adMarketplace analyzed and optimized post-conversation data to generate a high ROI for CreditCards.com, and grew the company’s profitability more than 400%.
The Opportunity
In tough economic times, it is difficult for credit card providers to source qualified applicants for new cards. While it is easier to drive overall application volume, lead quality is muddied by the increased percentage of unqualified applicants. Unqualified applications make it difficult for credit card issuers to effectively optimize search marketing campaigns, which reduces their ROI.
Credit card issuers know that not all application-based conversions are created equal. While a strong initial conversion rate can appear profitable, true ROI metrics can only be determined once the applicant qualifies. Therefore, adMarketplace worked closely with CreditCards.com to understand which of its traffic sources generated leads from qualified applicants.
The Approach
In late 2010, CreditCards.com partnered with adMarketplace to drive more credit card applications. During the initial testing period, the adMarketplace account management team was able to drive application costs below the client’s goal, but the high number of unqualified applicants reduced profitability.
adMarketplace shifted its priority towards optimizing against post-application performance data — which CreditCards.com agreed to provide. This detailed analysis of qualified application metrics allowed adMarketplace to determine an accurate ROI for traffic sources within adMarketplace’s network and optimize accordingly.
The Results
True “post-conversion” performance data dramatically improved CreditCards.com’s profitability and its capacity to scale. adMarketplace was able to grow its profitability more than 400% from previous levels while increasing its lead volume by 600%.
“This is perhaps the biggest improvement in any of our accounts I have ever seen. I expect adMarketplace to remain our top non-Google/Yahoo traffic source,” said Tracy Moon, CreditCards.com’s SEM Manager.
About CreditCards.com
CreditCards.com, a part of the Bankrate Online Network, is a leading online credit card marketplace, bringing consumers and card issuers together. The card issuers include American Express, Chase, Citi, Capital One, Discover, First Premier Bank, Visa, MasterCard and more.
CreditCards.com is also the web’s leading publisher of original consumer credit card news. Its proprietary research, stories, tools and video are routinely picked up by leading news outlets such as the Associated Press and appear on major sites, including Yahoo, MSNBC, NASDAQ.com, Forbes.com, TheStreet.com and Google news.
About adMarketplace.com
adMarketplace delivers pay-per-click advertising to performance marketers from traffic sources outside of the major search engines. Thousands of online advertisers and their agencies leverage our proprietary data-driven technology platform — comprised of filtering, scoring, targeting, pricing and analytics — to drive ROI from over one million traffic sources worldwide. adMarketplace offers a managed service to large marketers and a self-serve alternative for advertisers of all sizes.
More information: http://www.admarketplace.com/credit-cards-com.php
