January Third
Short Codes
Short Codes Make it Obvious
B2B Ad Campaign
What are those five-digit numbers businesses use to text their customers?
You get those automated texts everyday. From your bank, airline or even hair salon. They're called Short Codes. You know what they are — but you probably didn't know their name. And that's exactly the problem we set out to solve with our national awareness campaign.
Short Codes are five and six-digit numbers that businesses use to text customers for shipping notifications, two factor authentication, banking alerts, and pretty much everything else. But no one knows what they're called — and it's hard to use something you can't name. It's especially hard to Google for them. So we built an integrated campaign to raise awareness about Short Codes and ultimately increase the number of Short Codes leased.
Short codes are (obviously) effective.
The data doesn't lie: Short Codes are an extremely effective way for businesses to reach customers. Over 90% of text messages sent as short codes are opened and read within three minutes. Compare that to the open rate for a marketing email at under 1%. They're the obvious solution for customer engagement, public safety, marketing, and operations updates. So we designed a campaign to tell the world just that: Short Codes Make it Obvious.
In our campaign, "obvious" is also a reference to the way short codes are delivered. While most marketing and operations messages from companies are lost in a sea of noise and clutter — just check you personal inbox for proof — short codes land on your phone right besides text messages from your mom or wife. Short codes are the obvious choice in part because they're so hard to miss. You can't pick up your phone without seeing them. In our campaign, users are bombarded by billboard-sized messages that mirror the obvious quality of Short Codes.
AN OBVIOUSLY EFFECTIVE MEDIA PLAN
Our media strategy for the campaign was all-digital, highly targeted, and leveraged a variety of platforms for a combination of targeting efficacy and affordability. Our media mix continues to evolve with each monthly report, which has led to a steadily increasing ROAS throughout 2022.
As the campaign continues into its fourth quarter, we're optimizing creative to ensure we don't run into fatigue — and making sure that we're moving folks at the top of the funnel all the way through to conversion.
The Results: They Also Make it Obvious
When it comes to reaching your customers, Short Codes obviously work. And so did our campaign. With an 81% video view rate, and a 3x more efficient CPM than LinkedIn's average, we saw extremely strong performance.
In the first 6 weeks, the campaign drove over $3.5M in revenue from a $200k spend — a whopping 18 ROAS. We've continued running the campaign this year, increasing the ROAS to 20, and still climbing.
Destination DC | Experience DC Tourism Campaign
- Washington D.C.