Cashrewards: driving trust and sign-ups

Plenty of Australian shoppers hear cashback and assume there is a catch. That scepticism stopped people signing up, and Cashrewards could not settle it through its own advertising alone. The answer had to come from somewhere shoppers trusted, and it had to land by November, when Black Friday and Cyber Monday leave every retail brand shouting at once.

The answer came from Mum’s Lounge, Marie Claire, Boss Hunting and three more

The work ran always on, with tactical bursts at Black Friday and Cyber Monday and again at the End of Financial Year. Continuous testing pointed to the groups worth talking to, among them mums, Gen Z and value-focused professionals, and to shopping verticals that drew the most interest, such as fashion, electronics and home goods. The content used real products and services available through Cashrewards, so a reader could see the benefit for themselves.

Mum’s Lounge ran relatable purchase examples and exclusive offers for mums, with Cashrewards Day adding urgency. It held strong dwell times with mothers looking for value in their everyday purchases.

Mouths of Mums wrote as an advocate for savvy shopping and emphasised the quality of Cashrewards’ retail partners. Ninety per cent of its clicks went to the sign-up link.

Marie Claire showed fashion-forward readers the breadth of brands available through Cashrewards in fashion, beauty and retail, and recorded the highest click-through rate in the campaign.

Daily Mail ran two articles. The first built excitement for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by calling Cashrewards the ultimate “shopping hack”. The second covered the “Parking Fines” activation and was framed as breaking news.

Boss Hunting spoke to financially savvy single and double income professionals and framed Cashrewards as a smart shopping tool for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with clear examples and simple sign-up instructions.

Time Out put the range of experiences and retail options in front of urban lifestyle seekers interested in both practical savings and entertainment.

Almost 700 clicks went to the sign-up page in four days

That was the Black Friday and Cyber Monday burst. Across the always-on content and the bursts together, the campaign held more than 772 hours of attention. Bounce rates fell 25 per cent, so readers arriving from these articles were more likely to stay on the Cashrewards site and look around. At End of Financial Year the content exceeded the dwell time benchmarks on Time Out and Boss Hunting by 2.3 times and 1.3 times.

Cashrewards told us the partnership tripled the range and impact of what the brand could normally achieve on its own, and that audiences arriving through Avid’s publications were far more likely to stay, engage and convert.

The doubt had to die somewhere other than a Cashrewards ad

The six publishers who said cashback was real were ones those shoppers read by choice, each writing in its own voice to its own audience.

Clicks to a sign-up page are not sign-ups, though, and none of this was built to change what an AI answer says about cashback. What it does show is a category doubt answered by somebody other than the advertiser.