In order to make the most of your marketing budget, you’ll need to optimize your campaigns from time to time. The recommendations below are based on what we have learned from over 30,000 customers and over a decade of optimizing campaigns for companies of all sizes and in various industries.
Campaign optimization falls into three main categories:
- Campaign Essentials
- Monthly Check-ins
- Optimizations and Troubleshooting
- Complementary Opportunities
Below is a description of each of these items and instructions to help you get the best results from your AdRoll campaigns month after month.
Campaign Essentials
Use this checklist to ensure you have campaign essentials covered.
| What to check | What to do |
| Tracking | Pixel Tracking — Ensure that your pixel is tracking your audience properly. You can do this by utilizing our PixelPal extension. Conversion Tracking — After confirming that the pixel is active across your entire website, you need to ensure conversions are tracking appropriately. Through our eCommerce integrations these segments are auto-populated on your behalf. If there are any major site changes or adjustments it is important to ensure your conversions are still tracking. |
| Campaign Structure | The structure of your campaign will impact its ability to achieve your performance goals. Having a proper campaign strategy is critical and can be overlooked. You can learn more about our recommended best practices here. |
| Goal | To determine whether your campaign is performing or not you need to have a specific goal. CPA, ROAS, etc, you need to know what specific metrics you’re working towards so you’re able to optimize your campaign to continue toward that goal. |
Monthly Check-Ins
To ensure your campaigns maintain strong performance and health, here are several things you should check-in on and what to do if you need to make adjustments.
| What to check | What to do |
| Campaign Reporting | You should utilize the reporting available to you by customizing and scheduling monthly reports which will allow you to monitor your campaigns and know when to make necessary adjustments. You can learn more about schedulable reports here. |
| Campaign Optimization Strategy | While creating your campaign or editing an existing campaign, you have the option to set a specific bid strategy. You can optimize toward conversions, clicks, or impressions. To maximize your conversions you can allow the campaign to automatically optimize to drive the highest number of conversions possible or you can target a specific CPA goal. Learn more about these different bid strategies here. |
| Audience Size & Segmentation | Ensure your target audiences have a healthy number of individuals to engage with. You also need to ensure you have proper segmentation for target versus excluded visitors. Check out more campaign best practices here. |
| Ad Placements | It’s important to ensure you’re utilizing all available ad sizes so your campaign can maximize its reach. Learn more about these sizes here. |
Retargeting Campaign Optimizations and Troubleshooting
Once you’ve confirmed that your pixel is active, conversions are tracking, and you have proper campaign settings, you’re off to a great start. The next step is to think about ways to make your campaigns better, either by troubleshooting common issues or by optimizing your campaign.
| What to check | What to do |
| Ads |
Ad Creative Refresh — It’s recommended that you refresh your ads at least every 90 days, if you’re seeing a low click-through rate or lack of conversions make sure you update your creative to see if different designs impact your performance. Pausing Under performing ads — If you’re utilizing multiple variations of the recommended ad sizes, review your ads performance to determine which ads should be paused/removed. Consider the spend of an ad in relation to total impressions, clicks, and conversions. It’s important to note you should at minimum have at least one ad size of the supported sizes mentioned above. |
| Audience |
Lower Funnel — Your campaign should focus as much as possible on lower funnel, high intent audience (ie. cart, products viewed, demo pages, etc.) Segment Duration — In general, cookie durations should be extended to more than 30 days (but exact duration dependent on your sales cycle). If you're achieving your goal, consider extending your segment durations to increase your ability to reach additional visitors. If you’re not currently hitting your performance goal, consider lowering your segment duration slightly closer to your sales cycle. (i.e. product viewed 30 days -> product viewed 21 days) This will allow you to focus more of your efforts on the newest visitors to your targeted segments. |
Complementary Opportunities
Consider coupling your display campaign efforts with additional platform features to help your visitors through their customer journey. Utilizing a multi-touch strategy allows each tool to perform more effectively and create a personalized experience for your customers.
Emails help you get in front of site visitors where they spend a great deal of time: their inboxes. AdRoll Email combines powerful retargeting tech with effective email strategies to trigger dynamic emails to prospective customers. Learn more about how to couple your retargeting efforts with email to convert visitors more effectively here.
AI Driven Product Recommendations
product recommendation influences shoppers on their path to purchase by showcasing products they've shown interest in or will likely be interested in across channels. Product recommendations can be surfaced in dynamic ads, emails, or an onsite carousel. Utilizing product recommendations onsite carousel creates a customized experience for users as they’re engaged by product recommendations across ads, email and your website. Learn more about how it works and how to get started here.
Email Capture
Email Capture enables you to collect emails from your website visitors so you can grow your subscriber list and continue to build relationships with them. Utilizing this first-party data allows you to find potential customers, increase your subscriber base, and increase your revenue as you gain new customers. Learn how to incorporate email capture for your site here.