How Trovant Media Reduced CPA’s for Savers by 90%
Introduction
For-profit thrift stores that help nonprofits
Committed to reselling and recycling, Savers purchases used goods from community groups and nonprofits and then sells the highest quality items in over 300 for-profit thrift stores across the United States and Canada. The priority is to find a new purpose for any given item, with unsold items being recycled or sent to developing counties. Savers keep more than 700 million pounds of used goods from landfills every year.
To get a steady stream of incoming merchandise, Savers partners with a variety of nonprofit organizations and purchases donated goods from them. In 2015 Savers rolled out the FUNDrive program, which encourages smaller nonprofit community groups like schools, churches, sports programs, animal shelters, and more to host donation drive fundraisers. Savers then buy the goods collected, providing valuable funding to the organization.
“With the FUNDrive program, we are reaching out to smaller nonprofit organizations like scouts, Little League, and churches. These groups can raise money for things like new uniforms, band camp, or something similar.”
– Nancy Storment,
Senior Marketing Manager for Partnerships at Savers
Problem
Overspending on new leads for FUNDrive
While word of mouth certainly brings in FUNDrive participants, Savers requires fast-growth media buying to solicit more used goods. Savers was running Facebook ads to encourage people to sign up to get more information about the FUNDrive program.
“We weren’t getting the dedication and focus that we needed with this particular program.”
– Nancy Storment,
Senior Marketing Manager for Partnerships at Savers
“The goal is for someone to fill out the form online and tell us that they’re interested,” says Storment. “And then our next goal is to actually convert them into a FUNDrive participant.”
To manage the Facebook campaigns, Savers had enlisted two different large agencies. “I didn’t feel that our agencies were giving the FUNDrive advertising program the attention it needed,” says Storment. “We had a really high CPA and we wanted an alternative agency who was better suited to manage the program on a day-to-day basis and who was willing to have a weekly conference call to discuss necessary changes and optimization.”
Savers’ needs were lost at the large agencies. “We felt like we were a tiny fish in that big sea and we weren’t getting the dedication and focus that we needed with this particular program.” As a result, Savers was paying $129.85 per lead with one agency and $91.65 with a second agency.
Solution
Fix the foundation
Storment was referred to Trovant Media by a colleague and was able to quickly notice a difference in Trovant Media CEO Jonathan Wallace’s approach. “When we first started working with Jonathan we only had him do one or two markets to see if he could do better than our agency, and it was pretty evident that he could,” says Storment. “Within the first four or five months, we transitioned all of our advertising over to him for the FUNDrive program.”
What set the Trovant Media experience apart was a holistic approach to paid advertising. Rather than continue to operate the existing campaign with a high cost per conversion, Wallace chose to address the fundamental issues, namely the landing pages for the incoming traffic.
“Jonathan has done a great job in helping us figure things out when we weren’t entirely sure ourselves. He’s creative and innovative when it comes to getting people to convert.”
– Nancy Storment,
Senior Marketing Manager for Partnerships at Savers
Wallace immediately noticed that the landing pages weren’t optimized and worked with this team to fix them. “He established a unique landing page for each location specifically,” explains Storment. “They said, ‘Hey Seattle! Hey Los Angeles! Hey Chicago!’ so that each page was more locally relevant. Then, he made it easier for people to enter their information.” Storment also notes that the Trovant Media team assisted with technical aspects of the campaign, making sure that the Facebook leads were integrated with Savers’s CRM.
Cost Per Conversion Comparison
How Much Savers Paid for Each New Lead
Agency #1 $129.85
Agency #2 $91.65
Trovant Media $37.14
Results
Massive reduction in cost per conversion
By halting advertising spend on unoptimized campaigns and by completely overhauling the landing pages, Trovant Media was able to lower the cost per conversion from $91.65 to $37.14 within three months. Trovant Media has now been running Facebook ads for Savers for over two years, and the lifetime CPA has averaged $35.
New landing pages aren’t the only factor in the massive cost reduction. More rigorous testing is also a key component. Trovant Media continuously optimizes the targeting methods, ad copy, imagery, landing page copy,
and more. Keeping to Savers’ original budget, Trovant Media has increased conversions by over 300%.
“Jonathan has done a great job in helping us figure things out when we weren’t entirely sure ourselves,” says Storment of what it’s been like to work with Wallace. “He’s creative and innovative when it comes to getting people to convert.”