How we helped cord increase paid search and social ads signups by 69% and decrease CPA by 23%.

56%

increase in sign-ups on paid social

28%

decreased CPA
on paid search

decreased CPA
on paid social

About cord

cord is a messaging tool for finding work. It has transformed the job search and hiring process into an extraordinary messaging experience for both engineers and companies.

It has a two-way approach—helping engineers get direct access to hiring companies in London, New York and remotely across Europe, and making organizations source active engineers who are looking for permanent work.

The challenge

cord wanted to grow the number of people on their tool quickly and sustainably. They decided to use paid acquisition channels and partnered with Hey Digital to scale.

Their goal was to increase the number of sign-ups from engineers/developers while keeping the cost per user acquisition under control.

Our approach

At Hey Digital, we believe time is money—and we strive to help our clients manage both by running experiments that get faster, better results while continuously optimizing campaigns to cut down costs.

With structured, funnel-based paid social and paid search campaigns, tailored creatives, and high intent targeting, Hey Digital helped cord successfully hit their goals.

Here’s a quick breakdown of our approach.

High-intent search keywords targeting

We used the Google search channel for demand capturing. Thus, instead of broad targeting, the Paid Media team identified and used high-intent keywords to attract ready-to-convert customers to cord’s website.

After analyzing historical search query data and performing thorough keyword research, we launched a high-intent search terms campaign. It helped drive down the Google Ads acquisition costs by 28%.

Additionally, the conversion-focused ad headlines and descriptions also encouraged the candidates to sign up.

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Google Smart campaigns

We went beyond Search, Display, and YouTube campaigns to scale candidate sign-ups and opted for Google Smart campaigns.

The Smart campaigns drove 69% of the Google Ads sign-ups in 6 months while reducing the cost by 30%.

On-brand and on-message creatives

Our design team worked closely with cord’s marketing team to build a smooth creative workflow and produce conversion-focused, on-brand, and beautiful creatives.

We explained the benefits of using cord to the audience with static ad creatives, GIFs, and carousels—which is a set of multiple ad creatives.

Every month, we consistently communicated and updated the new offers, up-to-date openings, and companies hiring on cord.

This resulted in a 56% increase in sign-ups and an 8% decrease in sign-up CPA on paid social platforms.

Always-on retargeting and prospecting campaigns

Instead of relying on occasional and seasonal campaigns, we switched our paid social strategy to run always-on user acquisition-focused campaigns on Facebook Ads.

This helped ensure that advertising algorithms have enough data to learn about and optimize ad delivery.

Further, to keep the CPA lower, we tested new targetings and creatives for these always-on campaigns while still benefiting from the historical learnings.

This allowed us to scale the ad spend on Facebook Ads by 43% while lowering the cost per acquisition at the same time.

Results

Hey Digital helped cord successfully scale their sign-ups from engineers/developers while managing the cost per customer acquisition.

As a result, cord saw an inspiring 69% increase in sign-ups and a 23% decrease in CPA.