Case Studies

Executive Summary

In an age-restricted industry, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) faces a number of unique challenges when it comes to lead generation.

Testimonial

"Advertising.com is a strategic business partner. RJR felt we could be open and candid about our business with Advertising.com.  This openness allowed for the growth in our relationship.  Our Advertising.com team has always been a positive force in meeting my needs. This includes overall level of service, combined with their positive outlook, flexibility and problem-solving abilities. They not only have expert people but also state-of-the-art systems that make us confident that we are working with a very high level of talent."
Mike Fagan, RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company

Products / Solutions Used

• Lead Generation

Objectives

Unable to advertise online, for a number of years RJR leveraged offline survey companies for lead generation – resulting in flat database growth and low opt-in rates for email communication. In addition, because these survey companies would re-sell the same leads to multiple tobacco companies, RJR was not acquiring exclusive leads. As a result, RJR turned to Advertising.com for a new approach.

Strategy

Advertising.com consolidated RJR’s efforts into one seamless program, developing an online strategy targeted to an age-appropriate audience and designed to capture a large volume of high quality leads. Advertising.com’s creative and promotional marketing teams developed RJR’s first Internet initiative - a pre-qualifying blind smokers survey. Advertising.com's Creative Services team has maintained responsibility for this program since its inception, and its Promotions team handles all prize fulfillment. The concept of requiring pre-qualifying questions ensures that leads are smokers of legal smoking age and the leads are obtained at a significantly lower cost than RJR’s previous methods of lead generation, including event sponsorship. Moreover, the leads are exclusive to RJR.

Advertising.com technology and development teams are involved on a daily basis. All leads are scrubbed in real-time and verified with Code 1® address verification software, ensuring only valuable leads are transferred to RJR. In addition, dedicated resources approve publishers on an individual basis and strict network quality regulations guarantee the RJR campaign only runs on RJR-approved sites or content.  

Recently, RJR and Advertising.com took their 6-year long relationship to the next level.  With the back-end performance tools that RJR provides Advertising.com on a regular basis, endless hours of analysis have gone into delivering the most valuable leads for the client.

Results

Advertising.com’s online marketing program continues to deliver cost-effective, valuable and exclusive leads – an accomplishment beyond what RJR was previously able to achieve. This strategy generated phenomenal improvements in RJR’s lead-generation capabilities. On average, about 85% of all survey respondents opt-in to receive emails announcing special offers and news – a sharp contrast to the less than 1% of opt-ins from offline surveys. In addition, any respondent identified as a non-smoker or under legal smoking age is redirected to a non-RJR promotion.

In 2005, Advertising.com began focusing its lead-generation efforts on RJR’s most-valued demographic target, and experienced a growth in results ever since. Currently, the market average for leads in their desired demographic is 25%. In 2007, 40% of all leads delivered to RJR will be within the desired target demographic - over-indexing the industry average by 15%. In short, Advertising.com’s strategy generates more of the high-value leads RJR desires, at a more efficient overall cost. And remarkably, of every 100 leads, nearly 70% are new – enabling RJR to steadily build its database of leads year after year.