• by Mendel Senf , Op-Ed Contributor, October 8, 2015

After looking at data management and needed resources and training, we shift our attention to the final part in our in-house trilogy -- campaign setup and optimization. Mastering the day-to-day processes of programmatic and developing successful habits is imperative to the success of your in-house campaigns.

First, let’s walk through executing your first campaign. To begin, you’ll want to set a full-funnel trial budget -- e.g., $25-30K. The budget should be split between communicating to your current users (remarketing) and new users (prospecting), extending to desktop, mobile and Facebook (generally wherever your customers are). 

You should slowly ramp up your budget by increasing spending by $5k, creating a number of sub-campaigns, learning from each increment. From there, you’ll want to introduce a set of creatives in which you can A/B test from (this should be an ongoing process). This should take you through the first 30-45 days of your initial campaign.

Afterwards, an analysis of the early results should be carried out. This will help you identify where your users are, what type of messaging is effective and what your total budget range should be moving forward. When examining specific metrics, an onus should always be put on customer lifetime value (CLV) over cost-per action (CPA) or other metrics.

In order to conduct an effective analysis, a proper setup of data visualization should be implemented within the reporting environment. This is important not only for monitoring the quality of users and the performance of the campaigns, but to also bring internal awareness in the company around the role of data and programmatic. Connecting programmatic campaign results to real-time stats makes every department aware of the central role of programmatic and first-party data. Below is an example of such a setup.

Once everything is running smoothly, you’ll want to aim for having at least 50 million impressions a month as soon as possible. This allows you to expand your cookie pool, better optimize your campaign and grow your operations faster.

Now, let's discuss and drill down deeper into campaign optimization, so you can get the best out of your campaigns. As we already pointed out, effective optimization begins with a deep analysis of any and all data points.

You should never be guessing or making assumptions -- everything you do should be data-driven! When doing your analysis, consider what your goals are. What are your expectations? What are you trying to achieve? How is your performance stacking up against this? Your analysis should begin with a deep dive into your traffic: how much? where are users coming from? What segments are most valuable? Not only should you be examining marketing goals, but also that of your ecommerce team and finance department, so that your organization remains aligned across the board.

Then continue your customer journey examination by looking at how users are converting and how they’re interacting with your brand. If it’s possible, you should map out their entire process, optimizing each stage. Alternatively, look to see if you can find spots within the conversion process that are not working, in order to optimize each stage of the customer journey. 

From your data analysis, you can construct/prioritize your unique selling propositions and possibly find hidden gems -- areas in which you didn’t know you excelled at. You’ve also now created a firm base for experimentation and to sculpt your strategy from. You will want to have a clear roadmap and first begin by deciding what will bring the most immediate impact. From here, you’ll want to further A/B test all creatives and communication, and depending on your product, test out different landing pages tailored to specific user segments. 

As campaign management is never complete, it’s important to form effective habits and create a culture of ongoing optimization and experimentation, always striving to churn out the very best results.

The new marketing landscape takes a holistic approach, with the customer journey being the focal point instead of antiquated siloed strategies. This open approach should extend to your company structure so that you’re optimizing on all metrics and striving for overall organizational efficiency.