I run the Performance Marketing and CRM team at Wonderbly. We make personalised children's books that are – if we say so ourselves – on another level. Like many startups we're very performance focused, we depend on performance marketing to drive a large chunk of our sales. As our books are oftentimes given as presents, we’re a highly seasonal business. In fact, the large majority of our annual sales is generated in just those few weeks before the holidays. A high stakes situation that represents a big opportunity, so we better be prepared to deliver on a solid plan. In this deck I went through during the Smartly Connect event, I highlighted some best practices we’ve developed, sometimes the hard way, to make sure you’re ready for peak season.

2. Experiences from
The High Sales Season
12 October 2017
Jorrit Bouma

3. Wonderbly (Previously Lostmy.name)
Director of Performance Marketing & CRM
TravelBird
Global Lead Paid Social & Display
Jorrit Bouma

4. Previously

7. The Little Boy Or Girl Who
Lost Their Name - An
adventure based on the
letters of a name
My Golden Ticket - Magically
transports any child into Willy
Wonka’s chocolate factory
The Birthday Thief - A
birthday story that changes
based on the child’s birth
data.
Kingdom of You - A book
bursting with the child's
favourite things
A Letter for the Littlest Bear -
Introduces a little one to their
whole family
The Incredible Intergalactic
Journey Home - An adventure
from outer space to home

8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhO_EsSlNA8

9. We deal with seasonality. A lot of it.

10. “Winter is coming”

11. 60% of our annual sales are in Q4

12. 5th of December ‘16 The last 2 weeks

13. 17(hopefully useful)
tips to smash
your peak season

14. Preparation
The (boring) basics

15. “Without data you're just
another person with an opinion.”
- W. Edwards Deming

16. Preparation Tip #1: Retro last Q4
Total
Facebook &
Instagram
PPC NB
Display &
Pinterest

17. Preparation Tip #1: Retro last year
As predicted, TV became
increasingly more efficient
over time in all markets.
Decision to spend more in
US and UK
Est. Weekly TV £CPOs by Market
Entirely pointless mapto keep BI-guys happy
Tube conversions by postcode

18. Preparation Tip #1: Retro last year
Key learnings for us
(might not apply to you!)
Improve channel diversity by increasing ATL investment,
rephase budgets next Q4 to accommodate for shifting conversion
lag and focus on high growth “RoW” and LATAM markets

19. “No plan survives first
contact with customers”
- Steve Blank

20. Preparation Tip #2: Scenario planning
Depending competition, auction dynamics, potential failure of a new
TV ad, site stability, weather, US elections, tornado’s, Facebook’s
mood, Unilever offloading budgets, Adblockers, Uber getting stripped
of their licence to operate, thundersnow, Brexit, AWS outages, Big Ben
being stopped for maintenance, performance may vary. Be prepared.

21. Preparation Tip #2: Scenario planning
Top-line
budget 1
Top-line
budget 2
Marketing
budget 1
Marketing
budget 2
Finance/BIMarketing
Target
marketing
contribution
(or whatever
your goal is)
Scenario 1
“FB goes to shit”
Scenario 1
“New TV ad sucks”

22. Preparation Tip #3: Trading calendar per geo Work in progress

23. Preparation Tip #3: Trading calendar per geo
Major trading events
Product launches
Operational restrictions
Local events
Launch of TV campaign
Targeted reactivation
Direct Mail send

24. Preparation Tip #4: Emergency drills & plans
“Site-down” drill Clear decisioning tree Communicate

25. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”
- Peter Drucker

26. Preparation Tip #5: Keep your team happy
Hire
smart
people
£1K
annual
training
budget
Send
juniors to
Berlin for
training
Great
perks
(free food +
booze)

27. Preparation Tip #5: Keep your team happy
Hire
smart
people
£1K
annual
training
budget
Send
juniors to
Berlin for
training
Great
perks
(free food +
booze)
Try to be a great
manager for your
team
Peak season will
be stressful!

28. Preparation Bonus recruitment tip
Hack to hire the
smartest grads (hey
Luke & David!)
“You run a hamburger
restaurant, calculate
rental share (%) of a
burger’s profit”

29. Preparation Tip #6: Team up with external stakeholders

30. Preparation Tip #7: Automate all the things
We use Smartly for
Predictive budget
allocation and fairly
straightforward
CPO-based triggers.
We also have
“stop-loss” rules that
can kill campaigns in
case of emergency
We use DoubleClick for
search for CPO-based
bidding across
AdWords, Bing and
Yahoo. On top of that
we add in impression
share triggers to
maximise visibility in
Q4.
We use Ometria as a
CRM “DMP”, where all
our customer data
lives.
Ometria pushes CRM
audiences to FB/SEA
for cross-channel CRM
campaigning.
Next step: Push DWH Attributed CPO/ROAS to channels

31. Preparation Tip #8: Kick-off!

32. Live
Delivering on the “plan”

33. Performance Performance Performance
“Performance”
standup involving BI,
Shop, Marketing.
Aim: Ensure site and
CVR stability
Live Tip #9: Keep communicating

34. Performance Performance Performance
Marketing
meeting
Live Tip #9: Keep communicating
“Marketing Meeting”
going through LW
performance against
budget, next steps,
ongoing testing,
cross-channel collab, etc.

35. Performance Performance Performance
Finance
Marketing
meeting
Live Tip #9: Keep communicating
“Finance standup” to make
sure we’re staying within our
FB credit limit
(= Sending FB enough )

36. Performance Performance Performance
Finance Ops
Marketing
meeting
Live Tip #9: Keep communicating
“Ops standup”
looking at
operational stability
across all geo’s (yes,
PSP’s collapse under the
volumes of Q4 )

37. Performance Performance Performance
Finance Ops
Marketing
meeting
Trading
Live Tip #9: Keep communicating
“Trading meeting” -
Weekly recap, how did
we do against budget,
what geo’s do well, what
products perform where,
etc.

38. Live Tip #10: Summarise/Operationalise testing
In-channel:
● Operationalise winning experiments
● Decrease volume of testing
New channels:
● Scale winners
● Re-test mediocre channels

39. Live Tip #11: Diversify channel mix
Seasonality dramatically
increases your CVR as you’re
a more relevant product to
potential customers.
This means otherwise
“expensive” channels become
available. Use them to reach
new audiences and to
decrease dependency (=risk)
on your core channels!
Q4 CVR

40. Live Tip #12: Be flexible with budgets
A marketing budget is just
a guideline for how you
think you’ll most likely hit
your goals. Stay flexible.
We reallocate spend on the
fly between channel-geo
combinations based on
performance.

41. Live Tip #13: Adjust for shifting conversion lag

42. Live Tip #13: Adjust for shifting conversion lag
More users start returning and
converting later, users less
likely to not return at all
1

43. Live Tip #13: Adjust for shifting conversion lag
More users start returning and
converting later, users less
likely to not return at all
1
Users become less likely to return
and convert later, increase in
likelyness to convert in-session
2

44. Live Tip #13: Adjust for shifting conversion lag
Users become less likely to return
and convert later, increase in
likelyness to convert in-session
More users start returning and
converting later, users less
likely to not return at all
1
Increase in users that
return but don’t convert
2
3

45. Live Tip #13: Adjust for shifting conversion lag
Key learnings for us
(might not apply to you!)
Allocate spend to late October and November, that’s when people start
their Christmas shopping orientation. “Yesterday's CPA” will look poor
because of shifting conversion lag, operationalise different CPA targets.
Retarget your Oct/Nov visitors in December. In December higher CPM’s
and lower response decreases efficiency of acquisition marketing.

46. “The only use for last click attribution
is to get you fired. Avoid it.”
- Avinash Kaushik

47. Live Tip #14: Don’t rely on marketing pixels
+
New customer - “Smile”
Position based (40-20-40)
Repeat customer - “Smirk”
Time decay

48. Live Tip #14: Don’t rely on marketing pixels
+
New customer - “Smile”
Position based (40-20-40)
Repeat customer - “Smirk”
Time decay
Some day...

49. Live Tip #14: Don’t rely on marketing pixels
Branded search conversions uplift
Or just ask…
“Where did you hear about us?”

50. Live Tip #15: CPO =/= CPA
Cost per order - includes repeat customers, and therefore dilutes
your blended channel efficiency with low-CPO repeat ordersCPO
Cost per acquisition - the cost of acquiring a customer (CAC).
Especially in your peak season, this is (likely) what matters most.CPA

51. Live Tip #16: Have some fun!
Real timedashboards
Full-on
randomness
“Marketing
Masterchef”
???

52. After
Celebrate?

53. After Tip #17: Scale down & go home
Out of
office
Out of
office
Out of
office
Out of
office
Out of
office
Out of
office
Out of
office

54. AfterLivePreparation
● Do a retro
● Scenario plans
● Trading calendar
● Prepare for the worst
● Keep the team happy
● Prepare with partners
● Automate
● Kick-off!
● Communicate
● Operationalise testing
● Diversify channel mix
● Flexible budgets
● Adjust for shifting lag
● Don’t rely on pixels
● Have fun!
● Scale down, go home