Creativity vs Conversion - Letting Data Decide

Use Data to Drive Creative Decisions

Ok, story time. 

Years ago I was in charge of a retail email list and I partnered with someone who ran social media. We had the idea to leverage social media marketing and create a lead form campaign to drive subscribers. I left the creative to the social media expert, which came back as highly lifestyle focused, beautiful visuals, low text. 

We ran the ad for a few weeks and had a high cost per conversion. I proposed the idea of a creative switch to something more promotional and to the point. After all, our email list was largely promotional focused. There wasn’t much agreement with the proposal, because after all, social media is far more focused on ‘lifestyle’. 

I persuaded the team to test the two creatives across the same campaign setup. After another few weeks, the results were a clear winner for the promo creative at almost half of the cost for conversion. These early lessons started my foundations in email oprtimization.

The Lesson

There’s more to this than just the importance of testing, it’s a lesson in building creative for the audience and for the campaign purpose. We were trying to sell lifestyle inspiration as a promotional brand, and even worse, trying to sell inspiration into a promo email channel. Be cautious against siding with something pretty against something effective. It’s an ancient battle that analytics teams and creatives have long had, and it requires the right balance.

Who are you speaking to?

We didn’t have any illusions about who our email list was for. Our email program was filled with sales messages, urgency, last minute deals and teasers. Because of that, it was important we advertised it as such. If we tried to give it a lifestyle, casual browsing sort of appeal, it would drive the wrong consumer. Last thing we want is to spend money converting people to a list they’ll opt out of after the first email.

Lesson: Connect your Ad with your Experience

Whatever your advertising, deliver on it when the customer arrives. Whether it’s an email, landing page, subscription, etc., you need to match the expectations. This will ensure you lower the abandonment of your conversion journey and increase your conversion rate optimization.

Expert Advice: Email is for Conversion

Not to paint with too broad a brush, but email is most often associated with conversion. To stand apart in a sea of emails, you need something compelling. If you want more opens and clickthroughs, focus your emails around strong LIFT principles.

Are you measuring what matters?

In my example, the goal was clear. We wanted to drive new email subscribers at a satisfying cost per conversion. The number of impressions and ad reach weren’t valuable unless the audience was joining the list. Maybe I’ve been in advertising and sales too long, but I know the tricks agencies can pull to hype their performance.

“Look at the views! Isn't it amazing!”

Sure, you spent thousands of my dollars on a conversion campaign and nobody is buying. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for pure awareness marketing, but call it what is and measure accordingly. 

For my example of an email signup, the measurement is simple, how much is it costing per lead? With this measure as a guide, we can adjust creative, copy, audiences, location, etc until we hit a strong mix. Having a goal like this can act as a strong compass to all metrics.

Lead conversion was the primary measure, but it isn’t necessarily the only one. Once the campaign is running, we can start measuring the audience we’ve captured through this campaign and seeing how they perform with email opens, clicks or purchases versus other audiences. These metrics may help guide future campaigns.

Test and Refine

I don’t want to speak like creativity doesn’t matter, it often is the deciding factor that will help you stand out from everyone else. That creative most often requires constraint around what the goals of the campaign are and who you’re speaking to. 

As always, let the data help you decide! Testing is so easy, and I’ve found it the only sure way to get everyone on board.