With the holiday rush being just around the corner, it’s very important for an eCommerce business to have a measurement plan along with specific KPIs in place to measure performance of digital marketing campaigns. All too frequently, brands get caught up on metrics and KPIs like last-click return and overall revenue goals to gauge performance. While these metrics and indicators are incredibly important to success, there are many additional and marketing channel specific KPIs that sometimes don’t get the attention they deserve around the holidays.
As we all know, the purchase path follows a journey of introducing, influencing, and closing channels. To get a true view of channel performance in a time of increased volume, we need to look at KPIs such as first click return and “influencing” return along with the traditional last-click model to fully understand the marketing mix. Even higher level “engagement-oriented” KPIs such as traffic/time spent on holiday gift guide pages can provide insight into how the top of the marketing funnel is performing. Make sure to look at these KPIs in the months leading up to Black Friday/Cyber Monday as comparison shopping and information gathering starts early! For example, looking at something as specific as retargeting/display advertising’s list size growth in the months leading up to holiday can help inform tactical decisions around the big buying days.
By setting a KPI of a certain percentage of month over month list growth from October to November to December, you will know exactly how many people will be served ads once it’s time for the big sale along with how you are pacing to that goal. A certain percentage of new visitors leading up to the holidays can also be a great KPI for audience building. Although it does not have a direct impact with last-click sales, the more qualified users that are able to be reached during the big push, the better!
Too frequently, we see marketing channels take a heavy-handed approach when it comes to margin and profitability on certain products. This is especially relevant around the holidays when big discounts to incentivize purchases can put an even bigger squeeze on margins across the brand. Many advertising platforms have the ability to track margin and optimize bidding around set margin rules for paid search campaigns by using a brand’s product feed. You can create a KPI for margin within your paid search program, and continuously optimize to that value by utilizing a bidding strategy which automatically takes it into account. This can significantly help maintain profitability around the holidays, when promotions are at their peak and margin normally takes a dive.
When it comes to holiday KPIs, it’s important to keep the high-level metrics top of mind, but don’t discount the details either. We at Blue Moon Digital encourage brands to create specific holiday KPIs for each channel with the goal of being able to use these to holistically monitor the performance of the overall digital strategy. It’s not too late! If you have questions around holiday strategy and channel KPIs, feel free to reach out to the experts at Blue Moon Digital today!
