Doctors Without Borders uses remarketing and retargeting to extend reach

By Karin Kirchoff and Jeff Regen

When the initial testing yielded promising results, MSF developed targeted creative with more urgency and a stronger ask. As the cookie pool grew, it also could secure better ad inventory and better pricing too.

By monitoring and optimizing the results, MSF now uses its cookie pool (i.e., the pool of people cookied while visiting its site) to retarget nondonor visitors differently from one-time donors — and again differently from monthly donors. For example, a one-time donor is served an ad promoting the monthly giving program 14 days after the one-time gift transaction. With this strategy, sustainer conversion rates were 17 times higher than general retargeting. Not surprisingly, MSF didn’t stop there. The organization has used e-mail to echo retargeted messaging with strong results.