An ever-present challenge at any burgeoning startup is to consistently improve online ad performance. During my time at Opendoor, I played a key role in numerous projects that helped us evolve our online ads and resulted in millions of dollars of savings for the business. Below are three examples of this.
Case Study 1 | Retargeting Ads
Challenge
When you request an offer for your home from Opendoor, we ask a series of questions that help us understand what makes your home special. In Q4 2018, we realized that there was a sizable number of people who visit the website and begin answering these questions, only to close their browser window and never complete the process.
We felt that we could get people to come back and complete their request, because the Opendoor offer is free and comes with no obligation to sell. At the time, we retargeted users with a generic Opendoor ad, but we knew we could do better.
Process
Since there was no easy way to determine the exact reason people were dropping off the page, I came up with 7 different hypotheses, and wrote messaging that responded to each objection. We then created retargeting ads with these messages and served them to customers to see which performed best. Here are just a few examples:
Results
Compared to the control, the new creative drove a 156% increase in click-through-rate month over month. It directly resulted in a 24% increase in completion of our seller flow (a.k.a the questions we ask about your home).
Case Study 2 | Messaging Refresh
Challenge
By Q3 2019, our paid ads were performing well. There was just one problem—we’d come to rely on three main messages, and we were starting to see the early signs of creative fatigue.
Process
I led a content brainstorm with stakeholders across the company to develop new messaging concepts to test. Once we landed on new concepts, I wrote three different versions of post copy to pay off the concept.
Results
The new creative we implemented resulted in a 48% increase in ad efficiency. Put another way, by simply updating the post copy on these Facebook ads, we were able to spend 48% less to get people to request an offer at opendoor.com. I can’t specify the exact number here, but let’s just say that the month of October was gangbusters.
I was also surprised (and encouraged) to learn that even the most minute one-word changes had a substantial impact on performance. For instance, we found that the removal of the word “today” significantly drove up our costs. Words matter!
Case Study 3 | Evergreen video
Challenge
In Q3 2019, we were eager to prove out YouTube as viable channel for our business. In the past, we’d seen some success with video, but found that production tended to be costly. We wanted to prove that we could get the same results as our previous high-budget production with a scrappy, $17,000 budget.
Process
I wrote numerous scripts and created storyboards with my Creative Director partner. We landed on three different concepts and worked with the team to score them on how attention-grabbing they were, whether we could keep them within budget, and how on-brand they felt.
Results
“We make it easy” outperformed our previous video at just 1/14th (!) of the cost, and was produced in just three weeks. We also found that it drove more people to request an offer than our customer testimonial videos, implying that it attracted an audience of serious sellers. Sometimes limitations lead you to the best solution.
Thanks for reading!