How We Leveraged Lead Generation for the Academy of Natural Sciences

Founded in 1812, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University is a leading natural history museum dedicated to understanding the natural world and inspiring everyone to care for it. The Academy of Natural Sciences is the oldest natural history museum in the Americas and has more than 19 million specimens, all carefully documented and well-preserved for future generations. They serve as the foundation for an active research program that continues to focus on the critical environmental issues of our time, ranging from evolution and biodiversity to human health and climate change.

The Academy of Natural Sciences has been a CI client since 2015. The team is consistently looking to build overall brand awareness across their community in Philadelphia while driving ticket sales from their more bottom-of-funnel audiences, particularly for special exhibitions.

In the below campaign example, the Academy of Natural Sciences wanted to generate excitement around their Under the Canopy exhibit and accelerate social media engagement. CI worked with them to develop a contest entry strategy for lead generation using a native Meta ad format (instead of using a third-party platform or apps).

CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE & IMPACT

Under the Canopy, which ran Feb 17 – Sept 2, 2024, was an immersive exhibition introducing visitors to the world of rainforests and the animals that inhabit them.

Because our campaign employed a native Meta ad format for the contest, there was no additional investment of time or funds in setting up and integrating a third-party platform or app to collect contest entries–and all entries served a direct lead-generation bottom-line goal.

We implemented a targeting strategy that included:

• Website Engagers (most bottom-of-funnel; zeroing on visitors to particularly relevant web pages)
• Social Engagers & Website Visitor Lookalikes (middle-of-funnel)
• Broad Interests/Affinity (most top-of-funnel)

The Cost Per Lead (CPL) was ultimately strongest for the middle-of-funnel segment at just $0.42, which is particularly notable when compared against the $0.47 cost per page view across segments in the Academy’s 2024 general brand acquisition campaign. Top-of-funnel CPL was under $1 compared to an average CPL of over $4 for lead generation acquisition campaign in a prior season.

Because it was by far the smallest audience segment in terms of platform reach, CPL was highest at $1.26 for the most bottom-of-funnel segment (visitors to particularly relevant web pages). 

WHAT VISITOR-SERVING INSTITUTIONS CAN LEARN

Your ordinary is your audience’s extraordinary

We say this all the time! When you have something unique on offer, think strategically about how you can leverage a special, individual or small-group experiential moment to drive big impact (via lead generation, raffle tickets, etc.). 

Keep first-party data collection top of mind

There is a wealth of anonymized, behavioral targeting available to you across digital platforms, but you don’t own that data and it will only last for so long. The Academy of Natural Sciences finished their campaign with 7-8K people in their campaign retargeting pool, which can be targeted for up to six months on Meta. Much more impactful are the ~1K high-intent, high-interest email addresses in their database (contest entries), which can be targeted via email AND social campaigns far into the future provided they continue to engage.

READY TO MAXIMIZE YOUR VISITOR ENGAGEMENT?

Let’s talk about how our team can help you!