Helen’s renewed brand’s first tactical campaign: The lowest CPA of the year generated 30% of the month’s sales
When Helen‘s new “It’s Energy” brand concept was followed by the first tactical campaign based on the brand platform, the results were astonishing. The CPA (Cost Per Action) was almost halved, and the campaign became Helen’s most effective sales campaign in two years.
Helen’s new brand concept builds a differentiating emotional relationship
Helen is one of the strong players in the sector in the competitive field of energy companies. Helen uses digital marketing to continuously actively acquire new customers and is looking for the most effective ways to convert sales to digital sales channels.
The bidding mechanisms and offering are quite similar for all electricity companies, which means that the distinguishing factor is often the image. Customer acquisition is supported by the renewed Helen brand, which builds a differentiating emotional relationship. The “It’s Energy” brand concept created by Dagmar for Helen was launched in September 2024, and the autumn digital sales campaign was carried out as a follow-up to it as the first tactical outlet in accordance with the new brand platform.
Contribution modelling identified the success factors of previous campaigns
The electricity market in Finland is very price-driven, and the price of electricity is of interest to almost every household that decides on its electricity contract. According to studies, people actively follow the industry’s price advertising. When the goal is to improve the digital sales of electricity contracts and achieve high sales targets, it is often done with price first. However, the offers of different operators are challenging for consumers to value, so even a good offer alone is not enough.
Helen monitors the effectiveness of conversion advertising with continuous contribution modelling that measures the results of the measures. We wanted to bring the principles of knowledge-based management of the brand renewal to the tactical advertising creative, so we used modelling to pick out the best-performing campaigns of previous years and identify common denominators for successes in the advertising implementations of these campaigns.
Helen monitors the effectiveness of conversion advertising with continuous contribution modelling that measures the results of the measures.
The concept of tactical advertising was visually tied to the new brand concept
We created a concept of tactical advertising combined with a brand campaign, the goal of which was to bring the offer message through as clearly and distinctively as possible.
Visually, the campaign was to be recognizably tied to the renewed Helen brand, so that the campaign gets maximum strength from the underlying brand renewal campaign and does its own sales-generating task in the best possible way in the campaign.
Recognizable, relevant to the buyer, good bidding mechanism, direct purchase opportunity
Dagmar renewed the existing graphic elements, taking into account recognisability and the similarity of brand advertising. The layout was designed based on the lessons learned from successful campaigns, eliminating everything unnecessary and emphasizing what is essential for the potential buyer.
We got a good bidding mechanism for the campaign (exchange electricity with a basic fee of €0 for the first 6 months), so we increased the campaign’s media budget: usually a larger budget does not bring more sales in the same proportion and backfires as inefficiency. In addition to a good offer, we were confident that the newly implemented brand campaign would have prepared consumers to consider Helen and that there would be enough demand.
The success of the tactical campaign was not only based on a careful analysis of previous campaigns, but also on the ability to harness the energy and appeal of the brand concept.
Collaboration and a shared goal have been key factors in growing our digital sales, and it shows how brand concept and the power of brand advertising can be leveraged in tactical marketing.
The media solution focused on Meta and programmatic display advertising, which enable direct purchase optimization. As a test, they wanted to test Snapchat’s new audiences with a small budget.
Helen’s most effective sales campaign in two years
The campaign was carried out 23.9.-13.10.2024. The results were measured by monitoring sales through digital channels, the achievement of the campaign’s CPA targets, and the growth of total sales using contribution modelling. In addition, the success of the campaign was assessed by comparing the results with previous campaigns.
Despite the increased media budget, CPA, the most important indicator of tactical advertising, was almost halved compared to similar campaigns, and the campaign was Helen’s most effective sales campaign in two years.
The campaign exceeded its overall target based on campaign performance in digital channels by 255% in three weeks. A third of all digital sales during the campaign period came directly from campaign media (typically about 10%).
The campaign’s CPA was the best in two years, falling 44% short of the CPA target. The Snapchat test was particularly successful, with a huge number of purchases made on a small budget.
The new tactical advertising concept proved to work and the campaign successfully continued the brand’s overall reach all the way to the shopping cart.
Our tactical campaign not only achieved but exceeded our expectations many times over.
The halving of the CPA and the significant increase in sales are an indication of how an interesting offer combined with good cooperation and planning with the advertising agency and internal stakeholders produces excellent results.
Good experiences encourage even closer cooperation across team boundaries.
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