December 22, 2015

Virgin Experience Days

By adopting a search strategy that embraced mobile, remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) and Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), iCrossing helped Virgin Experience Days achieve substantial growth over a three-year period

Brief

The key objectives were to maximise orders and revenue at an acceptable ROI. The account was already successful at targeting high-volume generic keywords such as ‘driving experiences’ but had gaps for lower search volume products that are frequently updated, or new products that have been added. iCrossing wanted to improve coverage and order volume on product-specific queries, and tap into valuable keywords that had not had coverage in the past.

Strategy

Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) is a PPC feature that enabled iCrossing to customise the search campaigns to users who had previously visited the Virgin Experience Days site by automatically tailoring bids and ads to these visitors when they searched on Google. People who have visited the site – whether or not they converted – have an existing relationship with the brand, so the propensity for them to convert is that much higher. Using RLSA on standard search campaigns had demonstrated that those consumers who had interacted with the brand were much more likely to convert again. When the opportunity to combine Dynamic Search Ads with remarketing techniques arose, the team quickly put this into action.

Execution

iCrossing have been using remarketing to build up lists of those who have visited the site, previously converted or abandoned a basket. For the new remarketing campaign, iCrossing simply duplicated the existing DSA campaign and then set two target audiences using RLSA: new visitors and returning visitors.

Result

Compared to DSA campaigns without RLSA, the new approach has delivered big wins: the click-through rate is 281 per cent higher, conversion rate is 230 per cent higher and ROI is 89 per cent higher. The huge differences in click-through rate and conversion rate meant iCrossing were able to increase bids and revenue whilst maintaining ROI. To ensure an accurate picture of performance, iCrossing conducted additional analysis.

Tobit Michael, Managing Partner at iCrossing said: “We used Google Analytics to determine if this growth was coming at the expense of organic traffic, and we found there was little to no cannibalisation happening – this was almost entirely incremental revenue. In one month alone, it amounted to 20 per cent of revenue driven from paid search, all going directly to the bottom line.” Going forward, iCrossing and Virgin Experience Days are committed to their winning formula.

“We’re currently at a level where 58 per cent of all DSA revenue comes from our DSA with RLSA activity. By adding remarketing to DSA, we have seen a 701 per cent increase in revenue for our DSA activity and a 34 per cent increase in ROI.”