Through our partnership with UFC FIGHT PASS, the unparalleled digital subscription service for combat sports, we are thrilled to announce the triumphant launch of a cutting-edge Conversion-Rate Optimisation (CRO) campaign that sets a new benchmark in the market.

This stands as a significant milestone in the partnership, representing an evolution of our unified campaign approach. Our aim is to optimise all facets of a consumer’s digital interaction with a brand, considering their behaviours and preferences. Specifically, we are concentrating on augmenting user experiences through personalised landing pages.

Here’s an overview of the motivations behind launching this campaign, its mechanics, as well as the dynamic programmatic creative campaign we have been simultaneously running behind the scenes.

The power of glocalisation

Successfully leveraging market rights is critical in growing a global OTT platform, something we have consistently seen over our four-year relationship with UFC FIGHT PASS, the product is currently available in more than 200 countries and territories.

Through rigorous testing early in our partnership, we established that localisation of assets and messaging is a key driver of acquisition; reaching audiences across the globe with imagery and copy that is relevant to their market consistently outperforms the generic alternative.

Our global acquisition strategy was recognised with a ‘Best Marketing Strategy’ award at the Sports Pro OTT awards in 2022, largely due to its tactical, glocalised approach; implementing a unified global strategy at a local market level, considering international nuances.

Through a personalised landing page campaign, we are able to gain valuable insights into on-site user behaviour, enabling us to continually optimise the user journey in the future.

By incorporating market-relevant product copy and athlete imagery to a dynamically served landing page, we sought to determine whether a more localised approach would outperform the control, generic landing page in market, for users arriving from paid activity across platforms including Google, Meta, Twitter, and Display in our core markets.

How does it work?

Dynamic landing pages use a combination of specific code and data-mining capabilities to recognise users through identifiers and show them different messaging based on specific scenarios and certain characteristics of their behaviour.

We identified and segmented traffic by country via IP geolocation. Users were then served with either a landing page that features the most searched local UFC athlete in their respective market, or the control landing page.

For example, 50% of paid traffic from Australia is presented with an image of Alexander Volkanovski along with copy that accurately reflects the product offering in market, while the other 50% were shown the global generic page as a control.

We made aesthetic transformations to optimise the user experience on both mobile and desktop devices:

• Simplifying the messaging to ensure clarity
• Enhancing CTA visibility
• Reducing logo duplication
• Decluttering buttons in the header for desktop users

This approach was taken to effectively deliver a tailored and intuitive experience to users, providing them with unique and highly impactful content that resonates with them in relation to their market.

Dynamic creative optimisation via programmatic

We’ve launched dynamic creative across programmatic display with UFC FIGHT PASS to further improve engagement.

This activity leverages contextual AI, matching targeting and creative at the impression level, to create maximum consumer impact. Effectively reaching users when they’re in a receptive frame of mind, consuming content related to the UFC – delivering an optimal ad experience to each user.

For example, a user in the UK reading an article about Tom Aspinall in an upcoming UFC Fight Night in London would be served an ad promoting his Fight Archive, leading users to sign up to UFC FIGHT PASS to watch more of the exciting Heavyweight prospect.

Through this campaign, we will deliver over 1,000,000 unique creatives for UFC FIGHT PASS, continually testing variations of athletes, events, USPs, and languages to identify the most optimal combinations.

These continually updated creatives are ultra responsive to page content, but also to what is happening in UFC events. Using result feeds, the fight schedule and athlete content to match creative against webpage content, we enable the advert to mirror and become an extension of the content the user is consuming.

This end-to-end dynamic approach to media enables seamless integration of personalisation, glocalised messaging and optimised user experience. Meaning we can provide an entirely personalised user journey from ad to conversion point.

With the impending loss of third-party cookies, the role of Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) is strengthened. With DCO technology continuously improving via machine learning and AI technology, brands will be able to deliver creative personalisation at scale, based on data sources.

Unlocking success

After working with UFC for over 4 years, we have amassed an extensive knowledge of their audiences. We have a deep understanding of their preferences, the optimal timing and channels to reach them, and the specific creative elements and messaging that resonate most effectively.

During the initial 26 days of the campaign, we monitored and analysed the results across core markets and saw key markets producing statistically significant positive results with CTA Uplift of up to 28% and Purchase Uplift of up to +35%.

With our drive for innovation, we are formulating future plans for CRO projects that encompass multivariate testing, custom live event pages for pertinent markets in multiple languages, where the platform is localised, and dynamic athlete pages for search that utilise variables like campaign UTM matching and keywords.

We have been excited about the opportunity to share this campaign with our partners, extending our support throughout our partners’ entire user ecosystem.

Our personalised dynamic campaigns enable us to improve conversion rates without the need for increased media spend. We hope that this empowerment will lead our partners to achieve enhanced results and drive success.

Find out more about our  award-winning work with UFC FIGHT PASS here.