Remitly · Global marketing research
Twenty million dollars of spend with no read on it
Brand and performance teams told different stories about what was working. Nobody could settle it, because the people the campaigns were aimed at were not in the panels being used to measure them.
- Method
- Pre/post survey with holdout market
- Scale
- 3 metros in market, 1 held out
- Audience
- 4 target groups, 2 languages
- My role
- Design, recruiting, fielding, analysis
The problem
A large share of the audience for these campaigns sends money offline. They do not appear in the online panels the industry uses for global brand measurement, which meant every existing read on the work was drawn from the wrong people. The decision in front of the team was whether to keep investing, shift targeting, or pull back, across three countries and four audiences.
What I designed
A pre-wave fielded in every metro before launch, an identical post-wave after, and a fourth metro held out entirely: no spend, same measurement. The comparison against the holdout is what turns a set of numbers into an answer.
Reaching offline senders meant building intercept recruiting from scratch, because no panel could supply them. I designed the instrument, programmed and fielded it, and scoped the analytics partner who ran significance testing. I ran the program with brand, performance, and marketing teams across the US and EMEA, reporting directly to them for messaging, targeting, and spend decisions.
What it changed
In one metro, investment continued on evidence rather than argument, and the messaging pivoted and narrowed on the insight. In another, targeting was adjusted once the pre/post showed who the campaigns were actually reaching.
Ad recall was the piece nobody had ever seen. Having it drove a creative redesign from awareness messaging to consideration messaging in two markets.