case, the cost per lead.
amorphous’ fundamental approach to the campaign was one of iterative learning. We put a set of adverts into the market, measured everything and dropped what didn’t work. What did work however was dissected and refined, prioritised and released back into the wild. A rinse and repeat cycle of continuous improvement.
DESIGN & LANGUAGE
We tested the strength of both the language and visual cues in each design. On the visual side, we tested multiple variations in layout, colour, contrast, simplicity, white space, as well as the priority of the messaging itself.
On language, we tested three main angles, namely:
- Edgy – Rabid bitch in your neighbourhood?
- Hard – Put a choke chain on vet’s bills
- Emotive – What if he got sick and you didn’t have the money?
Put very simply (and perhaps a little heartlessly), it didn’t take long to learn that when it comes to people insuring their pets, aim straight for the heart!We rapidly tested messaging online and then applied those learnings across our mediums.What if digital was the originator? What if we swept focus groups aside and favoured real world testing with definitive results? What if we swapped the assumptions of few for the beliefs of many? The fact is, iterative learning gets us as close to fact as fact can be – which is a fitting guide for future design, regardless of the medium.
MEDIA PLANNING
We got off on the good foot by negotiating bulk volume deals with major publishers, cutting lead costs in Phase 1 of the project. As measurements gave way to insights, we optimised our print placements to keep costs low – without putting a major dent in the reach.But then things turned on their head – literally. After testing and optimising our online designs, we fed those insights into the print designs – which flies in the face of old school media theory. We really needed the right kind of visitors to our store. And we got them, in droves.
The results really speak for themselves:
- 75% decrease of costs per lead over the course of the project
- A decent sample size of 36 000 visits (that’s 6,000 more than AMPS uses)
- We observed a 60% increase in visitors that converted into leads (meaning we were getting the right sort of customers)
INSIGHTS
Our approach of iterative learning was clearly successful here. We threw out gut feeling, personal experience and subjectivity, relying instead on the hard facts of what the market was telling us. Like a science experiment, observation trumps suspicion.
So next time that really convincing creative director (yes that ageing white guy) tells you he ‘gets’ the South African youth – get analytical.