With evolving privacy regulations and the decline of third-party cookies, accurate conversion tracking has become a challenge. Sanlam, a leading financial services provider, partnered with Incubeta to implement Google’s Enhanced Conversions and Performance Max, dramatically improving its data collection and campaign performance. In this interview, Kelly Driscoll, Head of Demand Generation at Sanlam, shares how first-party data powered its strategy, the role of video in engagement and what’s next for Sanlam’s marketing evolution.
Sanlam needed to find a way to collect first-party data which would initiate an email acquisition journey for potential clients and drive qualified leads to its call centre –something they had never attempted before.
Working with digital marketing partner Incubeta, the team utilised Google’s Enhanced Conversions and Performance Max features to craft a bespoke strategy that improved the accuracy of Sanlam’s conversion measurement.
After seamlessly integrating with the Search Ads 360 (SA360) platform, Enhanced Conversions enabled the refinement of conversion measurement in a way that respected user consent preferences. Alongside this, Performance Max bolstered conversion accuracy, thanks to its ability to optimise across all Google channels, including Search.
Whenever a lead form was submitted, the captured first-party data was channelled through Google Tag Manager. From there, the hashed data was matched against Google’s logged-in user data, and an enhanced conversion was reported in SA360.
The approach delivered tangible results for the Life of Confidence campaign, where Sanlam experienced a significant improvement in conversion tracking accuracy and saw notable advancements in campaign performance.
Kelly Driscoll, Head of Demand Generation at Sanlam, commented, “For the first time in 2023, our brand campaign strategically leveraged the full funnel to drive first-party data acquisition and leads to various business units, and it yielded exceptional results. Not only did we surpass our targets well ahead of schedule, but the data empowered us to better leverage our campaign and increase and decrease leads in line with our call centre’s capacity. This success underscores the effectiveness of our approach and its ability to drive meaningful engagement and business growth.”
Kirsten Fynn, Account Director at Incubeta, stated, “By combining Enhanced Conversions and Performance Max, we were able to navigate the challenges posed by evolving privacy regulations and Google’s ever-shifting stance on the depreciation of third-party cookies, allowing us to bolster Sanlam’s conversion accuracy and drive tangible results for its Life of Confidence campaign.”
Sanlam achieved an incredible 191% increase in total lead form conversions and a 343% boost in Performance Max campaign conversions. With a yearly target of 20,000 email sign-ups, Sanlam soared past this goal by achieving more than three times that number. The company is now rolling out Enhanced Conversions across the full business’s marketing campaigns.
By utilising this technology, Incubeta helped Sanlam to completely undermine the fears surrounding decreased data collection methods, actively increasing its first-party data collection and demonstrating the power of Enhanced Conversions.
Driscoll took the time to answer further questions below.
Why did you choose Incubeta?
We’ve been with Incubeta for eight years now – a real feat in the fast-paced world of digital media! We have a really great relationship; we love that they are constantly pushing us forward and bringing new ideas to the table. They live and breathe Sanlam and are really an extension of our team. We can always trust them 100% to do what it takes to make our campaigns a success.
Tell me more about thick data and why this type of data was so important.
Financial services is a very generic industry—a lot of the products are homogeneous, and the messaging and branding are quite vanilla. For our campaign, we wanted to cut through to a real insight that would resonate deeply with our audience. Thick data helped uncover the underlying motivations, fears and aspirations that drive people to make certain choices, which led to our key human truth—people can’t imagine themselves far into the future, and that makes it really hard to make sacrifices now that will lead to a financially secure future. We used this insight at the core of our campaign, which helped paint a picture of what your life would be like in the future, so you are more motivated to make the right decisions for it.
Why did you decide to use video as your primary medium?
We needed highly engaging content that could paint a picture of what your future could be like, and video was the best medium to do this. It works well across all digital platforms, it entertains, it’s shareable, and of course, when done well, it delivers high engagement. The campaign concept was set in the metaverse, so in a future world, we might have delivered the whole campaign in the metaverse, but as things changed and the metaverse moved further away, we managed to adapt the campaign to more accessible channels through video.
How did you narrow down the buzzwords you decided to use?
We try to steer well clear of buzzwords… the financial services industry has a terrible reputation for using buzzwords, and it’s not very customer-friendly. We try to communicate everything plainly and simply, especially as our target market ranges so much – the simpler we keep our messaging, the bigger the audience that will understand it.
What’s next for Sanlam in terms of its marketing strategy?
A renewed focus on the importance of brand building, the return of humour in financial services advertising, and the introduction of product-led marketing with our new fintech launch.
