The Paid ‘Search’ Email Placement: Right Place, Right Time via @sejournal, @jonkagan

By the time you read this analysis, the realization that the NY Jets will not be winning the big game this season has hit us all. That is both old and new, much like the concept of email campaigns, but this time, tied to paid media in “search.”

But first, a big thank you to Amsive’s Brandon LaRocco, associate manager, digital media, and Patrick Dunfey, senior specialist, digital media, for collaborating on this article with me.

What Is A ‘Paid Search Email Placement’

This is both straightforward and mildly confusing, based on how you define paid search. But using the overtly generic approach, I am defining this as any ad unit in an email environment that was powered by a search engine’s ad platform such as Google Ads or Bing Ads (because it will be a cold day in hell before I call it Microsoft).

They look like this (don’t judge what targets me):

These ads end up here either by Demand Generation (Google), Audience Ads (Bing), or Performance Max (Google and Bing).

Originally, they were only audience based/behavior based targeting, but with the expansion of Performance Max search themes and the introduction (it is actually a return and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise) of keyword content targeting, these are now leaning more into a search term style of targeting.

In my opinion, this may be the most under-publicized capability of any of these ad units. In this day and age, a massive chunk of advertisers have an email marketing campaign; this is a way to augment it.

Wait, I Didn’t Even Realize This Exists, Does It Actually Work?

This is actually a question I am getting more and more often (only outpaced by people telling me they didn’t know that YouTube Shorts is a thing).

The answer is always dependent on the brand and the setup. Since you can’t control placement abilities in Performance Max, I am throwing that entity out for this discussion, and focusing on Demand Gen/Audience Ads.

But, in efforts we have used it, the short answer is yes, they do work.

Long answer is also yes, but it depends on a variety of things, such as audience, vertical, key performance indicator, and what you compare it against. Note the following:

In reality, email has some of the highest intent of a consumer on the internet and an area they spend the most of their time, alongside production tools, social media content, and watching clips of “The Office” that they can relate to their day-to-day life (Note: I have no data to support that final part of the statement, but let’s be honest, we know it is true).

What Kind of Performance Will I Even Get?

Well that is a question you should hypothesize on your own before testing it, since we don’t know your current situation.

But keep this in mind, the reason you are even doing this type of ad unit (or even, really any form of awareness media at all), is because you cannot survive on direct to site traffic, without it. So this is a foray into a format that will drive additional traffic to your site, directly through the ad, or indirectly through other channels. Thus, making the performance from this placement, as incremental. Why is that important? Because incremental will always be less efficient performance, but it will be activity you wouldn’t previously have gotten. Meaning the KPIs at a place that is between DR and Awareness, and not putting the success solely to one or the other.

For example, when we compare display efforts head to head (Google Display Network, may it RIP, and Demand Gen Display), we see very different performance, despite the same audience targets and similar investments:

Or when we compare Bing search vs. audience display vs. audience email display:

How Should I Set This Up?

I am a bit of a control freak, so when I can, I separate the video components and display components into unique campaigns (or at least unique ad groups), to minimize cannibalization and focus placements when I can.

Vs. when they are separated

I should note, that “big search engine” will almost always recommend lumping all placements into a single ad group, with a logic of: “more placements and more data will get you better performance.” To which I will say: “Yeah, I’ve seen that sometimes, but it doesn’t help me achieve all of my goals.” However, I do recommend you test out both scenarios and see what works best for you.

Additionally, email placements often have the highest click-through rate and time on site, so I want to make sure I am dedicating volume-based opportunity for it.

“But Jon, what about Performance Max? That’ll cover Gmail/Outlook placements as well. Why don’t I just use that?”

To which I respond (in both a somewhat condescending and “snartastic” tone at the same time): You’re correct. The blind trust of a search engine-based ad unit that you have minimal control over will, in fact, give you some of those email placements. But, once again, you have almost no control over those placements. All that needs to happen is in Search: If you start to see in Performance Max that Shopping or Search is producing positively in performance, the email placements go by the wayside (which will happen to any channel in Performance Max).

Here is month one of a Performance Max campaign:

Vs. month six as performance shifts toward leads coming from search, and ultimately stops the Gmail rotation:

The same concept happens in Bing Performance Max. Here is month one of the campaign:

Vs. month six of the campaign, where you can see the email placement (outlook.live.com) has dropped from 1.6% of impressions to 0.5% of impressions:

Which is the reality of email placements in Performance Max. They will not outperform Search, but still serve a vital role for incrementality. Which is why I run them concurrently in Demand Generation/Audience Ads. It provides the advertiser more control of the placements, but it also provides a way to avoid cannibalization/minimize cannibalization.

Ok, You’ve Convinced Me To Give This A Try, Anything Else I Should Know?

Of course there is.

My absolute favorite in Google’s Demand Generation units, which I think is one of the most helpful and important parts of it (especially for Gmail placements), is the audiences. Demand Gen is the last Google ad unit that lets you do in-platform lookalike (LAL) audiences. Which is excellent for prospecting (Bing never got rid of theirs; those audience auto generate and are called “Similar” audiences).

Truncation is a pain, so if you are targeting the email placements, while you have 40 characters in the headlines to work with, keep it to 30 or less to prevent/minimize truncation. Get that strong grabbing headline out there and fully visible.

Sometimes the long headline works and shows in full; it depends on the environment, and sometimes no headline shows at all (it is a gamble). When they open the email (in Gmail), then you can grab them with the strong copy and lifestyle image.

Leads to this:

Test It Out

Now, after sitting through a training put on by “big search engine,” they will recommend you allocate at least $100 a day to Demand Gen, and all units (video, display, etc.) should be in a single campaign. There is probably some merit to that as well. But if you’re really wanting to test it, try isolating a campaign to just Gmail/Outlook, and you can get away with a smaller daily budget.

But make sure you have the right copy, and more importantly, the right (and big enough) audience. Otherwise, you’ve set the test up for failure.

The Takeaway

This was written based on my experiences and thoughts. There are often differing points of view on how to execute this and the logic, and that is fine. There is not a single “right” way to do things. But there are very distinct wrong ways to do things (like people who cut donuts into quarters or let “big search engine” run the account for you without true human intervention).

I will also note, and honestly, this is the most important part of using Demand Gen/Audience Ads for email placements: This is in no way a suitable replacement for an email marketing campaign. Those exist for a reason, while Demand Gen/Audience Ads are there for incrementality and augmentation of your current efforts.

You will not get the same efficiency as an email campaign or search campaign from them, but you should see a direct last-click performance return to some degree by utilizing them.

These units are a “simple” way to interject your ads into favorable spots, in an environment that individuals spend a lot of time in. While not ending up in the spam/junk folder.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Natalya Kosarevich/Shutterstock