Kaplan Merkle | Periscopix

CASE STUDY

“As we hadn’t had any previous experience with DoubleClick Search, working alongside Merkle | Periscopix has helped us master the platform at a fast pace”

—Mihai Beldean, Paid Search Manager, Kaplan

Goals

• Reach potential students through search

• Facilitate campaign management

• Reduce daily manual operations

Approach

• Adopted DoubleClick Search through DoubleClick Technology

Partner, Merkle | Periscopix

• Collaborated with Merkle | Periscopix to set up accounts and

implement bid management strategy

• Applied CPA bid strategy in conversion bid management

Results

For exact match terms, cost dropped by 18% while

conversion rate increased by 16% and CPA fell by 20%

With DoubleClick Search and Technology Partner Merkle | Periscopix, Kaplan increases valuable leads, reduces CPA by 20%

Case Study

For broad match terms, cost dropped by 45% while

conversion rate increased by 27% and CPA fell by 3%

With DoubleClick Search & Technology Partner Merkle | Periscopix , Kaplan increases valuable leads, reduces CPA by 20%Kaplan International English provides English language courses at 41 international schools in eight countries. Kaplan aims to provide a fully rounded learning experience, not just focusing on the classroom, but enabling students to learn English while experiencing new sites and cultures.

With a target audience of potential students in various countries, Kaplan was running paid search campaigns in 26 different regions. After enlisting Merkle | Periscopix as a DoubleClick Technology Partner, they looked to DoubleClick Search as a platform that would provide Kaplan’s in-house team easy day-to-day management across thousands of campaigns and automated tools that would allow the workload to shift from daily manual operations to wider search strategy.

Kaplan & Merkle | PeriscopixCase Study

Google Confidential & Proprietary

“The DoubleClick platform has no doubt helped us to integrate all of our existing advertising technology stack together as one, to gain great insights that are actionable.”

—Vincent Lau, Head of Performance Marketing, Kaplan

The initial setup of DoubleClick Search – which Merkle | Periscopix put in place for Kaplan – aimed to make account management easier. By planning and building formula columns, custom conversions, executive reports and automated rules, they created an efficient environment to work in.

The next task was to create a bid management strategy that would not only save time but would also provide tangible improvements in results. Working together, Merkle | Periscopix and Kaplan’s own search team formulated an approach to automated bidding that wouldn’t hamper conversion volumes but would save on spend that could be redistributed elsewhere within key regional markets.

Given that the account KPI was cost per lead, the team chose to run DoubleClick Search’s cost per acquisition (CPA) conversion bid management as the bid strategy. In order to provide the bid strategy with the best possible data volumes, they created a custom conversion for the strategy to work towards which amalgamated all lead types.

At this stage, they set about proving the bid strategies could work on smaller accounts before rolling out to a larger, key market. Within the test regions of Angola and Latin America, they trialled different CPA starting points and the breadth of bidding parameters in order to establish optimum target CPAs and bidding constraints to maximise the effectiveness of the bid strategy. With the strategy having shown signs of success when applied to these smaller territories, the team rolled out bid strategies in one of Kaplan’s key markets – France.

The brief for France was slightly different from the early test regions. The strategy was set to provide a consistent volume of conversions for all generic exact match keywords, while reducing CPA by 15%. And because internal data had shown that the quality and subsequent conversion rate of leads through exact match terms substantially outranked that of other match types, the strategy was also set to reduce spend on broad match modified terms by 30%, without compromising conversion rate.

Kaplan & Merkle | PeriscopixCase Study

Google Confidential & Proprietary

Easier Account Management through DoubleClick Search

Intelligent Automated bidding drives performance gainsAfter the two bid strategies were created, they ran untouched for a period of two months. Compared to the same keywords for the same date range in the previous year, the results exceeded expectations. For exact match terms – where the vast majority of valuable search leads stem from – spend dropped by 18%, conversion rate increased by 16%, leads grew by 3% and CPA fell by 20%. For broad match modified terms, spend went down by 45%, conversion rate increased by 27% and CPA decreased by 3%.

These results gave the Kaplan search team the confidence to roll out bid management across the board. This measure has added up to significant time savings – time that could be utilised for strategy and testing rather than time consuming bidding tasks.

“For us, paid search is the biggest acquisition channel and DoubleClick Search is the perfect platform to manage our huge portfolio of accounts”, affirms Kaplan Paid Search Manager Mihai Beldean. “The technology integrates seamlessly with other Google products. Features like landing page tests are just effortless to start and the bid management suite has undoubtedly enhanced performance.”

Case Study

Google Confidential & Proprietary

“The technology integrates seamlessly with other Google products. Features like landing page tests are just effortless to start and the bid management suite has undoubtedly enhanced performance.”

—Mihai Beldean, Paid Search Manager, Kaplan

Kaplan & Merkle | Periscopix

While DoubleClick Search has helped Kaplan to achieve its performance goals, the decision to work with a DoubleClick Technology Partner has also contributed significant benefits. DoubleClick Technology Partners like Merkle | Periscopix provide access to the platforms as well as training and support for companies that wish to utilise any of the DoubleClick Digital Marketing products in-house.  

Merkle | Periscopix trained Kaplan on the DoubleClick Search platform to ensure a smooth and seamless integration with their paid search accounts. They also consulted on factors vital to using the tool correctly, for example, which data points to optimise towards, the most suitable accounts based on consistency of the data and how to test and learn before ultimately rolling out a full trial.

In this way, Kaplan became equipped with all the skills needed to ultimately run the accounts and bid strategies based on their own specific needs and wealth of historic business insights.

“The strategy was based on our knowledge of DoubleClick Search best practice, combined with Kaplan’s understanding of their own customers and search activity”, explains Richard Croney, PPC Team Leader at Merkle | Periscopix.

“The working relationship with Merkle | Periscopix has been phenomenal”, says Vincent Lau, Head of Performance Marketing at Kaplan. “We are stepping in the right direction from a performance marketing perspective to deliver personalised experiences to our students. Next on our digital roadmap is to integrate our own attribution model with DoubleClick Search, and we are confident that in collaboration with Merkle | Periscopix this will help us on the road to a holistic view of our digital activity.”

Kaplan & Merkle | PeriscopixCase Study

Google Confidential & Proprietary

Teaming up with a technology partner boosts expertise

“The strategy was based on our knowledge of DoubleClick Search best practice, combined with Kaplan’s understanding of their own customers and search activity”

—Richard Croney, PPC Team Leader, Merkle | Periscopix

English language courses41 international schools in eight countrieswww.kaplaninternational.com

About Kaplan International English

Case Study

Google Confidential & Proprietary

Kaplan & Merkle | Periscopix

Performance marketing agencyDoubleClick Technology Partnerwww.periscopix.co.uk

About Merkle | Periscopix