A TFD regional magazine client recently doubled its newsletter list size in 6 months using Facebook Ads - here’s how they did it.
Objective
Brands and publishers are always looking to grow their newsletter lists in a cost-efficient manner and targeted way. No matter how you monetize your audience, an email capture is a key step before monetization so it plays a vital role in any audience development strategy. Because of this, we are always looking for experimental and new ways to accomplish this goal on behalf of our clients. Recently, we partnered with one of our regional publishing magazine clients in an effort to significantly increase their email newsletter lists.
Publishing over 10 individual newsletters, the client’s objective was to identify and build audiences based on niche interests relative to the content distributed. This included lists of people who love to travel, eat, go to the theater, be active outdoors, drink whiskey, and more. Affordable email acquisition was the primary goal for this client.
A key differentiator for this client was their willingness to invest at a high level which allowed for extensive experimentation that ultimately led to a strategy that struck email acquisition gold.
Strategy
- Leveraging a relatively unique, unsaturated idea, TFD utilized Facebook ads to amplify specific pieces of the client’s content. The articles are “gated” behind an in-platform Facebook form.
Tactics
Targeting
- Audience targeting was set at the intersection of geography and user interest.
Execution
- To read the content, a Facebook user will input their email address to sign up for the niche content newsletter. The article is not behind a paywall on the site, so it is accessible on the open web without email address submission. Interested readers’ email addresses auto-populate in the Facebook form, making the subscription sign-up a seamless process.
- Campaigns are typically 4-6 weeks long with tests on multiple variations of copy and imagery to determine what will produce the top outcome from each segment.
Results
The client believed in this idea and invested significantly in this strategy. As a result, their subscriber lists saw dramatic increase.
- In a 6-month timeframe, the client spent $20,000 and earned 40,000 new emails - a 102% increase.
- Cost Per Thousand Impressions was only $4.72 despite industry-wide traffic changes.
- Only 11% of emails are churning, proving an 89% retention rate.
- The average cost per lead was $.50.