Published on 26-Apr-2012
"We can all make decisions and come up with theories, but without actual data, it’s hard to prove them out. It’s very comforting to bring in data, test it and use analytics to judge what happened—and to know that you found the right answer at the end of the process." - Robert Gilbreath
Customer:
Calendars.com
Industry:
Retail
Deployment country:
United States
Solution:
Cloud Computing, EMM - Digital Marketing Optimization, Smarter Commerce, Smarter Marketing, Smarter Planet
Smarter Planet:
Smarter Solutions for Retail
Overview
Founded in 1999, Calendars.com is the Internet’s largest calendar store with more than 6,000 items. Its operations and fulfillment office, a state-of-the-art, 125,000 sq. ft. facility, is located in Austin, Texas. The company is an affiliate of Calendar Holdings LLC.
Business need:
For Calendars.com, an online retailer, search engine marketing (SEM) is a business-critical challenge. Its wide range of product categories and its seasonal revenue model make for a complex equation when it comes to determining which keywords to use and how much to pay for them. The SEM team was manually entering keyword performance data into spreadsheets, an extremely time-consuming and error-prone task that detracted from more strategic work. The retailer needed a better way to manage SEM.
Solution:
SEM is both an essential sales tactic and a gamble. Companies pay higher stakes for popular keywords and hope they generate enough revenue to justify the cost. Calendars.com dramatically increased the odds of winning this complex game with a sophisticated search marketing solution. The retailer can view keyword performance in real time and correlate sales numbers with search engine metrics. The integrated performance reporting gives the retailer an accurate picture of whether its bets are paying off in terms of sales revenue and which bets to place next.
Benefits:
Improved paid search conversion rates by 23 percent in the first three months, achieving higher returns on paid search expenditures
Enabled instant access to reports—a 100 percent improvement on a process that previously took hours
Saved 10 business days of work per month, allowing for reallocation of marketing resources to high-value activities
Added 1,100 terms to the keyword inventory—a 47 percent increase—boosting site traffic
Case Study
Founded in 1999, Calendars.com is the Internet’s largest calendar store with more than 6,000 items. Its operations and fulfillment office, a state-of-the-art, 125,000 sq. ft. facility, is located in Austin, Texas. The company is an affiliate of Calendar Holdings LLC.
The Opportunity
For Calendars.com, an online retailer, search engine marketing (SEM) is a business-critical challenge. Its wide range of product categories and its seasonal revenue model make for a complex equation when it comes to determining which keywords to use and how much to pay for them. The SEM team was manually entering keyword performance data into spreadsheets, an extremely time-consuming and error-prone task that detracted from more strategic work. The retailer needed a better way to manage SEM.
What Makes It Smarter
SEM is both an essential sales tactic and a gamble. Companies place bets on keywords—paying higher stakes for the popular ones—and hope they generate enough revenue to justify the cost. Calendars.com dramatically increased the odds of winning this complex game with a sophisticated search marketing solution. Instead of guessing, the retailer can view keyword performance in real time and correlate sales numbers with search engine metrics, such as click-through rates and cost per click. The integrated performance reporting gives the retailer an accurate, real-time picture of whether its bets are paying off in terms of sales revenue and which bets to place next. This insight is particularly important to guide SEM strategy during the holiday season, when the equation often shifts radically. For instance, an expensive keyword such as “gift ideas” might not generate enough sales to justify its cost during most of the year. Between October and January, however, the sales could be lucrative, so the retailer needs to adjust its strategy. Counting cards? You bet.
Real Business Results
· Improved paid search conversion rates by 23 percent in the first three months, achieving higher returns on paid search expenditures
· Enabled instant access to reports—a 100 percent improvement on a process that previously took hours
· Saved 10 business days of work per month, allowing for reallocation of marketing resources to high-value activities
· Added 1,100 terms to the keyword inventory—a 47 percent increase—boosting site traffic
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software:
IBM Digital Analytics, IBM Search Marketing
Legal Information
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012 IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 Produced in the United States April 2012 IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and Coremetrics are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. The performance data and client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.