Let’s face it, Paid Social teams are aways playing the game of the platform algorithm, never entirely sure what it is or how it works. Sure, we have a good idea, however the nuances of impression delivery and how budgets are allocated still raises a lot of questions amongst critical thinkers.
Retargeting audiences are a prime example. There is always some doubt over how an engaged visitor is bucketed and deemed ‘likely to convert’, especially when using the rudimentary audiences available on the platforms. Who really is in a 30-daywebsite visitor audience? How does the algorithm distinguish between someone who is in market from a casual browser or a mistaken click?
A perfect example is the car vertical. Any car fan will go into a configurator, customise their dream Porsche and close the tab, but only a tiny proportion are actually in-market and looking to take the next step. We’re at the mercy of the algorithm when it comes to ad delivery, and we know that we’re wasting a portion of our valuable impressions and budget on “Jimmy the Porsche fan”.
In response, and because we can, we’ve been able to break down these retargeting audiences into smaller segments; add to cart, product viewers, initiate checkout etc, incorporating smaller and smaller recencies to hopefully find the most likely to convert within the parameters available. These segments can often still be large however, and when budgets are becoming more and more stringent, clients want to see their money working as hard and smart as possible.
Enter Hyper-segmentation. It’s a term often thrown around, however at Sub2 Tech we’ve been able to grasp its true value in our game-changing service; ScoreMax. ScoreMax gets the maximum out of tailored budget strategies, and that’s crucial at times like these.
By placing code on site and using intelligent modelling, we’ve been able to create hyper segments of users based on on-site actions, to quantitatively score potential customers on their likelihood to convert. We ingest these audiences back into respective social platforms into tailor-made events and parameters to retarget. It’s not based on the algorithm, but rather leveraging the algorithm towards pre-loaded segments, which we know will or will not convert.
By gaming the algorithm this way results have been astonishing. Up to 90% improvement on conversion rates, 33% in CPAs and most importantly, reduced budget and impression wastage to the client. By incorporating ScoreMax into all our paid social clients Sub2 has been able to consistently beat the comparable ‘BAU’ retargeting segment using these modelled hyper segments.