Avalon worked with the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) to build its list of email subscribers and combat natural attrition by running a targeted Facebook lead generation campaign.
For creative, we used the highest performing creative from the previous ad campaign. But we also developed new creative that include a carousel of images from the museum’s annual member calendar and invited users to vote for their favorite image. Finally, we utilized the in-platform email collection tool. This allows people to easily sign up without leaving Facebook, cutting out extra steps for the user and maximizing conversions.
NMAI had previously tested ads on Google Search and display and Twitter with limited success. But given Facebook’s reach and the museum’s engaged community on that platform, we wanted to test generating leads there. We used NMAI’s existing Facebook followers to build a lookalike audience based on interests, keywords, and geographic location. And, when early performance showed our new carousel creative was underperforming the creative from the previous campaign, we shifted our ad spend to ads with stronger click-through rates. Plus, it was a great time to reach out to new supporters since the museum was about to re-open after a months-long pandemic closure.
New subscribers entered an automated 3-effort Welcome Series that
The combination of the right platform, right creative, and right timing helped NMAI bring in nearly 12,000 new email subscribers with a cost-per-lead (CPL) of just $1.13 (including all associated costs). This outcome translated to a 16% increase in their active email list size and a 98% reduction in CPL from the previous campaign. The 9.93% click-through rate was 11 times higher than our benchmark average of 0.91%. And new members who joined via the Welcome Series have an average gift of $33 – 50% higher than the museum’s $22 introductory offer. The engagement numbers for this campaign were also huge for NMAI – more than two million impressions, nearly 200,000 clicks, and a lead-per-click rate right at our benchmark of 6%.
We will use these findings to further finetune our next campaign, slated to run during Native American History Month and Thanksgiving in November when interest in the museum historically peaks online.
