#MarketingExcellenceAwards SG 2021 highlights: Programmatic pays off for Singtel

Singtel took home the silver trophy at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Excellence Awards after it impressed judges with its programmatic capabilities. The brand wanted to reach out to users who weren’t part of its consumer base, and stay top-of-mind by maintaining brand awareness in a busy digital landscape.

Here’s how the telco giant cut through the clutter despite having a tight budget on its hands. 

Challenges

In Singapore, internet penetration stands at approximately 90%, with 5.29 million people spending an average of eight hours each day online, engaged in various activities from work to shopping to entertainment.

Amid the pandemic, internet access has become the fourth basic human necessity, and for Singapore’s hyper-connected society, reliable fibre internet connection has become more important than ever. Singaporeans turn to their computers for their new normal needs, including work-from-home, home-based learning, entertainment and socialisation.

Singtel, one of the country’s largest telecommunications giants, saw that the broadband market in Singapore is highly competitive, intensified by the growing number of providers coming online in recent years through the Singapore government’s Smart Nation initiative. With more options available, consumers are constantly in search of the best packages, deals, and service offerings.

While traditional bricks and mortar retail has long been an important touch-point for internet users, social restrictions limited the opportunities to connect in physical settings. With many players fighting for the spotlight and a larger share of the pie, Singtel needed to find a new way to attract new broadband subscribers and stand out among existing internet users to convert into subscribers.

Strategy

Singtel decided to embark on a campaign with the primary objective of tapping on changing consumer needs and trends to lead users to Singtel’s Online Shop and drive conversions. It wanted to stay top-of-mind and maintain brand awareness in a busy digital landscape.

The key target audience were consumers not subscribed to the Singtel fibre network, in particular, Singtel users who have recently turned to competitors, and users interested in fibre broadband services.  

To ensure a more straightforward customer purchase journey that would turn buying behaviour into action, Singtel wanted to reach users who are household decision makers. With a competitive budget, the campaign from July 2020 to June 2021, also had to scale in reach within one year, while ensuring an effective cost-per-land (CPL) and click-through-rate (CTR).

To cut through a crowded digital space, increase awareness and generate leads, Singtel worked with its media agency Amobee and Yahoo on a programmatic campaign. The campaign was built on first-party data, alongside the right tools for targeting and optimisation. Automation was implemented to increase efficiency, maximise campaign performance, and deliver value on spend.

The campaign’s primary objective was to reach the most relevant users and inform them about Singtel’s fibre broadband offerings, before leading them to Singtel’s Online Shop.

A formidable addressable audience was created to enable the programmatic campaign to drive and scale through Yahoo’s DSP, alongside native ads, across desktop and mobile. This involved leveraging synergistic first-party data which combined Yahoo’s 200 billion cross-screen data points from search, mail, content, and more, with Singtel’s first-party CRM data to create a complete picture of the audience.

Through this process, the campaign was also able to exclude existing Singtel customers, eliminating the redundancy of advertising dollars.

Having set the foundation, the campaign would also enrich the audience base by layering additional information and employing audience expansion tools, including Yahoo interest categories and lookalike audiences.

With the various products that Singtel provided for its customers, with its suite of products and upselling opportunities, personalised and customised ads (served from a range of ad creatives) displaying the most relevant products and services were served to users based on a hyper-segmented audience.

The campaign leveraged AI and machine learning, alongside Yahoo’s omni-channel insights tool, for transparent insightful measurement that enabled progressive tweaks to all the aspects of the campaign.

Execution

Keeping in mind the goal of sales conversion, the programmatic campaign was executed tactically using Yahoo’s targeting tools:

• A synergistic combination of Singtel’s CRM data, hashed to ensure user privacy, with Yahoo’s first-party data to exclude existing Singtel customers, eliminating the redundancy of advertising dollars.
• DSP targeting to deliver customised and relevant ads to the key target audience: to users who have recently churned to competitors, and to users interested in fibre broadband services.
• Leveraging Yahoo’s cross-screen data points, signals, and custom audience builder, to target priority users:
  (a) Decision makers identified by using Yahoo’s cross-screen data points – anonymised email domain targeting of users receiving emails from competitors or e-bill receipt signals that indicate “household decision making”.
  (b) Those with higher purchase intent, identified by using Yahoo’s proprietary data key signals to define key life moments and demographic lifestyle attributes such as purchase of a home or home upgrade.
• Audience expansion tools including:
  (a) Interest categories based on insights from data signals such as searches for related products and services, purchase behaviour, site visits, and device usage.
  (b) Lookalike audiences (new prospects that have similar behaviour to the subscribers of Singtel’s fibre broadband services).
  (c) Re-targeting users who have clicked and landed on Singtel’s online store, or dropped off during the conversion journey, using search, mail and purchase receipt re-targeting.

Apart from display ads, seamless native ads were used to deliver an experience that fitted the user’s content experience without any interruptions, driving conversions while delivering added benefits of increased engagement and higher ad awareness within premium and trusted environments.

Through the use of demographics, interest data and lifestyle categories, the programmatic campaign was also able to harness upsell opportunities for Singtel’s new range of lifestyle and work-life solutions by matching relevant customers to the product mix.

This included:

• People who lived in larger homes, indicating the likely need for improved connectivity in large spaces or a high-end router.
• People using video-conferencing tools interested in Singtel’s work-from-home solutions.
• People gaming and streaming who likely needed larger bandwidths and speed upgrades.

Using dynamic creative optimisation, ideal personalised ad copies from a range of creatives were served to the target audience based on pre-set segments, providing highly relevant and valuable content to drive the desired action from users. This optimisation also enabled the display of a range of products and solutions for upsell opportunities.

The synergistic combination of first-party data also provided a strong foundation that was used for audience re-targeting, and enabled options for further targeting of nuanced personas – helping to push users further down the conversion funnel.

Leveraging advanced machine learning and AI for the extended phase of the campaign, the team maximised campaign efficiency and performance by combining performance predictions and information from the forecasting system to enable optimal bidding.

Through the campaign, several bidding models were tested, along with fluid budget allocations, to progressively tweak campaign targets, parameters, and best identify users with a higher likelihood of conversion.

Results

Through a strategic programmatic execution that combined artificial intelligence and synergistic first-party data from Singtel’s CRM and Yahoo, the campaign achieved consistent, efficient and cost favourable results for Singtel.

• Achieved 17% lower CPL compared with similar campaigns.
• Sustained high land rate with 14% improvement in average CPL year-on-year.
• 30% higher CTR as compared with industry benchmarks in Singapore.
• 21% improvement in average cost-per-assisted conversion year-on-year.
• Well-performing results saw conversion to the evergreen campaign.

With ads served programmatically across Yahoo’s DSP, including owned and operated properties, the campaign succeeded in capturing a wide pool of decision-makers online, sustaining the campaign’s land rate month-over-month and maintaining an efficient click-through-rate and cost-per-land.

Regular monitoring and optimisation were placed to meet KPIs, and the campaign progressively contributed to an uptick of 14% in average CPL achieved year-over-year with 17% lower CPL compared with similar campaigns.

The campaign also achieved a 30% higher CTR compared with Singapore industry benchmarks, and a 21% improvement in the average cost-per-assisted conversion, year-on-year.

Through Yahoo’s consistent delivery of KPIs, sustained efficiency on various fronts and continual performance on the programmatic campaign, Singtel was not only able to stand out among existing internet users, it was also able to cut through the clutter to attract new broadband subscribers.

It also took advantage of immediate opportunities to promote its premium products and services to the ideal audience.