About the company
Founded in 1960, Compass is a company of the Mediobanca Banking Group specializing in consumer credit. Today, through its merger with Linea, Compass is a consumer credit leader with more than 2 million active customers, 1 million credit cards and a network of 146 direct branches in Italy.
The challenge
Compass entered the online world in 1999 with the launch of its web site. In 2006, it began using Google AdWords as a lead-generation channel. The strong synergy between offline and online marketing
says Compass's Marketing Manager, led Compass to promote all its communication campaigns in the digital channel, even institutional ones (Compass is an Official Sponsor of the Italian National Football Team), with the objective of intercepting the user base that spontaneously goes on the web for additional information about what it has read or seen in other communication media
.
Through a search engine marketing and content advertising campaign on Google AdWords, based on the use of a mix of keywords linked to the brand and specific products, Compass was able to achieve significant lead-generation online.
In the light of the initial positive results, digital communication acquired an increasingly important role, with increased investment in Google keyword advertising, managed by the agency Digital ReveNew: Through the use of ad hoc landing pages, the online campaigns yielded excellent results, making Google AdWords the main digital advertising channel for generated leads
.
The results
Thanks to an integrated, multi-channel CRM platform
continued Compass the lead could directly make an appointment at the selected branch: in the period considered, 40% of prospect appointments arrived via the web, and 55% of these from Google campaigns. The results were surprising: in 4 months, from February to May 2009, the campaign for personal and "fifth-of-pay-check" loans generated a total of 11,000 leads, 10% more than forecast, and our objective is to exceed 25,000 leads by the end of the year, also increasing the conversion rate in the branch
.
In addition, an analysis of the Google Analytics data allowed comparing the performance of users coming from sponsored links to those coming from the natural traffic generated by brand keywords: visitors coming from natural traffic yielded a conversion to prospect rate of 3%* while, thanks to the use of ad hoc landing pages, yielded a conversion rate of 6%*.
The results confirmed the strategic value of the web channel for Compass
the Company concluded Investments will be sharply increased in 2009-2010 along with the essential collaboration with Google in the search for continuous innovation of processes, products and technologies
.