Meta ads has a new feature that will allow you to dynamically insert offer details on your CTA for shopping ads. This allows you to add something like “10% off” or “Free X with Purchase” right onto the CTA of your ad. It can be dynamically sourced from your landing page or manually added to your ad.
One caveat before I jump into recommendations for testing this feature: it’s currently only available for single-media Instagram stories. You can include the ad in multiple placements, of course; the CTA just won’t show the offer details.
With that said, let’s dig into the significance of the feature and how to approach testing it.
First, as you can see in this example provided by Facebook Business, the feature is clean and appealing:
I can see this being a nice driver of increased conversions, especially when used to retarget people to remind them of active sales or to sweeten the offer a bit.
The beauty of the feature, for me, is that it can help speed up offer testing. If a client is not seeing traction on a 10% discount and updates it to be 15%, we just have to go in and check that it pulled the updated amount automatically– or we can manually update it. Overall, either option (manual or automatic) is much faster than having to update creatives or request changes from Facebook.
In general, I recommend that any brand currently running Shopping ads should incorporate this into their strategies. As I write this, we have a good window before Q4 and the holiday season to test discount amounts that meet revenue and margin goals while boosting sales numbers.
It’s also a good idea to get comfortable with the tool now, when things are slower. You want to make sure when crunch time hits you know how it’s working. Dynamic integrations can always have some nuances and gotchas you need to explore before the stakes are higher.
As far as testing structures go, A/B testing is always a best practice. My personal preference is to conduct tests manually, which gives you more control and makes it easier to draw conclusions from the data to pinpoint the right discount.
Luckily, this new feature also incorporates the use of promo codes (which are optional but encouraged) so if you want to run tests side by side, you’ll have transparency into which promo code performed the best right in your CRM.
As I mentioned, one obvious audience to use for this feature is a retargeting audience. The retargeting window you want to establish should depend on the product.
For smaller purchases, it could be a two-week window with your original discount. Just something to say "Hey, you looked at our product, now we want you to seriously consider it." You don’t want to extend the window too long for smaller purchases, since users could have already selected a competitor, and targeting them when they’re no longer in market could just waste budget.
For larger purchases, you might only want to offer discounts to those users outside of a 7-14 day window. If it’s a larger price, they’re likely doing research before the purchase, and you can offer them something to sweeten the deal and sway them back towards your product. You could even add a second window – maybe 30+ days from their last engagement – offering a larger discount.
As always, make sure to check exclusions. You should only target one window of time, with all others excluded. Also, make sure to exclude all purchasers. Sending them a larger discount for a product they just bought is a great way to guarantee the customer service team some angry emails.
In general, any new eComm-friendly ad feature that helps you get your promotional strategy ready for Q4 is one to prioritize testing. If you’d like some friendly advice from the JDM experts about this or other promotional strategies, hit us up for a chat.