Precision targeting is helping the European Commission match potential investors with promising projects
The European Investment Project Portal is a matchmaking service with a difference – designed by the European Commission (EC) to bring potential investors together with European-based projects. Its success depends on being able to reach and engage parties on both sides of this potential relationship – and that’s where LinkedIn comes in.
Tailored targeting brings niche audiences into focus
Audiences don’t get much more specific than potential investors in infrastructure projects – and those actually running those projects. The EC social media team dedicated to the investments portal campaign knew that success would depend on reaching these niche groups with minimal wastage. Having already driven engagement through updates on the EC’s Company Page, they knew the people they were interested in could be found on the LinkedIn platform. Team leader Carole Fromage-Duforêt turned to the agency Pebble Media and LinkedIn’s account team to help target these audiences as precisely as possible. LinkedIn and Pebble developed separate targeting criteria for each of the two audiences, using parameters such as seniority, job title, industry type and company size to optimise their approach. “Things just kept getting better and better as they were able to look at the results and see which approaches to segmentation worked best,” explains Carole. “Having expertise available in targeting on LinkedIn really helped to reach the niche audiences that we needed.” The approach delivered strong engagement from the start, and this grew rapidly to deliver an average open rate of more than 60% for Sponsored InMail, which beat benchmarks for the sector by almost 50%.
Investing in Sponsored InMail pays dividends
Carole and her colleagues knew that driving engagement and securing registrations were crucial to the success of the entire portal project – and that a tangible Return on Investment (ROI) would be critical for any paid marketing activity. “We needed to demonstrate that this channel could deliver value for a brief like ours,” explains Carole. The LinkedIn strategy was designed to deliver strong, personalised calls to action to an audience that were already primed with awareness of the investments portal. Leading with Sponsored Content and then following up with a personalised message through Sponsored InMail ensured that the campaign delivered more than just engagement. It also spurred action with an extremely high 7% click-through rate for Sponsored InMail. “Sponsored InMail was more expensive than other options but the conversions it led to meant the extra investment was worth it,” says Carole. “In the end, we moved more budget to InMail to take advantage of the response we were getting.”
