Responding to such opportunities is baked into the culture of Société Générale, France’s third-largest bank and an institution that prides itself on innovating in the interests of its customers. That means exploring new ideas while carefully controlling risk, which made the Microsoft Audience Network an ideal fit.
“We pride ourselves on being one of the most innovative finance companies in France—and this has to apply to our customer acquisition strategy as well,” says Mame-Coumba. “We can’t just settle for doing the same basics. We need to test new things to stay ahead of the competition—but we also need to be in control. Knowing that our campaign would only run on Microsoft properties that we could trust gave us the confidence to go ahead.”
Setting up a retargeting campaign on the Microsoft Audience Network involved only a small investment of time for Mame-Coumba and her team. “The actual campaign creation only took us around 20 minutes,” she says. It started delivering eye-catching performance almost as quickly. After just one week, the campaign was delivering a CPA six times cheaper than search, on the back of a conversion rate 24% higher. When a marketing investment delivers returns like these, it makes sense to increase your exposure.
“The results were so strong that we quickly increased the budget,” says Mame-Coumba. “After three weeks, the role of the Microsoft Audience Network had grown so much that it’s now generating 46% of our total conversions at a CPA 48% lower than search. That’s a result of being able to retarget people who are showing some interest—but it’s also a result of the extra reach we get from encountering people across Microsoft properties and different devices.”