• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 11, 2015

Western Union Digital, the ecommerce arm based in San Francisco, has combined content, video, social, display, and search advertising into a multichannel, multidevice year-long campaign to give away $182,500 in gifts. Data from knowing customers sending money to family members and friends supported the ad targeting.

"Our customers work hard to succeed in life to give a better life to someone they love," says Nidhi Gupta, the company's senior marketing manager, Americas.

Gupta says the campaign uses the "feel, think and act model." She says success came from messages that made people feel something about the brand, followed by something that made them think and act.

The awareness campaign gave away monthly prizes were luxury weekends, credit card bill payments, and more to bring awareness to the thousands of locations, as well as the mobile app. The final prizes include a down payment for a home, car, or year's school tuition.

Gupta and team tied the brand to an incredible story and pretty noble values, calling it "sweat equity." The next phase of the campaign will not just give away a home, but help build them, she says.

As the American Dream campaign winds down and Western Union gifts the remaining prizes, Gupta shares the campaign's results with MediaPost Search Insider Summit attendees Friday during her opening keynote. 

The cost per click (CPC) for paid-search campaigns came in at 22% lower than Western Union's average campaign. The click-through rate (CTR) was 2% higher than overall average. The cost per acquisition (CPA) was 27% lower than overall average, and the conversion rate was 4.4% higher than the average campaign for the company.

The campaign relied on branded keywords, but also capitalized on other keywords to enter new market. Some generic phrases include "how to pay a bill," "how to get a loan," and "how to get debut free." Content supported the keyword searches.  

Display also expanded the audience through retargeting with direct response messages. Offering a customer a message they can engage with and then offer a direct response message it drives better conversion rates.

The display ads at .1% outperformed the industry click rates at .06%. When featuring the tuition prize the display ad performed even better among Millennials.

Landing page conversion to acquisition was two times the average, and conversion to purchase was 350% higher.

The social, mostly earned and owned media, campaign produced direct click-through conversions higher than any previous westernunion.com campaigns. The Facebook reached nearly 2.7 million with 3.4 million impressions, and a sentiment of 89% positive to neutral, Gupta says.

Video ads got 2 million views across Facebook and YouTube. American Dream videos had a 13% higher average percent viewed than the year to date average for the channel.

American Dream average views per video came in 137% higher than the year-to-date average for the channel. Overall, viewers spent 20,339 hours watch the videos. Two of the videos had a 98% average percentage viewed.

In aggregate, the campaign's cash prizes redeemed for a down payment for a house, school tuition, family meals and more. People could submit an entry form without making a money transfer, or those that do were automatically entered when sending money through the system. The amount awarded depended on the specific promotion at the time.