Key Topics
Dashboard Description
The Marketing Dashboard aggregates and summarizes marketing performance at a company-wide level and by channel and vendor. With the analysis and visualizations in the marketing dashboard, Daasity merchants should be able to identify:
- Which channels and vendors are producing metrics reflective of efficient marketing spend?
- Should you increase spend with any vendors? Should you decrease spend with any vendors?
- Are there major differences between first and last click metrics?
Channels & Vendors are identified either by the marketing integration or in the Marketing Spend and Channel Mapping data you provided.
IMPORTANT!
You must identify a Vendor in both the Channel Mapping & Marketing Spend sheets in order for orders to be properly attributed to that Channel & Vendor. This is important for spend reporting and ROAS, CPO and CPA reports.
DYNAMIC ATTRIBUTION MEASURES
As of October 2022, this dashboard uses a new set of "Dynamic Attribution" measures that have been added in addition to our first-click, last-click, and vendor-reported measures.
Dynamic Attribution measures allow you to use a single measure for a metric such as Revenue and toggle between attribution models via the Dynamic Attribution Method filter.
These new measures default to last-click attribution. After selecting a new attribution method, you must hit the "Update" button for the changes to take effect.
The first-click, last-click, and vendor-reported measure still exist. But this dashboard utilizes the new dynamic measures.
PRO VENDOR FUNCTIONALITY
Pro vendors receive additional functionality in their marketing explores that is not available to Growth merchants:
- Subchannel and media type classifications to split channels and vendors into more granular categories like acquisition vs retargeting and brand vs non-brand
- The ability to map marketing campaigns to channels / vendors / subchannels / media types (note that this requires additional work to customize the data model)
- The ability to expose data down to the ad level for vendors that allow us to pull data at that level (note that Facebook data is only captured at the campaign level)
The Marketing Dashboard has four sections:
KPIs
In the top section you’ll find week-to-date and month-to-date key metrics, including:
- Total Spend, CPA, CPO, and ROAS
- ROAS broken down by Facebook vs Google
- Spend and ROAS trends compared with the previous month and the same month last year
DATA TIP: WHAT SHOULD MERCHANTS DO WITH THIS INFO?
If blended ROAS is trending down or CPO trending up, it’s time to dig in. Is it being driven by a certain channel?
- Perhaps a ‘free’ channel (Organic, Email, Direct) is getting fewer orders
- Is there more competition in a paid channel? A new competitor flooding Facebook or Google can drive up ad fees. Or as you approach your peak selling season you may see rising cost per clicks for the same key words in Google and Facebook as more companies bid on those key words.
- Has a particular vendor started to underperform? Most merchants spend the bulk of their marketing budgets in Google and Facebook so taking a closer look at those vendors is a good place to start.
And vice versa, if ROAS is trending up and CPO is trending down, dig in to see why! Hopefully volume of orders has remained steady and a specific vendor happens to be more effective. If that is the case, test out more spend with that vendor to see if the improvement is sustainable under higher spend.
Channel and Vendor Level Performance
This section lets you get a detailed view of how individual channels and vendors are performing. By default, this shows data for the past 30 days, but this can be changed in the filters section.
DATA TIP: WHY ARE THERE SUCH BIG DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FIRST CLICK, LAST CLICK, AND VENDOR REPORTED METRICS?
First click and last click attribution use UTMs, the channel mapping BSD and the discount code BSD to apply orders into specific channels and vendors (and for PRO merchants, subchannels and media types). Spend from each channel / vendor is then matched up against orders to determine the metrics for that channel / vendor.
For last click metrics, orders are only counted in a specific channel / vendor if the customer last clicked through an ad on that vendor before they purchased.
For first click metrics, orders are only counted in a specific channel / vendor if the customer first clicked through an ad on that vendor as part of their customer journey. The GA First Click Data integration is required to see this information.
Vendor reported metrics typically use "attribution windows" to determine if an order should be attributed to a specific vendor. For example, Facebook defaults to a "7 day click / 1 day view" window. If a customer clicks through a Facebook ad and lands on your site but does not purchase, then comes back to your site through ANY channel and purchases less than 7 days later, Facebook will count that as a "Facebook order".
Vendor reported metrics will typically try to take as much credit as possible for orders, whereas Last Click metrics will often under-report for vendors like Facebook where spend often leads to a click but not necessarily an immediate purchase. The "true" answer often lies somewhere in between these two methodologies.
For more on this, see here.
Top-of-the-Funnel Metrics
The next section contains visualizations that display your vendor-reported performance. This data is ingested directly from your marketing integrations.
These data points help you understand how much you're spending in each channel, how often your ads are being shown (impressions), and how often they are being clicked. You can also see if clicks and impression are getting more expensive or less expensive.
In the Cost per Click Trend chart in the screenshots below, you can see Facebook CPCs have been increasing, which warrants investigation.
DATA TIP:
Cost per thousand impressions and cost per click metrics can be an early indicator that performance is trending up or down. Keeping an eye on these can help you make quick adjustments to marketing spend when you see your spend with a vendor becoming more or less efficient.
Customer KPIs
This section gives you a higher-level view of how your marketing efforts. They help you understand:
1. How a customer's acquisition channel affects their long-term value as a customer
2. Which channels are driving customer acquisition versus which are doing a better job at retaining customers
Lifetime Value (LTV)
Our LTV charts help you understand which channels acquire customers that are most and least profitable over their lifetime as a customer. Some channels attract customers with higher first order values that plateau, while others start small but rapidly grow as they repurchase. These charts help you segment your customer base and understand those trends.
Additionally, you’ll find the new customer rates by Channel. Balancing new and returning customers is the goal of all businesses. Repeat purchases from existing customers keep costs down so that investment can be made to continue acquiring new customers to drive your business.
Repurchase rates play a large role in how profitable customers end up over their entire customer journey. Use the chart below to understand which channels have higher or lower repurchase rates.
Customer Acquisition
For your business to succeed, it's crucial that you continue to grow your customer base. This set of charts help you understand:
- Which channels have historically driven the most customer growth?
- Which channels are more likely to convert new versus returning customers.
Are you seeing a large amount of existing customers coming through high cost paid channels like Paid Social? If so, consider strategies to shift those customers to lower cost channels by improving email / SMS campaigns.
Dashboard Requirements
For the Marketing Dashboard to work properly and be complete, merchants must have the following:
- A Shopify integration
- A Google Analytics integration
- A Google Analytics First Click integration
- At least one marketing integration
- Channel mapping completely filled out in the Channel Mapping BSD
Reports
Total Spend WTD
Total Spend MTD
Blended CPA WTD
Blended CPA MTD
Vendor Reported ROAS WTD
Vendor Reported ROAS MTD
Vendor Reported CPO WTD
Vendor Reported CPO MTD
FB ROAS WTD
FB ROAS MTD
Google ROAS WTD
Google ROAS MTD
Spend by Vendor
% Orders From New vs Returning Customers
ROAS by Vendor Over Time
CPO by Vendor Over Time
Vendor Reported ROAS vs First Click and Last Click ROAS
Vendor Reported CPO vs First Click and Last Click CPO
Cost per Thousand Impressions
Impressions by Vendor
Cost per Click
Clicks by Vendor
Channel Performance Last Click
Channel Performance First Click
Vendor Performance Last Click
Vendor Performance First Click