Hearst: 500% Increase in Site Traffic

Hearst is a leading global, diversified media, information and services company with more than 360 businesses. Hearst offers premium content and experience with an overarching purpose: to help people get more out of life.

Hearst was keen to experiment with programmatic direct mail and evaluate if it can increase customer engagement online as well as the overall conversion rate of people who browse subscriptions but abandon before purchase.

Paperplanes and Hearst partnered together to scope the best approach for launching programmatic direct mail. It was agreed early on that triggering relevant, personalised follow-up to customers who browsed subscriptions on the Hearst website but did not go through to make a purchase would be a good start.

Paperplanes integrated with Hearst’s website to identify any abandoned sessions not completed within 24 hours. Creative concepts highly personalised around each title browsed were constructed to offer the right kind of personalisaion without the need for further incentive.

Hearst saw double conversion rates and low CPA rates

68% uplift to Hearst’s key feature titles.
500% increase in overall traffic to site from the mailed universe.
Strong CPA level of £9, worked out more cost-effective than other digital re-targeting strategies.
Double conversion rate for mailed universe vs typical standard web browsers

“We were looking for a solution to increase our conversion rate on our e-commerce site and were excited by the strategy offered by Paperplanes. The results were really impressive and worked out more cost-effective than some of our other acquisition channels. Results from the initial basket follow up have enabled us to the pilot phase with Paperplanes and we look forward to a long-term partnership focused on continued optimisation.“

Digital Marketing and CRM Director, Hearst

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