Media Insights
Marketer’s Guide to Holiday 2020 | Edition 3: Key Indicators to Watch
Expecting the unexpected is more critical than ever this holiday season. How can you avoid data overload, focus on the right metrics, and keep a pulse on the changing environment? Ovative is here to help!
Marketers should be diligently tracking key performance indicators and related drivers, and must be ready to adjust marketing investments real-time based on findings. Many marketers fixate on only the media performance metrics they are responsible for, missing indicators across the rest of their business and industry that are critical to understand to remain competitive.
What Should I Track and Why?
We’ve gathered a checklist of key metrics to monitor this holiday. Comparing these metrics to last year, similar comparable sales periods this year, and including nuances for your specific business (e.g. store closures) is important to telling the full performance story. Download the full checklist here.
Media Performance
Why watch? Tracking media performance in the context of the broader business allows you to optimize key levers to hit your goals.
- Revenue
- Traffic, click-thru rate (CTR)
- Conversion rate (CVR)
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR) *
- Cost per click, cost per impression
Site Performance
Why watch? Keeping a pulse on key site metrics will help you quickly diagnose user behavior and issues with the site.
- Site visits
- Conversion rate (CVR)
- Cart abandonment rates
Consumer Trends
Why watch? Customers are at the core of your business – watch what they are doing and respond accordingly.
- New customer rates
- Buying behavior (category, device, etc.)
- Consumer sentiment, social conversation
Macro Trends
Why watch? Understanding broader industry trends helps explain and predict marketing performance.
- Unemployment rate, stock market, credit card default rates
- COVID-19 closures, state mandates, case rates
Promotional Calendar
Why watch? Key events drive marketing performance.
- Promotions
- Key events
- Philanthropy, PR
Operations
Why watch? Product mix, availability, and pricing also influence marketing performance.
- Product launches
- Inventory levels and shifts (full price, markdown, clearance)
- Shipping cutoff dates
- Fulfillment capabilities
*EMR incorporates online and offline revenue, future customer value, incrementality, and profitability into a single metric of success. EMR is not just a return metric but also a mindset that pushes business leaders to transform how they approach marketing.
What’s Next?
Use this checklist and work across functional areas to design the set of metrics that’s right for your business to track this holiday season. Develop an action plan detailing what you will do based on the results of each metric to enable agile decision-making when pressure is high.
Interested in reading more from Ovative on how to prepare for the holiday season? We’ve put together The Marketer’s Guide to Holiday 2020 | Edition 1 Playbook available here to share key consumer insights and trends, potential complications to plan for, and actionable recommendations to win.
Ovative is a digital-first media and measurement firm seeking to transform the measure of marketing success. At Ovative, we help brands move the needle. We are curious. We value your brand. We want to see you succeed. Connect with us to learn more!
Download the checklist here.
