2019 Awards Preview: Most Effective Performance Marketing Campaign

Ahead of our 2019 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, staged in partnership with our headline partner Dynata, and our partners DAX and TabMo, well be previewing the nominees in each category,giving you a glimpse at the high quality of entries weve seen this year. In today’s preview, we look at the best performance marketing campaigns.


Parkmobile & MobPro: Anti-churn Campaign
Parkmobile (RingGo in the UK) is the most downloaded parking app in the Netherlands. Parkmobile – and Ringo – doesn’t make money unless someone uses the app to pay for a parking session. Generating as many downloads as possible therefore doesn’t necessarily benefit RingGo. For this reason, and because various studies show that significant costs are involved with having to attract new customers, MobPro actively focused marketing efforts on preventing active users from deleting the app and activating them to use the app when parking.

The strategy was to target current users with three different mobile banners within a period of five months, each presenting a different incentive to re-activate the current users. MobPro then investigated which incentive and which churn management method (lift or risk) is the most effective.

To reach users with a retention campaign, MobPro connects a predefined audience to its S+A marketing platform, an automated buying solution used to target consumers through mobile, desktop, and DOOH devices. When a bid request including an advertising ID is presented, the platform is able to match it to the audience, so MobPro can serve and track different creative to individual devices precisely.

Afterwards, MobPro was able to classify users based on their risk-scores and lift-score, enabling it to compare both churn methods.

Quantitative research conducted in collaboration with Erasmus University Rotterdam showed an “undeniable” relation between the retention campaign and preventing customer churn. The churn rate of the campaign group was 37 per cent lower than the control group.

It was also found that targeting users more sensitive to advertising (lift) is more effective than targeting users with a high churn risk (risk). The churn rate of the lift group, compared to a control group, was reduced by 50 per cent. The ROI results also improved significantly from 109 per cent with the risk method to 376 per cent with the lift model.

Radiant & Moburst: The launch of the Say app
Radiant wanted to create a social app that opens the door to a secure, wholesome, private environment for family conversation, free from interruptions. However, it started out on its journey without knowing the best way to make inroads in the family structure.

Working with Moburst, it started testing two sets of creatives: one aimed at parents, the other aimed at teens. These tests made it clear that the app needed to target parents, so it launched another set of tests to see which messaging and visuals resonated the most with this group.

A combination of Apple Search Ads, Facebook, and targeted media buys were used to reach the target. During this process, media allocations were being continually optimised to reduce cost of the app install and deeper events within the conversion funnel.

Say launched in late April 2019 with the goal of achieving 30,000 installs from the campaign’s media budget. In three months, it reached 58,234 installs, exceeding its target by 98 per cent. Cost per install was lowered from $4.38 to $1.77 and cost per invite sent was way down from $37.01 to $8.89.

Starbucks & HelloWorld, A Merkle Company: Starbucks for Life
In its fourth year running, Starbucks for Life has become a modern mobile holiday tradition. The primary campaign goals included driving customer excitement and store visits during the holiday season using a fun, whimsical mobile game with chances to win the coveted prize – Starbucks for Life.

During the holiday season, Starbucks Rewards members were encouraged to make a purchase to earn a game play in the Starbucks for Life game. Each play earned the member a collect-to-win game piece and the chance to instantly win a prize. A holiday-themed game board tracked the member’s progress towards collecting all pieces in the race to claim Starbucks for Life, Starbucks for a Year, and more. The guaranteed chance at instantly winning a prize in the snow globe game drove repeat visits, and members were invited to share their favourite game pieces to social media, extending the campaign reach.

The game had real-time purchase integration with the Starbucks app, enabling participants to immediately earn a play and engage following their eligible purchase. Users were offered a free first play and a guided tour of the game to further drive participation and reduce drop-off. The guided free first play engaged 94 per cent of players who visited the site.

The instant win game drove almost one in four active Starbucks Rewards members to play, with the average participant returning to play the game 10 times throughout the campaign. There were nearly 1.9m prizes awarded and game pieces were shared a total of 87,744 times.

The Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony takes place in London on 14 November. To book your place at this celebration of the best in mobile marketing, click here.