Success Stories: How EF English reduced their CAC by 40%
Founded in 1996, EF English Live has been at the forefront of english language learning for more than two decades. It was the first platform with a 24-hour online English course and teacher-led classes. Today, it is the world’s largest online English language school, backed by a world-class team of academics and technical experts.
The online strategy involved acquiring leads and new customers, as well as continuing to build brand awareness. The objective of the campaign was to execute the customer acquisition strategy at a lower cost per lead and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) than its other digital channels:
EF English Live: The Results
-40%
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) vs other digital channels
-17%
Cost per Lead (CPL) vs other digital channels
+67%
Return of Investment (ROI) vs other digital marketing channels
Campaign Planning
EF English Live is the largest online English language school in the world. Its global presence provides a great added value, since its users have the possibility of taking classes anytime with native or bilingual teachers. With the campaign, the goal was to increase EF English Live’s digital presence, discover new audiences and attract customers at a lower cost than other acquisition channels.
As an alternative to the current campaigns, EF English Live sought the use of brand ambassadors who met the profile or segment of the target market.
A brand ambassador is someone who brings the company’s products, services and values closer to other potential customers, attracting their attention through marketing actions. It is about using external people to promote and recommend, through their own digital channels, your brand.
To implement the strategy, the brand ambassadors’ brief and target were initially defined and, in a second stage, the results-based cost strategy was defined.
Brief and Brand Ambassadors Selection
The first step is the brief that will be sent to all VoxFeed users that fit the market target. At this stage, the campaign is described, the tone of the message, guidelines and even examples.
VoxFeed Plus was used to transmit the message to the base of creators that met the specific segment the company wanted to reach. This is a feature that leverages VoxFeed’s data storage and processing to segment micro influencers according to their gender, interests, audience size, social network, engagement rate, cost, reach or location. This enables the campaign to scale to thousands of users in an efficient way, discover new talent and optimize budget utilization.
Having the brief defined and the content for the campaign, the cost strategy was designed and how the budget would be used.
Campaign Budget – Cost per Action (CPA)
For the use of the budget allocated to the campaign, a hybrid model was implemented in which the profiles selected as brand ambassadors would also be paid based on the results of their campaign (CPA). CPA or Cost per Action is a pricing model where the advertiser pays for each specific action or sale. It is for many the optimal form of digital marketing investment, as an advertiser only pays for the advertising when the desired action has occurred.
In the case of the campaign, a CPA was established for each Lead confirmed by EF English. This allowed the advertiser to validate the quality of the leads obtained and adjust its investment depending on the results.
Results – CAC, CPL, Conversion Rate and ROI
A social media promotion program is much more effective than relying on traditional advertising methods. In the digital age, peer-to-peer recommendations are the most powerful advertising tool. In fact, 92% of people say they trust the recommendations of Brand Amabassadors.
How to work with brand ambassadors?
A brand that wants to position itself and create a strong sense of community must start from the premise that sales will come from recommendations among users and not only from the company’s actions.
To design a brand ambassador program, you must fulfill three steps:
1. Plan in advance and define objective goals.
What profile of brand ambassadors are you looking for for your company? What results do you expect to obtain with this campaign? What is the target ROI?
2. Find and select your brand ambassadors
You need to find your brand ambassadors, recruit them to your cause, and grow enthusiasm among them about your company, campaign, or initiative. VoxFeed gives you the tools to do just that. To find the best ambassadors, you need to understand who you want to target, what their interests are, their audience or who they interact with; above all, who will be able to make authentic recommendations about your brand.
3. Keep your ambassadors engaged
Your social media promotion strategy must be scalable. You must be able to have the tools to manage several (tens, hundreds or even thousands) of brand ambassadors committed to advocating for your brand.
Having the tools to develop this type of strategies, these, for the most part, allow you to acquire customers at a fraction of the cost vs. other traditional digital channels. The authenticity of these types of interactions breaks through the noise of traditional marketing, and supports a business’ user acquisition strategy on its most valuable asset: customers.