How Highly Segmented Ad Campaigns Can Exponentially Increase SQLs

Cybersecurity technology company, OneSpan, saw a 69% increase in SQLs across all target markets with Directive.

Client Overview

Services Involved

Paid Media

OneSpan is a cybersecurity technology company that offers a cloud-based and open-architected anti-fraud platform. They’re best known for their multi-factor authentication and electronic signature software.

They empower enterprises to deliver an optimal level of security across all digital interactions. OneSpan improves customer experience, ensures secure and compliant interactions, and accelerates business workflows.

The OneSpan team did not have enough bandwidth to reach its marketing goals. They needed extra support to scale their paid campaigns. Although they had an internal team for paid media, maintaining focus on each region was difficult as they have a large international scope. Directive helped shoulder the load with OneSpan’s team and eventually took it over entirely. Read the paid media case study.

66.7%

Increase in US SQLs

33.4%

Increase in UK SQLs

300%

Increase in CA SQLs

The Challenge
The Strategy
How We Developed Region-Specific Strategies
How We Expanded Our Original Ads Strategy
The Results

All great partnerships are built on trust, and trust between a client and its agency is built from day one. However, results do not often come as quickly. A core part of the client-agency partnership is in trusting the process.

Meredith Eddy | Paid Media Strategist at Directive

The Challenge

Our goal was to alleviate the load on OneSpan’s internal paid media team and bring results. We took over management and coverage for 4 geographic regions: the United States (US), Canada (CA), the United Kingdom (UK), and Australia & New Zealand (ANZ).

The UK and ANZ regions needed specific attention as their SQLs were historically few and far between. The Directive Team was tasked with boosting performance by developing a strategy to meet their marketing goals. OneSpan relied on our tech marketing expertise to scale its brand awareness and pipeline in each region.

The Strategy

After thorough research and financial modeling, we proposed a more granular and targeted approach that made better use of OneSpan’s segmented international campaigns. To build accurate segments, we went deeper than simply changing the geotargeting of the ads. We leveraged OneSpan’s existing account structure to create regional segments that focused not only on targeting, but also on goals, strategy, and content.

How We Developed Region-Specific Strategies

For each region, we set individual north star metric (NSM) goals, built unique strategies, and optimized campaigns for each audience.

We ran OneSpan’s campaigns through a performance audit to see where their leads were coming from. This helped us identify which region needed to be optimized first. This audit also revealed what needed to be optimized in each region.

All of this data allowed us to move forward with confidence as the ad strategies we built were backed by highly segmented marketing touch points.

How We Expanded Our Original Ads Strategy

We started with basic Google text ads for the highly segmented ad campaigns. Since they were successful, we expanded OneSpan’s text ads to other formats such as display ads. We also implemented a remarketing strategy to further improve lead generation.

The Results

OneSpan saw a 69% increase in SQLs QoQ across all target markets. This included a 66% increase in the US, a 33% increase in the UK and, most significantly, a massive 300% increase in Canada. This was OneSpan’s best quarter in the past year. In an agency-client relationship that had to navigate some misalignment at the beginning, these results prove that sticking together is worthwhile in the long term; especially when the agency puts in the work.

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