Success Story: How Not to Give Up After First Weak Results
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Did you know that India is one of the most promising markets for 2023?
That’s right! The situation in India is changing so fast lately – from a country whose residents relied mostly on the cash economy, almost overnight, it transformed into a digital payment kingdom. One step led to another and unexpectedly, Fintech is the industry with the hugest growth right now in this part of the world.
If you want to learn more about the post-pandemic trends in India, make sure not to miss a podcast with the industry name Gaurav Mehta – it’s super interesting and engaging.
So, it’s clear the circumstances were just right for our partner – Stashfin, who’s all about providing quick online loans to Indian people, to get more traffic and more conversions. But still, they needed an extra push and a bit of PropellerAds magic to end up where they are today.
About the Campaign
Let’s see how it all started.
This case study is super fresh. The flow and the results we are about to show you are tied to the end of February and the beginning of March this year, and the duration period was seven days – from February 25th to March 3rd.
Here are the campaign details:
- Traffic Source: PropellerAds
- Ad formats: Push ads, Popunder ads
- Pricing models: CPA Goal, SmartCPC
- Campaign Settings: Mobile, Android
- GEO: India
- Budget: $10,000/month
What you should know is the campaign is running for two years whenever the seasonality is high for India.
For instance, right now, there is the International Cricket Council Tournament (ICC) which is a big deal across the whole country – during these days, traffic goes crazy and spikes significantly, which leads to an increase in the demand for services like the one Stashfin is providing.
And yes, their budget was huge. But don’t let that intimidate you. Our partner did invest a lot in this campaign, but what matters more is the fact they were strategic but playful, they were open to ideas and suggestions, and they weren’t shaken and wavered by the first disappointing results.
They pushed through, and they were awarded for it.
Campaign Flow
February 25-27, 2023
So, despite the big budget, our client started small, just to feel the market. They decided to launch the campaign with Push notifications and only two creatives, and to rely on the CPA Goal model for the first four days.
You must be wondering what happened afterwards?
Well, to be honest, nothing much.
When it comes to conversions, it was dry as a desert. NOTHING for the first two days, the same number – only 21 conversions. Yes, the impressions were doubled, but no action, not really. Then on day three, an unexpected surprise – the tracker showed 39 conversions and a slight decline in ad visibility, which led to day four when everything shifted.
February 28, 2023
On day four, conversions went to 100, and everything else started rising, continuously. Okay, there were still some ripples, but that’s to be expected, there’s never a straight line in this line of business. What’s important is this was a clear sign the campaign was the right call. As well as the strategy behind it.
It’s just like with losing weight – you cannot step on the scale 10 times on a first day expecting to see the numbers go down each time, or at all. The desire itself for something to happen isn’t enough, it takes time. And patience.
March 1, 2023
So even though the average CR for the first four days was only 0,5%, the client was on the right track. On the 1st of March, they added two more sets of creatives for Push notifications, but they also created a whitelist campaign with top zones on the SmartCPS model.
On top of that, Stashfin decided to go all the way through, so, at the same time, they launched the CPA Goal Onlick campaign on Run-of-network (RON), no whitelists or blacklists – the type of advertising with no targeting specifications.
At this point, the numbers exploded. Overnight there were almost 500 conversions, almost one million impressions, and nearly 15.000 clicks. So from 21 to 500 in just five days – not bad at all! The conversion rate was now 4% on average, which is quite pleasing keeping in mind both the campaign’s time frame and the specificity of the clients’ service offers.
Clearly, the combination of Popunder and Push notifications was a winning strike.
March 2, 2023
The final step, at least regarding this small fragment of time we extracted to make a case study was this:
For the Push campaign, they added even more creatives + they started a whitelist SmartCPC campaign that resulted in doubling the number of impressions. Again in one day. So a million turned into two million impressions. And sure, the CTR doesn’t seem to be high as expected, but that’s only because of a great increase in impressions.
If you ask anyone who works in the sales department, they would agree this is an outstanding result.
Next steps
It’s clear the work’s not done yet. Ambition-wise – numbers can always go up, and precaution-wise – it can all change in a day. With campaigns like this one, you need to make sure you are flexible enough to be able to stay in control of the narrative. Sure, we made some awesome results, but now we need to make sure everything stays that way.
We created a new plan, Stashfin approved it, and we decided just to keep going. So in the following weeks, we will do this:
- create a very engaging Interstitial campaign with a landing page creative
- start a SmartCPM campaign with top zones from the CPA Goal Onclick campaign
- refresh creatives for Push notifications every week in order to get fresh traffic
By the way: Even though it doesn’t look like that from how the table for March 3rd is presenting the data, the campaign results were more than good that day as well. The conversions were stable, just like everything else. The fact is, stats were pulled too early and they only covered the first two to three hours of that particular day.
Final Thoughts
Patience. Patience. Patience.
It’s not easy at all, we know. Sometimes it feels like it may kill you. But it’s absolutely necessary to survive and succeed in the affiliate world.
If we are being honest, Stashfin should be congratulated for sticking to the plan till the very end, and for being no more than brave. It takes confidence not to pull out when things get tough. Experiments are always risky, there’s no way to deny this, but a thoughtful approach + experienced account manager is a combo that can change the game.
Now, from this distance, we can say, ‘it’s been only four days’. But four days may seem like forever when you invest your all into a campaign hoping for the best.
What have we learned?
- 1. Push notifications and Popunder can be the force of nature together
- 2. Small CR rise is still a rise
- 3. Be generous with creatives; the more the merrier
- 4. There’s nothing in a con list when talking about the WL campaign with top zones
- 5. Don’t give up, even when it seems you really should – wait for just a while anyways
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