1. www.Tru-Signal.comDISCOVER YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE
CASE STUDY
Problem Statement
A large for-profit college captures hundreds of thousands of
unconverted lead inquiries each month. Most of these inquiries do
not become students. Can we use Facebook campaigns and 1:1 tar-
geting techniques to reactivate those aged student inquiries and
produce new enrollments? Can we get additional lift from Facebook
advertising over and above current remarketing techniques?
Key Considerations
With the goal of driving incremental enrollments over and above
the college’s current campaigns, improving the custom audience
match rate with Facebook and optimizing the campaign creative
would be key. Here are the five key considerations we took into
account as we planned out the school’s campaign:
1. Measure Incremental Impact: Some aged inquiries will convert
“on their own” without being influenced by the campaign. How do
we measure the true incrementality of the Facebook campaign?
2. Cross-Channel Conversions: How do we account for users who
are exposed to the campaign and then convert through other
channels?
3. Age of Inquiries: When is it too soon to begin a remarketing
campaign? Is there a sweet spot for remarketing when it comes to
length of time since last inquiry?
4. List Management: To be effective with Facebook, we need the
audience match rate to be as high as possible. How can we maximize
the list asset for improved match rates?
5. Creative Burnout: Facebook campaigns can grow stale quickly.
How do we deal with creative burnout?
Using Facebook to Profitably Reactivate
Aged Lead Inquiries
TruSignal increases audience match rate by 24% and implements
closed-loop reporting to show a 38% boost in new customer activity
The Challenge
Cost-effectively turn
unconverted, aged
lead inquiries into
new customers
The Solution
A targeted remarketing
campaign via Facebook
The Results
FACEBOOK MATCH RATE:
Increased by 24%
NEW CUSTOMER ACTIVITY:
Boosted by 38%
COST PER NEW CUSTOMER:
Reduced by 75%
2. CASE STUDY
www.Tru-Signal.com www.twitter.com/TruSignalwww.Tru-Signal.com/blog
Methodology
Using Facebook’s Custom Audience capability,
TruSignal launched a 1:1 targeted campaign to re-
activate aged inquiries.
Audience Creation
To start, the college provided TruSignal a file of
unconverted inquiries that were 1–24 months old.
TruSignal then prepared the file by appending
missing emails, adding secondary contact emails,
encrypting the data, and uploading the final file to
a Facebook ad account.
A/B Split Testing
All users from the remarketing list were randomly
assigned to either the test group or the control
group. Using an A/B split testing methodology,
the test group was exposed to the Facebook
campaigns, whereas the control group was ex-
cluded from the Facebook campaigns. In all other
respects, the test and control groups were treated
identically. This experimental design allowed us
to isolate and quantify the impact of the Facebook
campaign. Any measurable difference in new leads
Send us a file of unconverted leads and
prospects via a secure FTP upload
We encrypt the final list and upload to
your Facebook ad account
Your prospecting list is now available for
targeting as a Facebook custom audience
We append missing email addresses, correct
miskeys and add secondary emails with our
database of 600 million U.S. emails
1
Jonathan R.Smith 145298722444212 12-13-1999 0312
Jack McGinnis 345544414529834 2-23-1967 9321
Peter R.Frederickson 225187224009455 12-13-1998 7621
James P.Thomas 345534646556567 2-23-1967 4321
Maria C.Sanchez 145209009345389 12-13-1999 2312
Jack McGinnis 3455872242264 2-23-1967 7685
Peter R.Frederick 2251145298009 12-13-1998 7621
James P.Thomas 3455298298 2-23-1967 4321
Joseph R.Noel 1452345565 12-13-1999 312
Susan M.Grant 345509009 2-23-1967 4321
Jack McGinnis 234553455 2-23-1967 4321
Peter R.Fredson, 2251345565 12-13-1998 7621
James P.Thomas 345509009 2-23-1967 4321
Joseph R.Noel 1452145298 12-13-1999 312
Susan M.Grant 345587224 2-23-1967 4321
Jonathan R.Smith 1452345565 12-13-1999 312
Jack McGinnis 345509009 2-23-1967 4321
Peter R.Frederick 2251345565 12-13-1998 7621
James P.Thomas 345587224 2-23-1967 4321
Maria C.Sanchez 1452298298 12-13-1999 312
Jack McGinnis 3455145298 2-23-1967 4321
Peter R.Frederickson 225109009873233 12-13-1998 7621
James P. Thomas 345565337698754 2-23-1967 4321
Joseph R. Noel 145298728413200 12-13-1999 7685
Peter R.Fredson, 225134556569672 12-13-1998 7621
James P.Thomas 345509009298799 2-23-1967 4321
2
Jonathan R. Smith jrsmith@gmail.com 721319921344
Steven P. Onis onis.steven@google.com 14316793217
Thomas Algren III thomasalgreen3@msn.com 2314361
Maria C. Sanchez mariasanchez@google.com 6912312
Jack McGinnis jackmcginnis@gmail.com 4338723196
3
0110010101010
0100011110101
0101011011010
1010101010100
0011111010101
0111101011101
0101010101010
1111001011110
0110101010001
4
FB Match
before
TruSignal
Appends
Net FB Match
w/TruSignal
Appends
Increase
in Match
Records
Match Rate
Improvement
1,549,904 1,921,882 371,978 24%
INCREASED MATCH RATE
By tapping into TruSignal’s database of 600 million U.S. emails
the school’s match rate with Facebook increased by 24%.
3. CASE STUDY
www.Tru-Signal.com www.twitter.com/TruSignalwww.Tru-Signal.com/blog
and enrollments between the test and control
groups can be directly attributable to the Facebook
campaign. In other words, we can measure the
incremental impact of the campaign.
Closed-Loop Tracking
The campaign was set up to track results in two
ways: through an online conversion pixel and
an offline email match. By comparing the email
addresses of all new lead inquiries generated in a
month with the original control and test groups,
we could measure exactly how many new leads
were generated from each group (see table
below). The email matching approach helped us
overcome many limitations with online conversion
pixels and allowed for a complete view of the
campaign impact. We were able to measure users
who were exposed to the Facebook campaign and
later converted through ALL channels, including
phone, TV, direct mail, search, and mobile.
Creative Optimization
In collaboration with the school, TruSignal created
a series of ad units across desktop news feeds,
mobile news feeds, and right hand marketplace
ads. All ad units were targeted 1:1 against the aged
inquiry audience and optimized for performance.
The campaign tested more than 200 different ad
permutations and honed in the winning formulas
that produced the most attractive lift metrics. By
rotating different creative sets, TruSignal was able
to avoid creative “burn out” that is symptomatic of
typical Facebook campaigns.
Analysis
A post-campaign analysis of the test and control
group responses and enrollments revealed several
positive proof points for including Facebook
advertising within the college’s multi-channel
marketing mix.
Incremental Impact
The marked differences between the new leads
and enrollments from the test and control groups
proved that the Facebook campaign was effective
at generating incremental enrollments. Aged leads
from the test group were 38 percent more likely to
enroll than those in the control group. Moreover,
these incremental enrollments were very cost
effective—reducing the school’s enrollment costs
by 75 percent.
Time Series Key Findings
Our study found that the campaign for the 1–4
month inquiries, while not stimulating much new
interest, reinforced the user’s decision to submit
Control Test Incremental Wins Lift
Records 960,000 960,000
Inquiries 1154 1519 365 32%
Enrollments 73 101 28 38%
CAMPAIGN RESULTS
The A/B analysis showed a positive lift in both new form completions and enrollments, showing the incremental
impact of the Facebook Ad Remarketing campaign.
4. CASE STUDY
www.Tru-Signal.com www.twitter.com/TruSignalwww.Tru-Signal.com/blog
Copyright 2013 TruSignal, All Rights Reserved
a form in the first place and therefore positively
influenced enrollment. Users in the 5–24 month
test groups were statistically more responsive
than their control counterparts, therefore driving
incremental value at both the lead and enrollment
level and at a greater percentage. This shows the
campaign’s ability to rekindle interest in the school
and drive incremental growth for inquiries aged
5–24 months.
Offline, Closed-Loop Reporting
Our analysis also found that the online
conversion pixel only accounted for a fraction
of the campaign’s impact. Today’s prospective
students use many channels for research and
form submission. However, with our ability to
match emails one-to-one through the college’s
CRM system we were able to compare those who
responded to the campaign on the back-end for
complete, closed-loop reporting. This allowed
us to show the true incremental impact of the
Facebook remarketing campaign across all of the
colleges many acquisition channels.
Conclusions
This 1:1 targeted campaign with TruSignal via
Facebook was a cost effective way to utilize one
of the schools best, hidden assets—past prospects.
List Expansion for Improved Reach
With TruSignal’s proprietary email append and
clean-up process the number of targetable users
in Facebook increased by 24 percent.
Incremental Enrollments Show Campaign Success
Some aged leads would have come back and
converted “on their own” without any prompting
from the Facebook campaign. To accurately
quantify the value of the campaign, it was
important to measure the incremental enroll-
ments (i.e. users who would not have enrolled if
not for the Facebook campaign) attributable to
the Facebook campaign. By running a carefully
controlled A/B testing protocol, we were able to
demonstrate a 38 percent increase in enrollments
in the test group. Since both the control and test
group received identical treatment (apart from
the Facebook campaign), we can conclude that
the incremental enrollments in the test group are
a direct result of the Facebook campaign.
Closed-Loop Analysis is Critical
By implementing the closed-loop reporting with
email match-back, we were able to track and
measure 100 percent of the responses.
Creative Optimization is a Must-Do
The creative testing and optimization techniques
provided critical insights into the right creative
messaging to re-engage prospective students.
There is a Sweet Spot
The campaign made the most impact on inquires
5–24 months old with the highest response and
enrollment rates being at 13–24 months. We can
conclude that using Facebook to re-engage
inquiries under five-months-old is not as cost
effective as waiting until they are closer to five-
months-old.