Welcome to Day 21 of the ‘How to run a Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign’ workshop.  This workshop runs between 27th January to 17th February 2010.  Designed specifically for Zen Cart store owners, each day we will focus on one task to guide you as you run a Valentine’s Day promotion campaign.

Today we will be analysing the success of our Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign and looking at any lessons learned.

Jump to today’s task – Analyse your Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign

It is important to spend some time analysing the information you have available so you can make an assessment on the success of your promotional campaign.  This will help you continually improve future campaigns.

Review your Campaign Objectives

Remember all the way back to Day 1 of the Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign workshop where we planned our campaign according to our objectives.  In general, promotion campaigns have one or more of the following objectives:

• increase your number of customers, and/or
• increase the number of orders placed by existing customers, and/or
• increase the order value of orders placed by existing customers.

If your objective was to increase your customer base, compare the number of new customers throughout the campaign period with the number of new customers for the previous period, or if you can, with the number of new customers for the same period last year.

If your objective was to increase the total value of each sale, compare the average value of each sale throughout the campaign period with the average value of each sale in the previous period, or if you can, with the average of each sale for the same period last year.

You might like to look at additional Reports for your Zen Cart store such as the Business Activity Report, Graphical Sales Report, Monthly Sales and Tax Summary Report or Sales Report.

Calculating the Return on Investment (ROI) of your Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign

While email marketing is among the most cost-effective marketing techniques available, executing a promotion campaign can be a lot of hard work.  It makes sense to ensure you see a return on your investment, even if the investment is your time only.

To calculate your ROI, insert your figures as we run through the example below.

1. 1. What was the total cost of your promotion campaign?
      Did you spend money setting up your Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign?  For example, your offer may have been a free Valentine Teddy Bear with every purchase over $50 and therefore you purchase 100 bears @ $3 each.  Or, you may have offered free gift wrapping and a hand-made card and the required supplies set you back $120.

      Step back over the daily tasks to jog your memory if you don’t have your campaign notes to hand.

      Example:
      Valentine’s Day Theme Images  $39.00
      Advertising in Local Paper  $72.00
      Total Campaign Cost:  $111.00

   2. What was your profit on items sold during the promotion campaign?
      Going with just a simple calculation here, we will take the total sales value of the items sold during the campaign and subtract the overall cost of the products.Example:
      Products sold = 53 x Candle Sets @ $19.95 = $1,057.35
      Less cost = 53 x wholesale cost @ $9.03 = $478.59
      Profit = Sales – Cost = $578.76

      Obviously there are many other factors that come into calculating the cost of running your online store.  As the objective here is to calculate the ROI for the campaign, the simplified calculation is adequate.

   3. Did you exceed the break-even point?  Was your promotion campaign a success?
      Add the cost of your products to the cost of the promotion campaign and then subtract this from your total sales during the campaign.Example:
      Total Sales @ $1,057.35
      Less Product Cost @ $478.59
      Less Campaign Cost @ $111.00
      Base Profit = $467.76

How did you go?  You can see how additional promotions can quickly eat into your profit margin if you don’t keep a close eye on the true cost.

Measuring Site Traffic during the Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign

An analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, can provide you with a range of statistics on your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Information such as number of visitors, the pages they viewed, if they were a repeat visitor, their geographic location, their browser version and more is available through the easy to read reports and graphs.

Look at the incoming traffic to your online store and compare your statistics throughout the campaign period with your statistics for the previous period, or if you can, with your statistics for the same period last year.

If you haven’t yet implemented a site analytics tool, you can get started with Signing up for Google Analytics and Adding Google Analytics to your Zen Cart store.  Also take a look at the six-part series Google Analytics Demystified available at e-Commerce Optimization.

How effective has your marketing with social media been in driving additional visitors to your store?  Have you noticed a significant increase in the number of referrals from the social shopping or directory sites?  Spend some time getting to know your visitors – you may be surprised just how much you can learn and how helpful this information can be.

Analysing Other Zen Cart Metrics Available

Another source of very helpful information is your Zen Cart Admin.  Have a look at the customers that purchased during the promotion campaign.  Look at patterns such as the geographic location of your customers, the products purchased and information such when was the busiest day and the comparison of new customers vs. returning customers.

If your campaign included the use of discount coupons, there is also a report available in Coupon Admin.  This will let you know the number of times each coupon type has been redeemed in total and by customer.

Add any interesting findings to your promotion campaign notes.

Lessons Learned

What will you do differently when planning your next promotion campaign?  Was there an area of your marketing that appeared to work especially well for you?  For example, perhaps the article you submitted to the local paper actually brought in far more customers than all the time you spent on various social media sites.

Or perhaps a lesson was that the promised hand-made cards put too much pressure on getting your items ready for shipping every day.  Maybe your promotion was too successful and next time you might look at a not quite-so-attractive discount.

Make some notes while everything is still fresh in your mind so that when it comes to planning next year’s Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign you can take advantage of your lessons learned.

Today’s Task

Review your campaign objectives. Calculate the ROI on your promotion campaign. Measure your site traffic during the promotion campaign. Analyse the Zen Cart metrics available. Take note of any new lessons learned.

See you tomorrow for the last task in this workshop.

Good luck!  Any questions, please use the comments section below.