Global payment system Visa, visa.com.ru Facts & figures
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Gazprombank, gazprombank.ru Facts & figures
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Goals
- Decrease CPL for a request for a credit card
- Lower the cost of an approved request
Tools used:
- Yandex.Direct / Automatic strategies
- Yandex.Metrica
Period: September — December 2019 (4 months)
Step 1. Pre-automatic strategies: Managing bids manually and analyzing the situation
September — Early October 2019
Early on, we managed our bids manually and tried to appear as much as possible in search results, especially in response to branded queries.
As a result, we received a large number of card requests, but the conversion rate for their approval (and by extension, for cards issued) was too low.
Manual bid managements did not allow us to get the results we needed — to have broad reach, maximum presence in search results, and at the same time maintain relatively low costs for approval of the Visa Smart card from Gazprombank with cash-back and miles.
So we decided to experiment with automatic bid management strategies.
Step 2. Experimenting with the “Optimize clicks” automatic strategy
Late October — early November 2019
We decided to test out automatic strategies. At that moment, the “Optimize conversions” strategy was not an option, as we temporarily lacked the possibility of integrating our CRM system with Yandex.Metrica, so we enabled the “Optimize clicks” strategy instead.
To get the number of approvals at a price acceptable to the bank, we calculated the cost and number of clicks that would lead to a sufficient number of conversions.
Step 3. New experiment: Switching to “Optimize conversions” strategy
Late November — December 2019
The automatic strategies brought their first results — the number of credit card requests increased by 41% compared to the period of manual bid management.
The approval cost, however, remained high, despite sufficient traffic volume. It was time to improve the quality of the traffic.
So we continued our experiments, and switched to the “Optimize conversions” automatic strategy.
Results
- The main result was a significant reduction in the cost of the card application and the cost of approval: the former decreased by 78% compared to before the start of testing, and the latter, by 86%.
- By the end of testing, CTR had increased by 24%, the number of requests — by 33%, and the bounce rate dropped by 19%.
- Every month, CPA for the goal (credit card request sent) decreased. The number of conversions increased during the first stage of testing, and then remained stable. In November, the number of applications received decreased slightly in comparison to October, but card applications did better at converting to approval. In December, the approval rate increased by 24% compared to October.
- Conversions for sent requests increased by 95%.
- Switching to the automatic strategies brought more high-quality clicks: the percentage of users from Yandex.Direct who successfully applied for a Smart card increased. The number of approved credit card applications increased by 52%.
An extra bonus — automatic strategies saved 71% of the budget for online promotion of the Smart card
The new “Last click from Yandex.Direct” attribution model helped to better allocate the budget for promoting the Smart card on the internet. Experts measured the number of requests for cards using the “Last click from Yandex.Direct” attribution model, and based on the indicators, they redistributed the budget toward campaigns that generated more requests that converted to approval.
In creating our campaigns, we needed to keep the interests of both partners in mind: we wanted to get more applications for Visa cards, while also taking Gazprombank’s goals and business into account.
Our work with Yandex.Direct automatic strategies and systematic testing lasted four months. As a result, we were able to find the right settings for our display strategy and ad campaigns overall. We found the right balance between the volume of applications received and their approval rates, while keeping the cost of an approved application at a level suitable for the bank.
Performics managed to reach the goals of Visa and Gazprombank — to increase the volume of credit card approvals by 52% and reduce the cost of credit card approval by 86%.
