Need to reduce the cost of your newsletter subscribers?

Church Answers

Church Answers is led by Thom Rainer and a team of experts with deep vocational ministry experience. They provide resources for churches of all sizes and levels of health: assessment tools, courses for church leaders and their church, digital community, ministry certification, and more!

Church Answers teamed up with ROAS Depot to bring down their cost per newsletter subscriber (CPS) and ramp up the number of new newsletter subscribers they gain each month.

In the first month , ROAS Depot was able to reduce CPS by over 67% and reduce total cost over 83% to date (November 2024)

The Task: Church Answers started the agreement with ROAS Depot to reduce CPS with Meta ads.

 
With an already high-converting newsletter in place, Church Answers knew that more subscribers on their list meant higher revenue, and more church leaders across the country gaining access to the support they needed to grow their congregations.

When ROAS Depot engaged with Church Answers, CPS from Meta was over $4.45 which was higher than their goal of $2.25.

The ROAS Depot Strategy:

Research:

Success with ads starts with a great product or service.

The Church Answers team recognized they had a huge audience of pastors and church leaders seeking support in guiding and expanding their congregations. With their top-notch newsletter packed full of resources, they were ready to assist those on this mission.

ROAS Depot follows a 'Research, Adapt, Implement, Observe' Model. They research competitors and businesses selling to the same market and collect insights into how they communicate with their shared audience.

The team at ROAS Depot adapts the findings into eye-catching and on-brand creative.

They implement structured tests inside the ad account, observe the results, and then scale.

RD’s research found companies similar to Church Answers, all with the same goal of helping church leaders expand their congregations.

Adapt:

The examples ROAS Depot found were a great launch pad to start ideating and pulling insights from competitors’ marketing strategies.

Trained eyes at ROAS Depot can spot, sometimes, subtle but important details that nearly every church resource company uses in their ads.

Major takeaways?

Competitors call out 'Pastors!, Church Leaders',  in the ad copy or creative to catch the eye of their target audience.

Most of the creative also includes verbiage related to growing their congregation, or a pain point that they might be facing.  

After thoroughly reviewing hundreds of ads from various brands,  ROAS Depot put what they had learned into practice and created compelling creative, and actionable ad copy.

ROAS Depot has vast experience and expertise in creating effective ads, having spent millions of dollars on paid social media.

With the valuable insights gathered from their research, they were equipped to produce impactful ads.

See 2 of the 100+ ads ROAS Depot created below.

Implement:

Church Answers has eye-catching, easy-to-understand ad creative.

What's next?

ROAS Depot implements campaigns in a structure that allows them to a/b test:

Ad creative
Copy
Audiences
Optimization strategies for the best ROAS (Return on ad spend)

Building ad campaigns with specific structures allowed RD to report data quickly and transparently to Church Answers’ executive team. The digital hurdle with Church Answers’ industry was that the Meta platform had no “church leaders who want to grow their congregation” interests or audiences.

Luckily, the Meta algorithm is excellent at utilizing ad creativity and machine learning to get in front of nearly any business target audience.

Equally crucial as running audience tests, businesses need to be able to produce fresh creatives as they scale, like the examples above, to reduce ad fatigue and help the Meta algorithm learn their target market.

See a few of the 100's of audiences RD tested.

Observe:

RD began optimizing the account once they found winning ad creative and audience combinations.

The screenshot below shows that Church Answers saw a HUGE, 67% decrease in CPS in month 1.  (See Screenshot 1) ROAS Depot was able to optimize by CPS and deliver more subscribers by the day.

The additional screenshot below shows how ROAS Depot was able to decrease CPS by over 83% to date while maintaining elevated spend over several months.



ROAS Depot is a humble firm, but... The Church Answers team had some kind words to say:

"Before ROAS Depot, we were stuck. Our leads were coming in too slowly and at too high of a cost. Once ROAS Depot started working with us, we saw immediate improvement. Within a short time, new subscribers skyrocketed as our cost per lead came down. Their team is hard-working, smart, responsive, and humble. We've found a great partner with ROAS Depot!"