Marketing Campaigns Analysis Report
Lucie Follett
UBC - Marketing Campaigns Analysis Report
- Items uploaded per subscriber are slowing : even worse, they are down at seasonal points in the year when consumer goods are bought and used in abundance (December 05 items uploaded is particularly bad: where is the Christmas effect?)(view )
- Page views per subscriber (a proxy for 'engagement') are slowing : (view ) and (view formula here )
- Although subscribers are increasing on a mom basis, : (view )(view formula here ), advertising costs to acquire new subscribers *may possibly* not being worked on for maximum cost efficiency: PPC costs, in particular, are gradually starting to creep up.(view )
- The number of reminder emails per subscriber has increased, from an initial 3.48 per week to 7.23 per week which whilst having short term gain, could soon lose subscribers who find this to be an intrusion : (view )
Analysis: A thought about the limited data available
- 1 Some key information is missing here which would have been really useful: namely the actual £ accrued by the sources of revenue (targeted advertising and insurance agencies) Ideally, I would like a breakdown of revenue by advertiser and by insurance agency to quantify their individual value to revenue.
- 2 It would also be useful to have more subscriber data to enable to drill down to find most active users of site (i.e., those who have not only posted items but also by comments/reports frequency) which would allow segmenting of users by type – e.g., heavy user/ medium user/ light user.
Analysis of Tivrati’s current marketing efforts
Revenue Stream Analysis
1. Targeted Advertising is the Primary source of revenue. However, we do not have the breakdown for this. Possible suggestions for action here include:
- I would want to speak with the Finance Director to find out these figures so that I can quantify how ‘successful’ our efforts are and also to work out a correlation between number of subscribers / number of new subscribers on a mom basis and how these relate to advertising revenues generated
- I would also want to find out from the Marketing Directorhow is this being charged for? How is it being placed? Generally across site or behaviourally targeted? If charging by impressions, investigate value of charging tier system for behaviour targeted ads. How targeted is targeted? CPM or CPC?.
- I would also want to analyse the most uploaded items by popularity by mfr details to find out about possibility of them advertising on site
- Am I maximising the value I can charge existing advertisers? What am I charging them for exactly? Can I think about charging them more say for more in depth data which would lead to this data being more useful for them? Yes, although I can claim to provide ‘qualified leads’ (as demonstrated by fact users have displayed interest in area) do I provide our existing advertisers with e.g. value-added tools and information to measure and manage their campaigns effectively. (as per shopping.com) which would allow me to charge them more? Do I also have any subscriber demographic data which would also be another reason to charge advertisers more? (E.g., income, demographic info)
- Could we investigate the possibility of tiered advertising? E.g., “featured store” placement (use of heat mapping analysis to demonstrate max visibility), e.g. 3 merchants, and is based on the top 3 cost-per-click bids for that product category. We could arguably claim this delivers better volume and quality of sales leads
I would also want to recommend to our Marketing Director
that we investigate additional revenue streams, namely via subscriptions to our content (ie,XML feeds for current site advertisers to use so they can increase conversion rates on their own sites) and also investigate possibility of licensing of our technology (e.g., Private label licensing which allows anyone to add valuable and robust functionality)
Subscriber Analysis
Increasing Subscriber Numbers
:Figures show that current subscribers are increasing; this we know, but at present there is a disjoint between nos of subs and items uploaded. This raises the question / dilemma that to increase no of subs at risk of cannibalizing quality of data/content on site (measured by items uploaded).
So, the task is twofold: not only increase items uploaded but also nos of subs.
How to advertise the site? Use other social networking sites where users perhaps display the right kind of interactive behaviour? Facebook groups? Myspace? fLICKR photo groups. This would hit the right demographic. Perhaps affiliate schemes might also be another option to investigate.
Again, although we are told that "the site has a structure that allows them to rank pretty well for organic search", I would want to speak with our SEO team to quantify our efforts here and look to maximising this where possible
Increasing Quality of Subscriber
This is defined by items uploaded per user. Clearly, this metric defines the nature of “site quality” – all very well increasing subs, but if content is not good, it has a knock-on effect.
Clearly, there has to be a reason why users are not uploading, I have assumptions, but I don’t know for sure. A practical solution would be a survey which asks such questions as likelihood to recommend/ why are you here (eg,I wanted recommendations on which product I should buy / To find product reviews on an item etc I'm interested in) /how often they use the site? As well as opportunity for open ended answers.
We could also look into incentivising users to create such engaging content and base rewards on such criteria as E.g. if a review is deemed "Very Helpful" for the vast majority of reviews in a category.) / Review frequency. / Quality of trust factor status).; i.e., points mean prizes – more reviews are written (frequency) x quality of review written (trust factor) = points
Similarly, I might also want to focus efforts on improving ‘engaging content’:
What is the quality of our user generated content like? How rigourously are user content (consumer reports)patrolled for quality purposes.eg, spammy/overtly commercial comments. Am I making the whole purpose of uploading items to be an action which has value? How clear are the guidelines to creating user generated reports: Am I making it entirely clear that they are to be brutally honest (pros and cons) not just a thinly disguised sales pitch?
Another option might be to emulate shopping.com’s ‘web of trust’: feedback mechanism so that subscribers are confident in the quality of the site (as determined by user comments/reports)
Efficiency of our current advertising spend
I would want to speak with the Marketing Director to work out a way to increase cost efficiency here. Although our banner ads and PPC efforts have succeeded in bringing us new subs, the cost is gradually creeping up, so we need to look to try to reduce our spend per sub.
Long term viability of email campaigns
Again, this is an issue which would need to be discussed with the Marketing Directoras the number of reminder emails per subscriber per week has risen fairly dramatically.Whilst on one hand this is good for the short term, arguably we could lose existing users in the longer term, causing us greater expense to acquire new subs
Summary
Clearly, the emphasis needs to be on improving the quality of subscriber as defined by items uploaded. It is all very well increasing the number of subs, but not at the cost of cannibalizing the perceived "quality" of the site, nor by expensive marketing campaignsWe also need to focus efforts to ensure that the revenue received is maximised as well as exploring possible further revenue streams
Action is needed; one that requires a well thought out strategy involving different members and dept's. It is not something that can be done overnight, but should involve a systematic process
