Going bananas: how AI helped Fairtrade's online marketing

Key takeouts:

-  Click-bait style content isn’t always a winner on social media

-  Using the products most associated with your business (in this case, bananas) isn’t necessarily the best route to attracting new interest

Like many organisations, Fairtrade Foundation relies on email marketing as a key channel to spread its messaging. In Fairtrade’s case, these messages are: better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. 

Fairtrade gathers many of the emails for its database through social media, using content that asks people to ‘sign up’ as a Fairtrade supporter. Fairtrade approached Automated Creative with a brief to use Facebook to acquire sign ups and provide insights into its creative approach.  

First, we set out to discover exactly what would make the audience respond by testing the effectiveness of different emotional triggers and Fairtrade products through a series of optimisation sprints.

We used our ‘Creator’ tool to optimise Fairtrade’s paid social media strategy, its value propositions and copy themes to identify which emotional trigger was most effective at acquiring sign-ups. 

Perhaps surprisingly, we found that click-bait style content actually performed badly. The standout performers in Fairtrade’s case were buying and product-focused messages, along with content that promoted living ethically. We also found that an emotional tone of voice performed better than a direct or educational one.  

Moving this forward, we began to examine which kind of products drove action. Again, some surprising results - bananas - a product often associated with Fairtrade - were outstripped by the likes of coffee, cocoa and flowers. We then applied Fairtrade’s values messaging across these best-performing categories, with the final results giving Fairtrade a definitive result on which content would drive sign ups most effectively. 

Our Creator tool produced 57 unique ads in a matter of minutes, which reached 228,155 people. 8,658 total link clicks and a CTR of 3.92% (benchmark: 0.9%) was achieved. Most importantly, 2,030 email sign-ups were delivered across the campaign (CPA £1.67). And Fairtrade now has a host of new, important insights to guide its creative approach in the future.