Case Studies / Success with Skai

Vox Media Engages Skai’s Expert Services Team To Restructure And Optimize Its Search Campaigns, Increasing New York Magazine Subscriptions By 756%

756 %
Increase in Conversions
15 %
in CPA

About New York Magazine

New York Magazine energizes people around shared interests, igniting important conversations with a cosmopolitan point of view and providing the map to shrewdly navigate a fast-moving culture. Part of Vox Media, New York Magazine launched monthly and annual digital subscriptions to NYMAG.com, Intelligencer, The Cut, Vulture, and Grub Street in late 2018.

Insights to Drive Actions

With a new digital subscription product, the Vox Media team was running early paid search campaigns directly through Google Adwords and did not have historical data to draw learnings from. With a small team, they did not have the time needed to restructure campaigns so as to drive higher subscription volume at a lower cost.

Value of the Experts

Having seen the success they had using Skai Social, the team made the decision to also move its Search activity onto Skai and engaged with Skai’s Expert Services team for strategic support when making the transition.

Following an initial discovery call to better understand their OKRs, the Skai Expert Services team worked with the client over the course of six months to accomplish their goals and ensure they were ready for Skai self-serve.

Actions taken were:

  • Campaign Restructure – Skai Expert Services Team worked hand-in-hand with Vox Media to restructure its campaigns while implementing search best practices.
  • Campaign Mirroring – Vox Media was looking to expand its reach and willing to increase spend. While it had never run a campaign on Microsoft Advertising, campaign mirroring was leveraged to quickly and succinctly expand the newly restructured campaigns to Microsoft with ease.
  • Skai Budget Navigator – Budget Navigator allowed for better forecasting and control over monthly budgets across publishers to meet the client’s targeted KPIs.

What were the results?

  • 408% increase in clicks
  • 748% increase in CTR
  • 67% increase in CVR
  • 756% increase in conversions
  • 15% decrease in CPA

Challenge

  • Managing paid search campaigns directly through Google Adwords, Vox Media did not have historical data to draw learnings from to optimize campaigns against. Also, as a small team, they did not have the time needed to restructure campaigns so as to drive higher subscription volume at a lower cost.

Solution

  • Campaign Restructuring – Skai Expert Services team worked closely with Vox Media to restructure their campaigns, implementing search best practices.
  • Campaign Mirroring – was leveraged to quickly and succinctly expand the newly structured campaigns to Microsoft with ease.
  • Budget Navigator – allowed for better forecasting and control of monthly budgets across publishers.

Results

  • 408 increase in clicks
  • 748% increase in CTR
  • 67% increase in CVR
  • 756% increase in conversions
  • 15% decrease in CPA

“Skai's Expert Services Team immediately devised a plan to restructure our Adwords campaigns and helped us make ongoing optimizations so that we could begin scaling digital and print subscriptions from this channel.”

- Brooklyn Presta, Director of Consumer Marketing - Vox Media