The situation
A ready-to-drink latte line ran a national retail trial program. Shoppers bought the product in store and submitted a rebate claim; the team counted each signup as a trial.
The team tested new creative to reduce cost per trial signup while keeping the BOGO offer fixed.
The problem
The team kept testing creative while the offer set the cost of trial.
BOGO required the shopper to buy two units to receive the offer. A free-can offer reduced that first-purchase commitment to one unit.
Each creative test kept BOGO fixed, so those tests couldn't show the effect of changing the offer.
What we did
Tested the free-can offer against BOGO.
Held creative and targeting constant to isolate the offer change.
Compared cost per signup and rebate fulfillment, rather than click metrics.
Shifted paid-media budget to the free-can offer after measuring its lower signup cost.
The results
The free-can offer cut cost per trial signup from $6.01 to $2.78, a 54% drop with the same product, creative, and audiences.
The program produced 25,982 total trial signups, 20,951 of them driven by paid media, against 6,739 rebate payouts fulfilled.
At the same paid-media signup volume, the $3.23 cost difference represents about $68,000 in modeled savings versus BOGO.