Holiday sales are projected to surge by 7% in 2022. Are you ready for the holiday rush? Position your marketing to dominate during this fiercely competitive season with CPA campaigns. By leveraging CPA campaigns, advertisers can de-risk their media spend by only paying for the defined actions they want – like conversions or loyalty program signups. CPA campaigns should be a priority in Q4 marketing strategies.
Holiday sales are projected to surge by 7% in 2022. Are you ready for the holiday rush? Position your marketing to dominate during this fiercely competitive season with CPA campaigns. By leveraging CPA campaigns, advertisers can de-risk their media spend by only paying for the defined actions they want – like conversions or loyalty program signups. CPA campaigns should be a priority in Q4 marketing strategies.
0:14:49.5 Ana: Hi, welcome to DMS Live, a webinar series from DMS, that is packed with performance, advertising best practices, key insights and tips to help you achieve all your short and long-term wins. Our topic for today's session is Setting Yourself Up For Success This Holiday Season With CPA Campaigns. And joining me today are Amber Paul, DMS, SVP of Distribution, and Chris Pink, DMS, SVP of Sales.
0:15:14.7 Ana: Amber Paul is the SVP of Distribution here at DMS, and has established herself as an industry veteran in the digital marketing space. Amber has spent more than a decade matching branded, high performing offers, delivering quality traffic to elite advertisers and maximizing ROI for customers and campaigns. In her current role here at DMS, she intelligently distributes marketing campaigns through an expansive network of publishers across multiple online channels while providing the technology, testing, analytics, process experience and people power to help brands achieve their campaign goals profitably.
0:15:52.9 Ana: Chris Pink is our DMS SVP of Sales, and brings with him nearly two decades of sales and business development experience. In his role here at DMS, he directs the sales team to uncover new business opportunities while also fostering lasting relationships with our current client base. Under Chris's leadership, the sales team continues to help DMS extend its list of active clients. Welcome, Chris and Amber.
0:16:17.4 Amber Paul: Thanks Ana, excited to be back.
0:16:20.9 Chris Pink: Yeah. Thanks for having me again.
0:16:23.1 Ana: Fantastic. One quick note before we get started, we will have a Q&A session after the presentation, but there's no need for you to wait until the end to ask your questions. Please feel free to submit questions via the Q&A feature in Zoom. Also, please stick around to complete our brief survey at the end of this webinar, your feedback is very important to us. And with that, let's dive right in.
0:16:45.7 Ana: It's hard to believe, but we're taking off October already, which means the holiday shopping season is right around the corner. This year, analysts are predicting that holiday sales are expected to surge by up to 7% in 2022, and we all know how important it is to be prepared ahead of time. So Amber, let's start with you. How should publishers prepare for the holiday rush this year?
0:17:07.8 AP: Great question. And can you believe it's already October, time is flying by, so if you haven't started your holiday preparation, you'll definitely want to get going with that right now. Three main areas to focus on, number one, all of the aesthetics, video, creative, that will be crucial to appealing to users this holiday season, but to not ignore the copy and the content aspect of marketing and advertising as well. There's a lot of different ways in which you can have videos created, we have a lot of tips over here at DMS as well, and we can help out with providing different content strategies, different demographic matching. It's going to be really crucial this year because the user kind of knows what they want, it's really our job as a marketer to deliver to them the right marketing message to ensure that they actually purchase the product online.
0:18:04.0 Ana: Interesting, and Chris, what do you recommend on the advertisers' side in terms of preparation for this upcoming holiday shopping season?
0:18:11.1 CP: I would focus a lot on the infrastructure. By infrastructure, I mean getting things ready, dialed up, tested ahead of time. Last thing you want to do is come into the holiday season, especially after Black Friday started, on Monday and not have enough inventory, have the site not up and working right, not have the shipping dialed in. So now is really the time to get things dialed in, even before now, but now's a good time to start because we don't... You shouldn't have to wait until the holiday season in order to get your things ready. Being ecommerce is pretty solid all year around, but it just hits next level during the holiday season.
0:18:52.8 Ana: Great points, Chris and Amber. So what I'm hearing is that optimizing campaigns and actively testing performance ahead of time to ensure it's ready for increased traffic is extremely important. Well, of course, focusing on making your products stand out, utilizing images, testimonials and diversifying promotions can make them more attractive and help you win this holiday season. So moving on to our next question, do you predict this season we'll see... We'll still see strong ecommerce growth or people are turning more to in-person shopping? Chris, let's start with you this time.
0:19:25.1 CP: Great. After all the years I've been doing this, ecommerce will always pick up during the holiday season. What we first saw a couple of years ago in the first year of COVID was one of our top years for ecommerce because people weren't going into stores and buying things. But last year returned to do a lot of in-person shopping, but [ecommerce] was still strong. And I assume that this year will probably be a bit similar to last year. I think the people that did go out and start buying presents in-person last year are going to be the same ones that are buying those presents this year. The people that buy ecommerce this year, are still going to be the same people that bought ecommerce last year.
0:20:04.2 CP: So I would expect it to be similar. As far as supply chain issues and shipping, it seemed to have been lightened up over the past year compared to last year when it was a mess, but this year it is... We've seen prices go down, we've seen shipping times take less time. So although it does exist, it's probably not going to be as big of a deal as last year. So I would expect in person and e-com to be similar to last year and the supply chain to be less, so it's less, but broader.
0:20:42.0 Ana: Great. Amber, does that align with what you've heard?
0:20:45.4 AP: Yeah, actually some fun stats, Ana, I think you touched on this in your opening, but in 2020 ecommerce accounted for 17 and a half of all holiday sales, and actually last year that number went up to 19%. So this year we could actually be seeing anywhere from say, 19% to maybe 22% of all sales being online. We are absolutely seeing more dollars being spent online. Something [else] taken into consideration too, while you do have less of an issue with say, supply chains, a lot of our users have realized kind of post-COVID some of the challenges is just in inventory in stores. Things are selling out a lot quicker. I'm sure you've probably seen that the shelves are emptier more so than they are stocked. So a lot of users will probably be taking to their computers and really relying on their buying power and having it in their own hands. And just something to also take into consideration,, too is that your logistics services like UPS and FedEx and Amazon, they do a fantastic job of making sure that we get our packages and a lot of customers are pretty used to that convenience versus having to go to the store. So I definitely think that online sales will continue to increase. And this year might also be a year that continues with revenge travel and revenge spending, whether people have the funds to or not.
0:22:08.9 Ana: You're exactly right. Now that we've experienced a rise in in-person shopping, we can better prepare for it in factoring things like supply chain processes more effectively. Nonetheless, ecommerce has incredible potential this holiday season. And with the current economic climate, I'm sure people will be searching online particularly for deals more than ever. Now, tell me more about the consumer trends for this year. Which digital channels are likely to dominate? Amber, why don't you go ahead and take this one?
0:22:35.4 AP: Yes, absolutely. Really excited to talk about this one. I think I cut you off a little bit because I'm so excited there. [laughter] Video, there's so much to be done with video and you don't want to necessarily just think of video as TikTok and Facebook. You also have your other channels. YouTube… Pinterest is another channel, as well, where having video advertisements is really a great way to showcase and highlight a product specifically for users that are looking for something based on their interests and based on what they're pinning. So taking the time to invest in videos, there's so many different ways that you can create videos and if you're working say with us on the DMS network and you're promoting some of our products, we can go that extra mile to even provide you with some of the products to help with creating the videos too. So that's one.
0:23:24.2 AP: Email. Email will never die. It is still one of the most lucrative forms of digital marketing. But with that, you really want to go the extra mile with personalization making sure that the users know that that email is meant for them. This is the time of year when every online retailer is just bombarding their user base. So you're going to really want to make sure that your email stands out. The upside is though, is more eyeballs. They're in their inbox right now because you have a lot more people that are looking for deals that are looking for ideas or suggestions for holiday gifts.
0:23:58.1 AP: And that takes me to next is SMS. I'm pretty sure 90% of Americans have their cell phone in their hands at any given time. So this is really a great way to market to consumers, letting them know about different products that are available, instilling in their minds that there are different discounts that are taking place. But reaching consumers through SMS is a very, very lucrative way and means of distribution. And if you're able to tie in your timing between SMS and email, that's the combination for some advertising gold right there because then the consumer really knows that message is for them and they're not escaping it, so they'll pay attention to it.
0:24:42.7 AP: And then last but not least, we all spend a lot of time on various websites, especially right now. Holiday travel, weather, everything that's going on in the world. So while it is competitive, native is a really great advertising platform. You'll be getting a lot of eyeballs, a lot of clicks from the consumers. And then going back to what we talked about earlier on this with the emphasis on video and content in creative, you can capture the users on native and make sure that you're able to get those conversions as well.
0:25:16.0 Ana: Definitely, that could not be more true. I don't know about you guys, but I am noticing myself that my attention online is rapidly shifting more to TikTok content, short reels and clips than ever before. So combining engaging short videos can really allow your audience, especially when combining it with personalized messaging, emails and SMS. Now, we've talked about the holiday campaigns, but Chris, in working with advertisers, why are so many of them choosing CPA campaigns in particular for this holiday season?
0:25:46.3 CP: I simply put, it's pretty reliable and pretty predictable compared to going out there with media spend with no real guarantee on generating sales. So it's usually... It's [a] no brainer. The one thing that you have to keep an eye out for is during the holiday season, inventory gets more expensive. So shifting over the CPA model, it might help save you a little in the fact that you're not out there actively competing in the various exchanges with the bigger brands. But also a caveat to that is because the CPA is an action based model, you are going to have people that are going out there and spending more. So you... The CPA campaign, what you're paying for a sale in October might be a little bit less than what you're paying in November and in December, the last final weeks. But, again, it's more reliable and predictable than it would be if you're just going out there spending your own ad dollars.
0:26:53.3 Ana: Definitely. Great. Great insight, Chris. Although many advertisers rely on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to push their campaign, planning promotion early and launching ahead of time with custom content with a focus on CPA campaigns will help drive predictable outcomes to get ahead of the game this holiday season. So with that, let's talk about timing. Each year it seems that consumers begin their holiday shopping earlier and earlier. So when should advertisers begin their campaigns and when does demand seem to be the highest? Amber, let's start with you.
0:27:24.1 AP: Oh, great, great question. The user... You already touched on this, but the user's attention span is pretty minimal right now. So you want to actually stay in front of the user a lot with your product. So from a holiday timing standpoint, right now is really the time to begin putting your advertisements together, working on your creatives. From a launch standpoint, there really isn't anything that's necessarily too early, but if you're able to start your initial testing phases and appealing to different audiences by the last week of October, you're really going to want to be live during that time frame, that window in November. Your pricing might be a little bit more expensive say that week leading up to Thanksgiving, but retailers are starting their sales earlier and earlier now. It's not just Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you have a pre-Black Friday, pre-Cyber Monday, you have after Cyber Monday, but it's pretty crucial to take advantage of that kind of six week window of the first week of November that goes until about the second week of December, because once you kind of get past that point, there's no guarantee that you'll actually have inventory available or shipping will make it in time.
0:28:40.0 Ana: And Chris, what are you hearing on the advertiser side?
0:28:43.7 CP: Pretty much the same. As Amber mentioned, you go to some of these stores right now and they already have their Christmas decorations up, so people are already starting to get in the mindset of that. But in the beginning of November is where you want to start dialing things up. Obviously when you have your infrastructure and everything's kind of handled before that and ready for prime time in October, in November. But Black Friday has been really when things kick into high gear, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week. And e-com has been strong again all year, but once those dates kick in, you're going to see an increase in inventory needed and if you're not stacked up for that, you don't want to run out of inventory in early December before the, really, height of the season. So I would just make sure that you are just getting everything in line by the beginning of November and make sure that you have enough inventory and know the spikes and traffic that are going to happen when they're.
0:29:52.8 AP: Hey Ana, I wanted to actually add on that, Chris, great points that you have. Something to take into consideration too is that if you don't have an in-house designer and you're solely relying on outsourced design work, you'll want to take into consideration vacations that your designers potentially have. Then maybe even allow yourself a little bit of an extra timeframe when you're trying to get creatives made because people do take time off and sometimes things do get slowed down a little bit. So going back to our points of having a lot of different creatives and content available now to ensure that it's not too late when you're actually able to get them.
0:30:28.3 Ana: Definitely thank you both Chris and Amber for that insight. So we're hearing a lot of buzz around Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns and promotions. So rather than wait until then, it's definitely better to be ahead of the game and launch campaigns by early November to increase your window to capitalize on online consumers. And then of course, when Black Friday and Cyber Monday comes, definitely be prepared to continue targeting consumers aggressively, as there's huge opportunity and very little time during that time period. And don't forget, having ample inventory is crucial for campaign success to get you through the holiday season. Now, let's talk about after the new year. Looking ahead, how can advertisers plan for January when sales may slow down a bit? Amber, let's start with you this time.
0:31:12.6 AP: Yeah, actually we love Q1. Users are coming right off of the holidays. They usually still have that holiday high. They usually have a little extra money where they have gift cards or they just want to get what they didn't end up getting for Christmas. So there's still a lot of buying power in January and Q1 from our consumers. Our advertisers and our publishers can really take advantage of that. On the publisher side, don't just give up on a campaign or a product that you ran during the holiday season because not only will maybe some of your pricing go down from your traffic sources in January, but your competition from just say other partners promoting the same product could decrease too. And you can really capitalize on post holiday sales, post holiday coupon codes and usually your shipping companies see a little bit of a lighter load post the holidays.
0:32:05.9 AP: So you can also kind of capitalize on expedited shipping and the consumer, again, being really excited to buy what they didn't necessarily get during the holidays which is a great marketing angle for anybody that's trying to sell something online, didn't get what you want for the holidays, well, now is your chance. And a lot of people usually respond to that marketing.
0:32:28.5 Ana: Definitely. Interesting. And Chris, what recommendations do you have for advertisers after the Christmas spike?
0:32:35.3 CP: It's basically the same thing. You're going to have to kind of change your messaging to... It's not for Christmas anymore, it is, get it possibly cheaper. Everybody has after Christmas sales, every store has after Christmas sales, you can get wrapping paper for a penny if you want. So kind of going along those lines because people are out there looking for deals. One of the bigger kept secrets is the dip after Christmas inventory is super cheap, super cheap just for the fact that you have the big box stores and everyone just pulling out, because they did all their pre-Christmas promotions. So the week after Christmas inventory is cheap and sometimes that's a good place to come in with the after Christmas sales. And then as Amber mentioned, January is always strong, there's a lot... From the E-com standpoint, it kind of focuses a little bit on New Year's resolutions, so you carry your advertising towards that, even if it's the same product. Every single time of year before Christmas, after Christmas, New Year's resolution, that whole thing, could be just another marketing angle too.
0:33:54.3 Ana: Definitely. So what I'm hearing is that when the holiday season ends, there's definitely an opportunity for advertisers and publishers to still connect with consumers. This can be done in forms of extended holiday deals, diversify promotions and inventories more accessible during this time as well. Great stuff. Now, let's talk about the creative aspect of campaigns. Why invest in creative variations early on? Amber, I know this topic is near and dear to your heart. What could you share with us?
0:34:21.3 AP: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's be honest here. Content and creative are absolutely king and that is how you're going to appeal to your consumer. But you don't want to necessarily be dealing with having to start your testing when prices are really high on various platforms. You want to do your testing when they're a little cheaper. So if you can get some of your testing in now and have an idea of what your users are responding to, but also really understanding demographics and the differences that you're kind of going towards. And something that we commonly see is, we'll see different partners utilizing other partners or say different angles and whatnot. You really want to make sure that you actually have a lot of your own content too, so that you can ensure that all of your traffic accounts stay in good standing. That's really one of the best ways to ensure that you have a long term successful campaign. And thank you for the beautiful image.
0:35:17.4 AP: So kind of have a quick little example here too of effective versus ineffective holiday ads. So you're going to want to make sure that you're really focusing on the product itself. Add the holiday aspect and component into it. Time sensitivity, that is one of the greatest ways to get into a user's heart and their mind and make them think that they only have a limited time to get this product. Coupon codes make a huge difference so if you're a publishing partner, any advertisers or networks that you're working with, make sure to ask them are there coupon codes that are available for shipping or for a discount or something of a sort if it tailors them with the holidays, that just really adds to the urgency that the consumer feels to purchase the product. And last but not least, making sure your call to action is very strong. You need to make sure that the user knows where to click, they know how to click, and they know what's expected of them on the next page so that they can convert on this product.
0:36:18.9 AP: So just kind of to really showcase and highlight that. With the image on the right you have a really happy person, you're not exactly sure what it is that they're happy about or what they're selling, but on the left it's very clear that you'll have a very nice package delivered around the holidays with an abundance of products. So you really want to keep that in mind, Deliver to the consumer in your marketing material what it is that would potentially be arriving on their doorstep.
0:36:46.4 Ana: Definitely, you're totally on point, Amber. Since creative branding has so much potential to resonate with consumers and capture your audience, it's only right to invest in creative variations early on to set yourself all our success during the holiday season. Now, I know that there are many ad networks that do CPA campaigns, so why work with DMS specifically, Amber? Why are so many publishers choosing to work with DMS?
0:37:10.3 AP: We might go over time. So I'm actually going to try and condense this question because I could talk about it forever. But let's start with the most important one and that is getting paid. We are going to make sure that every single publisher that we work with this year is on a payment term and plan that works for them so that they're able to really monetize and maximize their spend this holiday season. We do have an abundance of products at the highest pricing, highest conversion points. I think a lot of us know that we have a great team with rave-worthy customer service. And that's not just on the distribution team, but we have a fantastic team that's led by Chris that works with a lot of our advertisers to ensure that not only are our advertisers making money, but our publishers are making the most during the holiday season. And last but not least, we do have a lot of really proprietary technology in our stack there that will allow our publishers to monetize our inventory this holiday season. And just some of that includes our custom API that's set up, one to one sub ID tracking and the list goes on and on. But we are fully here and dedicated to making sure that all of our partners have successes this holiday season.
0:38:25.8 Ana: Fantastic. And Chris, why are so many advertisers working with DMS for their holiday CPA campaigns and beyond?
0:38:33.5 CP: I think that one of the biggest things is industry knowledge. We've been around for a while. Most people on the sales team have seen many holiday seasons and they... And we know what's going to work, what's not going to work, the cost consumer versus the payout versus the messaging versus the page layout. There's a lot of little nuances that are involved in development of the e-com products. So direct response is a huge part of it. So there's a lot of industry knowledge and we also focus on operationalized compliance. We're super compliant when it comes to all sorts of traffic sources in addition to creative optimization and just overall we're there for you. We know what kind of works and we'll help you through the process.
0:39:25.0 Ana: Definitely. This has been really informative. Thank you both Amber and Chris. Let's quickly check the chat and see if any questions came in. So it looks like we'll only have time for one, but don't worry, if we don't answer your questions, we'll reach out to you after the webinar. And our question for today is, how is a CPA campaign in November going to be different from one running a week before Christmas? What types of adjustments should be made? Chris, I know this is definitely an area of expertise for you, can you share your insights?
0:39:58.1 CP: Yeah, so not all messaging throughout the holiday season is pretty equal, in the beginning, you're not going to want to do Christmas blowouts in November. You're going to want to dial it up a little bit, maybe the week before Christmas you're going to want to just go all in. It's literally the world series of the e-com time and bigger discounts, making sure... Putting really compelling messaging in there. Also you want to make sure, and this is huge, if you're going to promise delivery by Christmas, you're going to want to factor in the shipping time factor and possible delays and factor into inventory. So it might not be... If you run outta inventory in, I don't know, let's say November, mid-November or something like that, you probably have some, mostly depending on where you're getting it from, ample time to kind of refill. But if you run outta inventory on the 2nd of December, you're not going to get any before the really possibly, I mean, could move mountains. But most likely it's going to be difficult to get inventory you need for the really kind of accelerated part of the holiday season.
0:41:13.1 CP: So yeah, you make sure you have inventory. And then one other final thing, as I mentioned before, possibly you're going to have more competition from the big brands out there. They're going to be throwing all their money at Facebook, all their money at native, all their money at Google, just everywhere they possibly can. And you're going to possibly have to pay a little bit more for the sales, but that's going to get... That's kind of a fluid thing and if the traffic kind of falls, you might have to come up with that combination of messaging and a possible higher payoff for the last couple weeks because competition is very stiff.
0:41:46.3 Ana: Definitely, interesting points. So November really is an awesome month to launch campaigns and keep those running through the end of the year as it allows you to capitalize on lower pricing for your campaign and stay relevant for a longer period of time with your target audience. Essentially, it maximizes your opportunity to connect with more consumers and use different messaging to resonate with them, not just a popular holiday sale buzz. Well, this has been great. Thank you again, Amber and Chris. This has been an awesome session and I hope everyone got some actionable tips that they'll be able to use to help drive future success. On that note, I want to remind everyone that DMS has a variety of solutions that can help you reach your goals. The DMS tool set consists of our first party data asset, proprietary technology, and expansive digital media reach. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help.
0:42:35.3 Ana: And in fact, there is a survey that will come up at the end of our session today where you can let us know if we'd like our sales team to reach out to you. So be sure to check that box at the end of the survey to set up a call with us. And next up on DMS Live Calendar, we have top four ways to make your campaigns more successful presented by Ryan Dana, the DMS, VP of Calls Operations, and Rob Camhe DMS, SVP of Strategic Partnership. That is coming up in just two weeks on Wednesday, October 19th at 2:00 PM Eastern. And you can scan the QR code on this screen now to get to your registration page or head to DMS-live.com. Thanks everyone for attending today and enjoy the rest of your day. And Amber and Chris, thank you again for an awesome session. Bye.