The US-based performance-paid online marketer, Dealtime.com, has launched a new 'ROI Tracker' that allows merchants selling via the site to measure the return on their marketing investment with Dealtime. The free tool aims to help merchants analyse sales performance in order to optimise their direct e-marketing campaigns.
The Dealtime shopping and product search site is used by consumers to find the goods they want, compare features and prices, and find a merchant from which to buy the goods they want. Merchants join Dealtime's network to advertise and target their products and services in the category-driven Dealtime catalogue.
"Several recent studies have revealed that the majority of online marketers are not adequately measuring the return on their search-related marketing investment," said Dealtime's chief revenue officer, Iggy Fanlo. "We created the ROI Tracker so our customers could track the leads and sales they are generating through the Dealtime network."
Analytics by category
The new ROI tool allows merchants to track key performance metrics and quantify the return on their marketing investment by campaign, and by combinations of product category, sub-category, and even by total presence on the Dealtime network.
The factors examined for performance and ROI include:
- Click volumes - the number of visitors to the Dealtime network that click-through to the merchant's web site and convert into sales leads. Cost per click is also examined.
- Conversion-to-sale ratios - the total number of customers that convert into buyers on a merchant's site, along with time-to-sale metrics as well as the volume and total currency value of those sales.
- Costs of sales - the total cost of a campaign, also represented as a percentage of total sales.
Successful trial
The new system has undergone a testing phase over the past two months, and was considered successful following trials by online retailer, SmartBargains.com. "It was easy to integrate and gave us detailed information on the transactions that were driven by Dealtime, including which products we sold and the total time elapsed from click-in to check out," noted Mark Weinberg, director of business development for SmartBargains.
The ROI tracking tool is the third in a series of service offerings the company has rolled out to merchants since its merger with Epinions in May 2003.
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