August 13, 2024   |   Vol. 23   |   Issue 8
By Noah Poissant, MGI Account Director

Top-3 Paid Ad Combination Tactics for Membership Recruitment

Recently, I’ve been involved in more than a few conversations with clients around optimizing paid online recruitment programs. The “how do we get the most bang for our buck?” discussion.

It’s no secret that digital strategies are a staple in our recruitment planning, and their importance is only increasing. According to MGI’s freshly launched 2024 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report (MMBR), more than 40% of associations now utilize Facebook paid advertising, 32% use search engine marketing, and 30% use retargeting – all better than three-percent increases compared to last year’s report. But whether I’m working with new or tenured clients in this capacity, finding out what is the most effective combination within digital advertising is important; not just because budgets are always tight, but also to achieve those tough-sledding end of year goals!

We’ve identified three powerful combinations of digital marketing tactics that consistently drive the highest conversions for our clients. These combinations offer significant lift in results compared to running these tactics individually.

Are you running these campaigns yet?

1. Google Search + AdRoll Remarketing

   • Why this works: Google Search Ads often capture new users searching for associations like yours, directing them to your site. The traffic from Google then adds new users to the remarketing funnel, where AdRoll can re-engage new and returning users across the web with join messaging (versus only remarketing to web traffic that organically hits your site.)
   • Results: Clients have seen 10% - 35% lifts in conversions when running these tactics in tandem, mainly by leveraging the push for new users and then the ongoing visibility of remarketing.

2. AdRoll Remarketing + Facebook Remarketing

   • Why this works: pairing AdRoll Remarketing with Facebook Remarketing maximizes your reach and engagement by allowing ads to serve across two massively popular platforms. Knowing emails, newsletters, and other ad programs drive clicks to your website, AdRoll Remarketing ensures you remain visible across the internet, while Facebook serves ads within social media feeds, where users spend a significant amount of time. This combination ensures your ads are served frequently and in different contexts, reinforcing your message and increasing the chances of conversion.
   • Results: Clients have experienced 21% to 48% increases in reported conversions by deploying this combination effort, oftentimes seeing the addition of Facebook specifically increase the effectiveness of AdRoll.

3. Mail Only + Addressable Geofencing (It’s not fully digital, but we LOVE mail.)

   • Why it works: the effectiveness of mail is still highly rated, but in today’s digital world, email programming to prospects is increasingly difficult. Addressable geofencing allows you to match digital ad delivery with your mail-only acquisition campaign segments through physical address targeting. This creates an omnichannel experience for users destined to only receive mail, leapfrogs the obstacles associated with mail & email combo tactics, and builds a new engagement channel, thus influencing a user’s likelihood to respond.
   • Results: this dynamic duo has helped clients lift mail recruitment numbers by up to 10% over mail-only program results.

If you are not already running some of these combinations, think about them. The nature of these combinations is to create a comprehensive approach to marketing, one that seamlessly interacts and keeps users experiencing what your association can do for them.

If you need assistance or have any questions, our team is here to help. Reach out to Jana Darling, VP of Client Services, at jdarling@marketingeneral.com