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. At Facebook's Fast Track event I highlighted some best practices we’ve developed, sometimes the hard way, to make sure you’re ready for peak season, discussing topics like planning, budgeting, automation and marketing-attribution.

2. Performance Marketing
In Peak Seasonality
1 November 2017
Jorrit Bouma

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

4. Previously

6. 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

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

12. “Winter is coming”

13. 60% of our annual sales are in Q4

14. 5th of December ‘16

15. 5th of December ‘16
The last 2 weeks

16. Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
“Traditional” performance marketing channels (SEA, Paid Social, Display, etc)
CRM channels (Email, RAF)
ATL (TV, OOH, Podcasts)

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

18. Preparation
The (boring) basics

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

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

21. 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 map tokeep BI-guys happy
Tube conversions by postcode

22. 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

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

24. Preparation Tip #2: Scenario planning
Depending competition, auction dynamics, potential failure of new 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.

25. 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 performance
deteriorates”
Scenario 1
“New TV ad sucks”

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

27. 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

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

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

30. 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)

31. 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!

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

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

34. Preparation Tip #7: Marketing Automation
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

35. Preparation Tip #8: Kick-off!

36. Live
Delivering on the “plan”

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

38. 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.

39. 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 )

40. 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 )

41. 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.

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

43. 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
● Decrease dependency
(=risk) on your core
channels!
Q4 CVR

44. 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.

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

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

47. 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

48. 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

49. 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.

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

51. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
$

52. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
$

53. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
Relying solely on marketing pixels
100%
100%
100%
100%

54. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
Relying solely on marketing pixels
100%
100%
100%
100%
Using only
marketing pixels,
in this case you’re
over attributing 1
conversion as
being 4

55. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
Last-click model
100%

56. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
Last-click model
100%
Using a last-click
model, you’re
giving no credit to
any of the
“introductory”
touchpoints

57. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
40%
New customer - “Smile”
Position based (40-20-40)
40%
10%
10%

58. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
New customer - “Smile”
Position based (40-20-40)
10%
10%
Using a position
based model,
you’re giving credit
to all touchpoints,
valuing opening
and closing
touchpoints most
but you’re not over
attributing
40%
40%

59. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
+
New customer - “Smile”
Position based (40-20-40)
Repeat customer - “Smirk”
Time decay

60. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
+
New customer - “Smile”
Position based (40-20-40)
Repeat customer - “Smirk”
Time decay
Some day...

61. Live Tip #14: Get your attribution right
Branded search conversions uplift
Or just ask…
“Where did you hear about us?”

62. 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

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

64. After
Celebrate?

65. 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

66. 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
● Get attribution right
● Have fun!
● Scale down, go home