How RuPaul’s Drag Race production company got a 20% conversion increase with AI

What do Queens and AI marketing tools have in widespread? They’ll each pull out some spectacular strikes to maintain their audiences engaged—whereas death-dropping bounce charges.

And that’s precisely what manufacturing firm World of Wonder did, utilizing AI. They had been capable of mechanically optimize their advertising and marketing campaigns by sending every customer to their best-matched touchdown web page—and improve their general conversion charge by 19.7%.

However how’d they do it, precisely?

Because the manufacturing firm behind mega-hit exhibits like RuPaul’s Drag Race, the World of Surprise group didn’t have the time and assets to experiment with AI optimization and really see what their touchdown pages are manufactured from. They’ve bought a race to placed on, dangit!

So, Unbounce proposed an experiment: Let’s strive optimizing your campaigns with Smart Traffic and see if we are able to pump up the conversion charges—with out a lot as lifting a (completely manicured) finger. 

World of Surprise’s response? Oh, heck yeah. 

For the complete story, let’s hit the runway.

Who’s World of Surprise?

RuPaul, RuPaul's Drag RaceRuPaul, RuPaul's Drag Race

We’re all born bare, and the remainder is drag.

World of Surprise is greatest identified for producing RuPaul’s Drag Race, internet hosting RuPaul’s DragCon, and forming The Drag Defense Fund in partnership with the ACLU. Not a nasty li’l portfolio. 

As current customers of Unbounce, the World of Surprise group was keen to check and optimize their touchdown pages—however time was at all times slippin’ away from them. They had been busy producing actually superior exhibits, in any case. That’s the place Unbounce and World of Surprise noticed a possibility to experiment with AI. Right here’s Maggie Tielker, Designer at World of Surprise, setting the stage:

Maggie Tielker, Designer, World of WonderMaggie Tielker, Designer, World of Wonder

We construct these pages with our greatest data and intention, however we haven’t actually executed numerous testing in any respect—so it’ll be cool simply to see what actually works. I’m all for utilizing AI as a instrument to assist us. I do suppose for sure stuff you want a human to return in after which do their magic however something that helps us get there’s nice.

With so many entities beneath the World of Surprise umbrella, it’s necessary for the group to reveal their worldwide viewers to all that they’ve to supply. That’s why one of many objectives of this experiment was to construct model consciousness outdoors of the Drag Race model

“World of Surprise is an LGBTQ+ model and firm, however we strive to not market ourselves that method as a result of it actually reinforces the misperception that the LGBTQ+ world is area of interest,” explains Kelly Dirck, the Chief of Workers at World of Surprise. “We’re making an attempt to interrupt out of the field folks attempt to put queer manufacturers in.”

Drag Race’s recognition in North America is well-established, however their viewers may not know simply how far the model’s attain goes. There are literally 20 worldwide variations of the hit present that audiences can watch on World of Wonder Presents Plus, the corporate’s very personal streaming service. (Uhm, signal us up.) And never all people is aware of about DragCon, World of Surprise’s in-person occasions in Los Angeles and London the place drag followers, artists, and other people identical to ‘em can meet up and share their love of drag collectively. (Signal us up, once more.)

World of Surprise had already launched touchdown pages to advertise their stay occasions and different initiatives. The query was whether or not AI may assist make these pages extra impactful.

Present-stopping experiments with Good Visitors 

The speculation for World of Surprise’s experiment was easy: If we take a look at Smart Traffic on three completely different marketing campaign touchdown pages over a four-week interval, will we see elevated conversion charges?

(Frankly, the Unbounce group had a hunch that we’d—however play alongside.)

After we requested why they selected to check out Good Visitors’s AI, Maggie says, “Generally we simply get within the weeds with what we’re making an attempt to perform with a web page. And for me, I’m perhaps not placing myself within the sneakers of the consumer as a lot as I ought to. OK, this individual is on the lookout for the place to observe Drag Race in Mexico. What’s the easiest technique to present that to them with out bogging them down with an excessive amount of data?” 

Good Visitors was the perfect instrument for World of Surprise. Knowledgeable by historic conversion information, it makes use of AI to judge customer attributes—like location and gadget—and directs them to the touchdown web page variant the place they’re almost certainly to transform. And with Unbounce, spinning up new variants is so simple as clicking a button. Maggie, Designer at World of Surprise, says:

Maggie Tielker, Designer, World of WonderMaggie Tielker, Designer, World of Wonder

We’re at all times doing so many tasks, occasions, and touchdown pages that we’re at all times simply making an attempt to get issues out the door. However some of these items is so easy that I don’t see why we couldn’t simply throw up a variant with Good Visitors. It’s fairly fast and it’s not like you need to change the entire web page.

As a benchmark, media and leisure pages usually convert round 7.9%. So, looking at World of Surprise’s current pages and their conversion charges, the Unbounce crew got down to see what may yield higher outcomes.

And low and behold, there was an general conversion elevate of 19.7% throughout the three pages—with even higher outcomes for some particular web page variants.

Touchdown web page #1: DragCon UK occasion

This web page’s objective is all about lead era for the London stay occasion of DragCon. The query was, how can World of Surprise create buzz and pleasure on a web page that’s only a placeholder? And the way do visuals, copy, and even layouts have an effect on conversions? Nice questions, certainly.

The 4 variants included:

  1. CTA field differentiation with dimension and coloration
  2. Hyper-visual to generate pleasure/curiosity
  3. Added worth prop, exchange video with picture
  4. Totally different structure, coloration experimentation, bolded CTA
Kelly Dirck, Chief of Staff, World of WonderKelly Dirck, Chief of Staff, World of Wonder

It’s at all times good to know that making small tweaks can have such an impression.

General, the conversion charge for this web page was 31.88%, with an general elevated conversion charge from Good Visitors of 19.1%. Right here’s how every variant carried out:
 

Authentic touchdown web page: 19.72% conversion charge
Variant 1: 37.42% conversion charge
Variant 2: 36.83% conversion charge
Variant 3: 34.85% conversion charge
Variant 4: 33.11% conversion charge

Touchdown web page #2: Vegas stay present

A particular occasion touchdown web page with the primary deal with ticket gross sales. The theories we wished to check: 

  • How do pictures evaluate to movies on an occasion web page? 
  • Does the wording on the CTA button have an effect on clicks?
  • Do extra (of the identical) CTAs all through the web page result in extra clicks? 

To get solutions, we experimented with the structure and size of the web page, with CTA frequency all through the web page, and tried completely different visuals and movies. So we landed on two variants:

  1. Focusing the eye on the CTA
  2. Utilizing completely different visuals and extra CTAs

The outcomes had been clear with an general conversion charge of 54.07%, and Good Visitors managed to extend the conversion charge by 10.51%. Slay!  

Authentic touchdown web page: 55.02% conversion charge
Variant 1: 51.31% conversion charge
Variant 2: 56.52% conversion charge

Touchdown web page #3: Drag Race streaming

As a result of World of Wonder Presents Plus isn’t as well-known as, say, Netflix or Disney+, the followers don’t know the place they’ll go to observe all of the variations and specials of Drag Race. So, the objective for this web page was to extend streaming service sign-ups. 

The query on everybody’s thoughts: How do small adjustments—like altering the CTA coloration and dimension, including a headline, or altering the background—have an effect on conversion and engagement charges? The main target was on the header picture, the copy, dimension, and coloration of the CTA button, and replica used within the headline and demonstrating the streamer’s worth proposition. 

The experiment resulted with three variants:

  1. Including clearer worth prop within the copy
  2. Coloration-reversed, action-oriented CTA button
  3. That includes video content material in background, as an alternative of a static picture

Good Visitors led the cost with an elevated conversion charge of 29.74%, the place the general conversion charge was nonetheless a powerful 13.56%. 

Authentic touchdown web page: 10.57% conversion charge
Variant 1: 13.41% conversion charge
Variant 2: 17.09% conversion charge
Variant 3: 11.02% conversion charge

AI advertising and marketing instruments (like Good Visitors) can keep

Kelly Dirck, Chief of Staff, World of WonderKelly Dirck, Chief of Staff, World of Wonder

The outcomes had been positively clear that [Smart Traffic] was profitable.

Kelly, Chief of Workers at World of Surprise, appears impressed by the outcomes. However what in regards to the technosapiens of all of it? Does utilizing these AI instruments imply we’re going to get replaced? 

Not fairly. Each Maggie and Kelly agree that AI is a superb asset to must help their work—a serving to hand, quite than one thing that may exchange them. It’s a instrument you’ll be able to construct off of, one thing to make your job simpler and quicker. Particularly in case you’re busy making a number of the greatest TV on the earth. And the World of Surprise group is all about it. 

“We’re at all times doing so many tasks, occasions, and touchdown pages that we’re at all times simply making an attempt to get issues out the door. However some of these items is so easy that I don’t see why we couldn’t simply throw up a variant with Good Visitors. It’s fairly fast and it’s not like you need to change the entire web page.” – Maggie Tielker, Designer, World of Surprise. 

And that’s the fantastic thing about utilizing an AI instrument like Good Visitors. You don’t must put within the guesswork or run the exams and manage the backend. It does all of it for you, you simply must approve the variant. 

So the ethical of this story is: In the event you aren’t optimizing your touchdown pages, that’s principally self-sabotage.  

So that you higher work… on optimizing these touchdown pages. And with The AI guide to conversion rate optimization (CRO), you may get your very personal grasp’s diploma in fierce conversions.

World of Surprise desires you to do good on the earth 

However on the finish of the day, World of Surprise stands for one thing greater than simply conversions. 

Past tv, World of Surprise is partnered with the ACLU for The Drag Protection Fund in safety of LGBTQ+ rights. The LGBTQ+ neighborhood aren’t any strangers to dealing with threats and censorship not solely throughout the US, however throughout the globe. And what higher technique to help one thing good on the earth? 
Kelly, the Chief of Workers at World of Surprise, places it greatest:

Kelly Dirck, Chief of Staff, World of WonderKelly Dirck, Chief of Staff, World of Wonder

The liberty to precise ourselves and our gender id in artistic methods fuels artistry throughout our nation and tradition – and Drag is protected by the First Modification like every artistic expression comparable to dance, trend, and music. That’s why RuPaul’s Drag Race, MTV, and World of Surprise are proud to donate to ‘The Drag Protection Fund’ in help of the ACLU’s LGBTQ+ rights work.”

Consciousness is essential. Taking motion is even higher. So what are you ready for? Donate to The Drag Defense Fund.