FoxyMoron drives sales conversions for Principal Mutual Fund through its New Fund Offer campaign

Subject:

Principal Large Cap Fund – New Fund Offer (NFO) Campaign

Brand:

Principal Mutual Fund

Agencies:

Zoo Media-FoxyMoron: Creative & Media| The Rabbit Hole:Video Solutions

Objective:

To launch and promote a New Fund Offer (NFO) campaign amidst the COVID-19 pandemic to gain maximum exposure and sales conversions online

Overview:

An NFO is the initial sale of share funds issued by an investment company to its investors. An NFO is very similar to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in the share market. Principal Mutual Fund typically runs traditional NFOs (offline) where most of the sales are generated through distributors and advisors. As this NFO was being launched amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea was to get maximum exposure and conversions online. The launch of this NFO was to be accompanied by a marketing campaign that enticed the investors to purchase the units in the funds. After the two-week period, this fund would begin to trade publicly. The fund would be officially launched after the NFO closed. Hence, it was important to run a successful pre-launch campaign in order to drive maximum transactions during the two weeks.

Brand Overview:

Established in 1879, Principal Financial Group is a member of the Fortune500 and has over $696 billion in assets under management (as on June 30, 2019). Principal Financial Group serves more than 22 million customers with a strength of over 14 thousand employees worldwide. In India, the brand brings on board the financial strength and global experience of over 140 years in asset accumulation of Principal Financial Group

Execution Strategy

This campaign was executed over two phases:

● The pre-launch phase was based on branding and driving users to the landing page to collect cookies as well as capture leads for those interested. This phase was rolled out about two weeks prior to the launch date. The primary objective of this phase was awareness. The leads captured during this phase were contacted and remarketed to during the launch phase.

The media in the pre-launch phase primarily focused on the following:

i. Google – Search, Google Display Network and YouTube

ii. Social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn iii.Programmatic Campaigns via Yoptima
Media Innovation – Competitor Targeting using Image Recognition Technology via Advansh
Moment Marketing- IPL 2020 Moment Marketing in the form of Android App Notification Campaigns via Tuttler from Mobinet Media.
News Site Takeovers

Prior to this phase, primary research with more than 95 customers and one-on-one interviews with more than 15 customers was done to understand the category, especially during the pandemic. The learning from the survey was that customers were confused as to when to sell or stop their Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs) and were inclined to panic selling. An air cover for the NFO was organically built via social media platforms, one month prior to the launch in order to persuade the consumers.

An A/B testing method was used in the pre launch phase via two key visuals to find out which visual creative resonated more with the audiences. The following visual performed the best, as opposed to the other creatives during the pre-launch phase and hence promotions around it were continued during the launch phase as well:

This phase of the campaign leveraged regional targeting to achieve maximum exposure. Tamil Nadu and Andra Pradesh were identified as key markets for the launch. Hence,banners in regional languages- Tamil and Telugu were circulated to target audiences in the southern markets.

A few of these campaign posts on Facebook can be viewed here and here.

A short teaser video, created by The Rabbit Hole was released in the pre-launch phase to give the investors a brief idea about the NFO. This video was the key asset of this phase and was heavily promoted on YouTube. This video garnered about 1.9 million views. This teaser video can be viewed here.

The launch phase was based on generating leads by driving users to the landing page to essentially fill and optimize the lead form. The launch phase campaign was a much larger media campaign distributed on various platforms like Paytm, One Native, Tutler, Image recognition, Discovery Ads, social media platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, Google, etc. A video was released for the launch phase that explained the USPs of the fund. The video can be viewed here.

Get Bigger Together (Launch phase creatives)

Remarketing to the audiences from pre-launch phase and to the database of the brand’sexisting customers was also a crucial part of the campaign during the two weeks of the Launch phase The major agenda of this phase was to get maximum transactions during

the two weeks window. Lead collection and tracking the status of leads were otherimportant agendas of this phase. There were relevant codes placed on the landing page to ensure relevant data for remarketing was being captured.

Roadblocks and site takeovers on major financial websites like Moneycontrol, BusinessStandard, Bloomberg Quint, Economic Times, Financial Express among others was the key to spread awareness and drive the correct set of audiences to the landing page. Audiences with an affinity towards mutual funds were being targeted heavily via various platforms. Banners on industry portals like Advisorkhoj and Cafemutual were also an add on to drive traffic to transact.

Bloomberg Quint

Moneycontrol

Financial Express

Economic Times

Tutler

The final landing page can be viewed here. Additionally, distributors were also targeted. The distributor target group included a mix of approximately 25 thousand individuals and institutions.

Outcome:

The number of visitors on the landing page was 8.64 lakhs.
The total number of transactions for the Large Cap NFO was 12,961.