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A smart automatic strategy for the Visa Smart card: +52% approved requests from automatic strategies

Switching to the automatic “Optimize conversions” strategy for the goal “Request sent” allowed Visa and Gazprombank to reach out to users more likely to apply for a credit card and, more importantly, to have their application approved by the bank. The first results were noticeable within two weeks of switching to the automatic strategy, and in the end, 1.5X more approved requests were received in December than in September. At the same time, the cost of an approved request dropped by 86%.
Case results
Finance
Optimization and switching to automatic strategies increased the ROI from Yandex.Direct
+24%
+24%
CTR
–78%
–78%
CPO for request sent
+52%
+52%
approved requests
–86%
–86%
CPL for approved lead
Clients

Global payment system Visa, visa.com.ru

Facts & figures

  • 1958 company founded
  • 65 000 transactions per second
  • 3.4 B cards across the world

Gazprombank, gazprombank.ru

Facts & figures

  • 1990 company founded
  • 350 branches in Russia
  • 5 M clients across the country

Goals

  1. Decrease CPL for a request for a credit card
  2. 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

Svetlana Kokorina
Svetlana Kokorina
Marketing manager, Visa
We had an ambitious goal: to increase the volume of Visa cards issued, to improve Visa’s brand recognition, and to do so using reputable methods. In collaboration with our partner Gazprombank and colleagues from Performics and Starcom, we developed an approach and methodology to place Gazprombank ads via Yandex.Direct. This made it possible not only to achieve the goals of the Visa team, but also to do so in the most effective way.

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

Sofia Tverskaya
Sofia Tverskaya
Product manager, Digital sales, Digital technology department
Our main goal was to get high-quality applications with a high approval rate, and thereby reduce the cost of an approved credit card application. At the same time, we wanted the number of approved applications to continue to grow.

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.


The campaign setup process took the important indicators, like CPC and optimum CPO for request sent, into account.

We saw significant results after just two weeks of testing.

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.

Sofia Tverskaya
Sofia Tverskaya
Product manager, Digital sales, Digital technology department
Restrictions related to Gazprom’s protection of its clients’ personal data meant that we could not user all the available optimization tools in Yandex.Direct. However, targeted optimization for online conversions had a positive impact on the funnel, both online and offline: from CPC, to the approval rate and reducing the cost of an approved application.
Nastya Bulgakova
Nastya Bulgakova
Senior Performance Manager, Performics

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%.

A smart automatic strategy for the Visa Smart card: +52% approved requests from automatic strategies
A smart automatic strategy for the Visa Smart card: +52% approved requests from automatic strategies
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Case prepared in collaboration with the Performics agency

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