Case study: the Dynamic banner as a source of sales

28. May 2020

The Dynamic banner is a great format for reaching new customers, as we’ve previously described. Now we decided to test this hypothesis in practise with our client Zahradnictví Kruh. And what did we discover? We can reveal that there has been an increase in the conversion rate and a decrease in the cost and turnover ratio. Read the detailed results and recommendation to find out how you can work with the Dynamic banner effectively.

The Zahradnictví Kruh company wanted to address its target group widely during the season. It chose the Dynamic banner and tested it as an acquisition tool. This product banner is usually considered to be one of the more effective options. It supplements the other formats of advertising greatly, such as combined advertising or Dynamic retargeting.

About Zahradnictví Kruh

Zahradnictví Kruh is a horticultural e-shop with its own tradition. It specializes in the sale of fruit trees, shrubs and plants. It has thousands of clients buying its plants which are specially selected for their greater resilience to our climate. Since 2008 Zahradnictví Kruh has been advertising on Sklik, but the horticultural business has been operating independently for over 40 years.

About Dynamic banner

The Dynamic banner is an advertising format that combines the benefits of efficiently communicating current offers from the product feed with the possibilities of attracting new customers. The Dynamic banner can be stylized through templates in any color, with a choice of fonts, and can be embellished with an advertising slogan. At the same time you can choose a category for sorting your promotion when you set the Dynamic banner, enabling you to flexibly respond to the ‘seasonality’ of your offer.

The Dynamic banner is like Dynamic retargeting but with one difference, it is primarily intended for acquisition targeting so as to precisely appeal to new customers with real offers from your shop. In addition to the offers from the feed, the advertising template shows prices, including any discounts:

About Dynamic banner targeting

Compared to Dynamic retargeting, where Sklik targets users found on the page they visit, we can also target specific websites and the behaviors of group of users such as hobbies or Shopping interests. In the case of Zahradnictví Kruh, we target the shopping interests of gardeners and other groups of interests separately, such as gardening and cultivation. This type of precise behavioral targeting increases the probability that the targeted users will actually look at the offer and buy the product. Thanks to the use of an XML feed, which contains images of the products, there is no need to create, for example, static banners for each category or product as there is in regular content campaigns. Sklik pictures these images automatically.

The purpose of the campaign

Through its campaigns, the company focuses on performance and has set targets, such as the percentage limit of the cost and turnover ratio, which it wants to keep to. However, it still enjoys looking for new ways to attract new customers and is willing to try new types of advertising to achieve this.

The goal of the Dynamic banner was to increase awareness and even possibly conversion rates. We agreed with the client that we will not evaluate the campaign according to the last-click model of attribution of conversions, by extension the cost and turnover ratio. We assume a global impact on the whole of Sklik and other channels, because it is still an acquisition campaign and the results may come later.

There was indeed an increase of sales, even before the start of the national quarantine due to government regulations (the period from February to March 2020).

How we proceeded

With the client, we selected the best range of goods to focus on. We created the templates of Dynamic banner for three selected categories of goods. The templates corresponded to the section and its pages with their color and description.

We tried multiple targeting when setting up the campaigns. We especially focused on interests in gardens and cultivation. We eliminated the group which had already purchased and modified their cost per click to the type of device that lagged behind with its performance, during the campaign. In the short-term, we also eliminated the group that visited the website as this was covered by Dynamic retargeting.

Results of using the Dynamic Banner

The Dynamic banner had the primary goal of increasing awareness and the secondary goal of increasing sales. Thanks to the correctly set retargeting and Dynamic retargeting we were able to continue to work with the target customer and to increase sales against the retention costs in comparison to the previous year. There were different types of campaigns launched in the year before, so we were able to compare the impact of each type.

The year-on-year comparison of the impact on the account with the same budget from the 30th of January to 28th of March 2019 and 2020:

Increase of total conversions 26%

Increase of total value of conversions 35%

Increase of views of advertising 114%

Decrease of PNO 25%

We have achieved the goals of spreading awareness. The Dynamic banner campaign reached over 600 000 real users, whereas the advertising was viewed by each of them an average of 7 times. There was also an increase of conversions for the same advertising cost as the year before. The Dynamic banner had a good impact on the brand and sales. The Dynamic banner campaign itself may have less pleasing results regarding the cost and turnover ratio, but it has to fill the retargeting and Dynamic retargeting of the audience to at least reach the sales at a later stage of the purchase.

Follow-up to Dynamic retargeting

The Dynamic banner had a big impact on retargeting. The new format has ensured a weekly increase of retargeting audiences of more than 1 300 new users (potential customers) in the long term. Thanks to the performance focus of Dynamic retargeting, which targets the same retargeting list, there has been a significant increase in the number of purchases and sales, and a decrease in the cost and turnover ratio. The year-on-year comparison of the statistics of the Dynamic retargeting campaign from the 30th of January to 28th of March 2019 and 2020, when the campaign was launched, revealed:

Increase of conversion rate 43%

Decrease of cost and turnover ratio 57%

Increase of conversion value 69%

Increase of CTR 8%

The optimizing of the Dynamic retargeting also helped us to achieve a good result when we modified the CPC for devices that didn’t reach the set results.

Recommendation for setting up the Dynamic banner

  • Create templates for each category separately and adapt the legend.
  • Don’t be afraid of investing larger amounts in the Dynamic banner, especially during the sale season.
  • Adjust targeting for device, behavioural placement and look for the best combination.
  • Divide reports according to advertising categories and according to targeting.
  • Eliminate the audience that have already visited and purchased from you.

You can find out how to create your own Dynamic banner in our help.

For the Sklik team, Petr Svoboda