5 Marketing KPIs For The 2022 Holiday Season
It’s that time of year again.
Christmas music has invaded the radio stations and department stores near you. As an eCommerce business, this means your holiday marketing should be in full swing. After all, there’s huge potential. The expected average holiday spending in 2022 is $1,802 per person.
But during this chaotic season, it’s difficult to know which KPIs should have your full attention. Here are five to keep in mind.
Site Traffic
Marketing metrics don’t have to be complicated. Analyzing the number of visits your site gets each month is a great place to start.
But knowing that big, singular number is only so helpful. To get a better understanding of the impact your marketing is making, hop into Google Analytics and look at your traffic by source and medium. This clues you in on what is or isn’t working.
For example, if you’re investing plenty of time and talent into social media, but it remains a tiny portion of your site traffic, it’s time to pivot.
TIP - Compare your site visits to the previous month and the previous year. This gives you a clear picture of your growth.
Every user that comes to your site has a story to tell and fortunately, using GA4 makes it even easier to understand and track the behaviors (indicated by events) to help us interpret that story. Total user numbers are important, but understanding what those users are doing when they’re on the site and how many times they revisit the site is critical to determining the intention of your shoppers. This type of data can drive decisions in your strategies for site content and targeting along with which marketing outputs to prioritize.
AVERAGE ORDER VALUE
You already know acquiring new customers is a long, difficult process. That’s why it can be valuable to focus on the people who already support your brand.
The average order value is a dollar amount that tells what the typical customer spends per transaction. It’s a simple formula. Divide your total revenue by the number of orders placed.
Bundling, cross-selling, and upselling are reliable strategies that can increase that number. But these aren’t set them and forget them strategies. There are always opportunities to innovate.
TIP - Offer incentives that encourage visitors to continue shopping. Spend $100 to get free shipping or save $5 when you spend $50 are great examples.
Open Rate
If you’re like most retailers, email marketing is a significant part of your holiday push. When combined, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday account for over 300 million emails.
That’s a lot of competition.
To determine whether you’re being acknowledged or ignored, keep an eye on your open rates. This percentage helps determine if you have an engaged audience. Opened emails don’t guarantee higher revenue, but it’s an important micro-yes along the sales process. Once you get the open, it’s time to earn the click.
TIP - Experiment with your subject line. A different tone or value proposition could make all the difference.
Click Rate
Once someone opens your emails, they’re still far from the end of your sales funnel.
Your click rate is a metric that essentially tells you whether or not the email did its job. Was this member of your audience intrigued enough to visit your site? This percentage will tell you. Just remember that email marketing is like baseball. No one gets on base every time.
Although it can be helpful to provide several different clickable options within the email, remember this is a tightrope. The paradox of choice suggests that more isn’t always a good thing. If you feature too many products or links, you may leave that visitor feeling overwhelmed rather than enticed.
TIP - Make sure the button or linked text that visitors can click is value positive. People are more inclined to “save 20%” rather than “start shopping.”
Cost Per Acquisition
More sales don’t always equal more profit.
If you’re willing to spend big on holiday advertising, the overall increase in revenue may not be the win it appears on paper. With the old adage of it takes money to make money in mind, it's essential to track just how much you’re spending.
Cost per acquisition is the dollar amount you spent to make an individual sale. It’s helpful to break this down by channel (pay-per-click, email marketing, etc.). These numbers allow you to compare apples to apples. Then, you can make adjustments as needed.
TIP - Run Google Ads search terms reports often. This allows you to consistently add negative keywords which reduce the money wasted on irrelevant clicks.
If you have questions about your online strategy, our digital marketing team is here to help.