Comparing Performance across Time Periods

Rockerbox can be leveraged to understand how your marketing performance and user behavior varied during two different time periods.

Examples of when you may want to do analysis across time periods include:

  • New product launches
  • Spend Heavy ups
  • Change in your marketing mix
  • Testing offline channels

Below we outline four analyses that you can leverage in comparing across time periods:

1. Impact to CPA/ROAS

2. Impact to Channel Mix

3. Impact to Top and Bottom funnel channels

4. Impact to Path to Conversion and Time to Convert


Priority Questions to Answer

Marketing Performance

  • Impact to CPA/ROAS- how did CPA and/or ROAS change between time periods
  • Impact to CPA - if spend heavy up - how did CPA change due to heavy discounting coupled with increased spend (and mitigating against diminishing returns)
  • Impact of discounting- if used different discounts across channels, did that change the improvement on CPA of each channel?

User Behavior

  • Changes to the path to conversion- were users taking more vs less time to convert and interacting with different marketing touchpoints?
  • Impact to marketing mix- were users converting from different channels?
  • If launching a new offline channel or doing a branding heavy up - did this result in users entering the funnel from different channels (first touch) vs converting from different channels (last touch)?

Choosing a control period
Before you begin any analysis you need to first choose your control period. This is the time period you will compare performance during your current time period against. When choosing your control period consider the following: - Choosing a time period without any significant changes to your marketing mix ( heavy-ups, new channel launched) - For sales with a longer ramp time (i.e. BFCM) - you may want to choose two control time periods (one pre-marketing heavy up and one during heavy up)


1. Impact to CPA/ROAS

Priority Questions to Answer:

Impact to CPA/ROAS- how did CPA and/or ROAS change between time periods

  • Impact to CPA - if spend heavy up - how did CPA change due to heavy discounting coupled with increased spend (and mitigating against diminishing returns)
  • Impact of discounting- if used different discounts across channels, did that change the improvement on CPA of each channel?

Methodology:

Resulting Metrics:
  • % change in CPA/ROAS by channel
  • % change in CPA/ROAS relative to % change in spend

2. Impact to Channel Mix

Priority Questions to Answer:
  • What was the impact to your marketing mix- were users converting from different channels?

Methodology:

Resulting Metrics:
  • % of conversions by channel

3. Impact to Top and Bottom funnel channels

Priority Questions to Answer:
  • Did offline channel launch or branding heavy up result in users entering the funnel from different channels (first touch) vs converting from different channels (last touch)?

Methodology:
  • Using funnel position view take a look and what is driving users into the funnel and how this has changed across time periods

Resulting Metrics:
  • % of conversions by channel for last touch vs first touch
  • % change in first-touch conversions relative to % change in spend

4. Impact to Path to Conversion and Time to Convert

Priority Questions to Answer:
  • How did our users’ path to conversion change- were users taking more vs less time to convert and interacting with different marketing touchpoints?

Methodology:
  • Use the marketing paths view to see the average time to conversion and look at any changes
  • Be sure to filter for new vs existing customers

Resulting Metrics:
  • Avg # of days to convert
  • Avg # of marketing touchpoints
  • (Both overall and by channel position)

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