Benchmark CPC and CTR in Thailand Online Shopping Marketplace

The average CPC for Online advertisement in a Fashion and Clothing industry would be around $0.09 with an average CTR of 0.15%. The campaign was circulating around Shoes, Clothing, Underwear, Socks both for Men and Women.

The result of the Campaign during these 16 days saw:
CPCs and Clicks Behaviour:

  • The CPC was more or less Flat except on DEC 1 when it went extremely high to be US$ 0.29. It was those high value clicks were bought with very few clicks before the Campaign was stopped.
  • The clicks went extremely high during the launch approximately spending nearly US$ 3000 per day. The CPC was acceptable between 9 to 10 Cents.

CTRs - Dropped due to more spending:
  • Notice CTR fell down which gives a message that fresh Ads were very interesting for the users once the campaign was launched but as period passed by it became stale and it fell around 0.12%.
 Please see below the co-relation between the CPC and CTRs along with the Impression and CTRs.
AS the impression grew the CTR fell and while the fell in CTR was being recorded it saw increase in CPC.

The strategy seems to reflect a very aggressive marketing over few days to capture enough visit to meet the KPI. In general it is better to lose the money within a short span of time and than concentrate over optimizing the effort to target on the products which could be sold and there is demand for the product in the market.


Note: The above information are meant for instructional purpose and it could vary depending on the criteria and type of Ads being served.

Posted at at 8:24 AM on Thursday, September 20, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Benchmark Email Marketing Fashion Industry Thailand

Online Commerce in Thailand is still crawling its baby step. Although the credit card penetration is increasing the interest of users in online sector can be outline as below: 

  • 38% of Thais are most interested in entertainment content
  • 12% online games
  • 10% blogs and web boards
  • 6.3% shopping
  • 6.1% news and information.
More detail about can be read at: Internet Usage and Online Shopping in Thailand

However, in a Fashion Industry where the Email Marketing plays a key role. Although in general Benchmark for Open Rate can be stipulated around 8% to 10% and Click rate around 3% to 5%, it is very interesting to see the Clicks and Open based on the day of the week.
Days Clicks Opens Clicks/Opens
Mon 10,367 49,760 20.83%
Tue 10,798 48,219 22.39%
Wed 10,602 46,910 22.60%
Thu 10,769 45,354 23.74%
Fri 10,015 44,462 22.52%
Sat 8,923 39,931 22.35%
Sun 9,291 40,091 23.17%

Although we would expect Sunday to be the best day in terms of Clicks and Opens as people would tend to check their email regularly but based on the above stat it looks to be move active during the weekdays as compared to the weekend. However, a very interesting phenomenon to be noted is the ration between the clicks and opens tends to be higher on Sunday. Neverthelss Thursday seems outperforming other days.

On the other hand if we are to consider the best time to dispatch the email in Thailand Fashion and Online Clothing industry, it would be around....  Any Guesstimates??:

Based on the sample data collected it looks the weight would fall 9:00 to 10:00 AM or even 16:00 to 17:00 PM. Indeed the ideal time for people to get ready for a work and an hour before they leave from work.

Hours Clicks Opens Clicks/Opens
00:00 - 01:00 303 1,320 22.95%
01:00 - 02:00 650 2,546 25.53%
02:00 - 03:00 7,461 35,917 20.77%
03:00 - 04:00 9,371 41,930 22.35%
04:00 - 05:00 7,668 35,103 21.84%
05:00 - 06:00 6,386 27,377 23.33%
06:00 - 07:00 4,947 21,275 23.25%
07:00 - 08:00 4,057 18,099 22.42%
08:00 - 09:00 3,700 16,502 22.42%
09:00 - 10:00 3,375 14,259 23.67%
10:00 - 11:00 3,034 12,954 23.42%
11:00 - 12:00 2,423 11,149 21.73%
12:00 - 13:00 2,196 9,853 22.29%
13:00 - 14:00 2,239 10,016 22.35%
14:00 - 15:00 2,456 10,750 22.85%
15:00 - 16:00 2,584 10,922 23.66%
16:00 - 17:00 2,505 10,470 23.93%
17:00 - 18:00 2,012 8,657 23.24%
18:00 - 19:00 1,392 6,340 21.96%
19:00 - 20:00 852 4,014 21.23%
20:00 - 21:00 470 2,201 21.35%
21:00 - 22:00 285 1,402 20.33%
22:00 - 23:00 190 836 22.73%
23:00 - 24:00 209 835 25.03%

Note: These above stats are indicative and should be meant for learning and experimentation purpose. It would highly depend on the type of product being made available online during the period of the study.

Posted at at 7:17 AM on Thursday, August 23, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Optimizing Keywords for better Campaign performance

Online marketing deals with various metrics. In a search based advertising it is the dual combination of the product and the keywords. To achieve the goal it is essential to place focus in optimize the campaign. The optimization should be applied to granular level possible. It is necessary to ensure the AdText, AdGroup and Keyword are tightly focusing towards the deliver the message to the audience and buy related traffic.

The sample report below represents various metrics to consider while optimizing the Keywords. This  report could provide a general guidance on how a keyword level report could be implemented and monitored on a daily basis. It also provides a guideline if the keywords are meeting its top level ROI target.


Posted at at 5:53 AM on Friday, July 27, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Email Marketing in Fashion Industry Sample Report

In my earlier post in June 2011No Traffic Segmentation is a Crime Against Analysis the emphasis of data segmentation and a short overview on the things which are needed to consider was mentioned. Segmenting the data to view the performance of the site will always yield into new discovery. Having mentioned segmentation it is always necessary to consider the Email marketing channel. The segmentation is a must and it should always be always measured against its KPI. Every vertical should have a KPI, if the vertical is not measured against the KPI there must be something wrong with the vertical itself and it is worth completely deleting the vertical.

Email marketing is one of the most profitable vertical and a it should be measured against its KPI. The KPI for email could be:

  • Click Rate
  • Open Rate
  • Total Email Sent
  • Conversion Rate

It could be measured weekly and compared against prior week. The delta difference would give indicative number and percentage change would provide the measurement against the prior week.

It is also good to have other metrics summarized by weekday to analyze the result. The weekday summary would allow to target the sales on a weekday basis.

Please see below a sample weekly report:

Posted at at 11:22 AM on Friday, June 29, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Online Purchase Made in Travel Industry - European Region

There was post which was made for the Online Purchase in APAC Region now its time to take a peak into the travel trend for European is  listed below. Norway ranks top of the table with 82% while Denmark ranks second position having a tough competition from Ireland, Sweden and united Kingdom. Hungary and Russia are listed in the bottom of the table this doesn't imply that they are not equally important.



Please see below the ranking of the 21 European countries:

Rank

Country

Percentage
1
 Norway 82%
2
 Denmark 80%
3
 Ireland 79%
4
 Sweden 78%
5
 United Kingdom 78%
6
 Netherlands 76%
7
 Finland 69%
8
 Switzerland 69%
9
 Portugal 60%
10
 France 56%
11
 Austria 54%
12
 Germany 54%
13
 Belgium 49%
14
 Greece 45%
15
 Italy 45%
16
 Spain 44%
17
 Czech Republic 42%
18
 Poland 42%
19
 Turkey 27%
20
 Russia 26%
21
 Hungary 24%

Type of Purchase made by European Travelers:
  • 64% of European purchase Leisure Travel (Traveling for Leisure)
  • 54% Purchase Hotels (Book Hotel Online) 
  • 47% Purchase Business Travel (Traveling for Business)
  • 46% Purchase Package Holiday

Purchase behavior:

The chart below represents type of purchase popular in Europe. For instance majority of Business Travelers are mainly from Norway. Majority of purchase for online hotels are being made from Denmark, Norway and Netherlands. Denmark and Ireland top the chart for Leisure Flights. People from Norway are more into package Holidays.


Posted at at 6:16 AM on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Beginners SEO and SEM Question for Thai Market

A General Question and Answer about SEO and SEM beginners in Thai market -

Q: How should the prioritization of Thai vs. English keywords is done, while starting Search Engine Advertisement (Google Adwords)? Thai people search in English or Thai, when they are looking for a) brands, b) buying stuff online, etc.

A: Search Engine Advertisement - People search in both languages English and Thai and also they type in Thaingish (Thai + English). Hence it is better off seperating the accounts in multiple languages:

  • Account 1: Language: Thai, Location: Thailand
  • Thai Keywords only, (SQR to generate related search and add Thainglish (Thai + English) in this account).
    • Site Links Thai
    • Text Ad - Thai
  • Account 2: Language: ALL minus Thai, Location:Thailand
  • English Keywords only, target Expat and the English speaking Thai community.
    • Thai AdText - Thai Keywords
      • Mix Keywords - Thai AdText
      • English AdText- English Keywords
Q: We are willing to have a monolingual site (only Thai). How should we built all the URLs?  English or in Thai

A: My suggestion is to go in English due to following reason:
  • The same word could be written in different ways with different spellings, this will land us to 404 page as visitors would come up with their own grammar and spelling. In short there is no standardization.
  • Bookmark, URL, Redirect, 301 redirect and also buying the URL in Advertisement would face difficulty hence let us keep it simple targeting Thai and Expat community.
However, if the website is going to be targeted only in multiple language separate the domain –
  • Thai - .co.th
  • English - .com

Q: In general, is there any search behavior guideline or benchmark over the traffic and language of the browser in Thailand?

A: Please see below -
Visit Estimation - (Based on Language they use - Language of Browser):
  • Language    % Visit Estimate
  • English        68.58%
  • Thai        30.15%
  • Others        1.28%
Origin Estimation - (Based on Location they are - Origin of User):
  • Language    % Visit Estimate
  • Thailand    97%
  • Others        3%
Based on Search Behavior -
Search Terms        Type
  • Thai
  • Generic Products
  • English
  • Branded Products   
  • Thai + English
  • Purchase + Research
Q: How many e-mail addresses do you think we need until it makes sense to get started with newsletters? My opinion: I expect to be conversion 0.5% max., so to generate at least 10 orders from one newsletter campaign, we should have > 2,000 subscribers.

A: Clothing and Accessories Industry -
  • EM-Open Rate = Approx. 8%
  • EM-Click Rate = Approx. 2.7%
  • Conversion Rate = Approx. 0.42%
  • To Generate 10 Orders = Total Email Subscribers - Approx: 20,000
o    Note: Depends on total products being featured and Louis Vuition would convert more if the offline price is beatable.

Posted at at 1:57 AM on Sunday, April 15, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Benchmark Conversion Rate Across Various Industry March 2012


Conversion rate across different industry for the month of March 2012. WK#12 vs. WK#11. Overall a -14% drop in email marketing while 8% growth in the general conversion which is mainly boosted by 11% growth all seen coming from New Visitors. This looks obvious that email had recorded the drop as the new visitors seems not yet targeted via email.

The table below will give a general guideline on the conversion rate across various industry. The data can be compared with 2010 (Conversion Rate 2010) we can expect in terms of that the conversion rate has increased. The global conversion rate is 2.80% vs. 2.30% which is 21% increase compared to 2010. While on the other end the Fashion industry has seen a -22% drop 1.70% vs. 2.20%.

Overall the one more important thing displayed below is the Repeat Visitor vs. New Visitor Conversion rate. The blog Why measure Pre-Click and Post-Click? will become very handy if we are going to measure the conversion performance.

Please see below the detail conversion rate - March 2012 (Source: Fireclick Index):
2012 Conversion Rating

Conversion Rate March (WK#12) March (WK#11) % Change
All Industry Global 2.80% 2.60% 8%
Keywords 2.00% 1.90% 5%
Emails 3.20% 3.70% -14%
Affiliates 6.50% 6.30% 3%
New Visitors 3.00% 2.70% 11%
Repeat Visitors 2.50% 2.40% 4%
Fashion Industry Global 1.70% 1.40% 21%
Keywords 1.40% 1.30% 8%
Emails 3.00% 3.20% -6%
Affiliates 5.80% 5.50% 5%
New Visitors 1.10% 0.90% 22%
Repeat Visitors 2.20% 2.00% 10%
Catalog Global 3.20% 3.00% 7%
Keywords 2.00% 1.50% 33%
Emails 3.30% 3.50% -6%
Affiliates 0.00% 0.00% 0%
New Visitors 3.20% 2.90% 10%
Repeat Visitors 3.30% 3.10% 6%
Specialty Global 3.00% 3.40% -12%
Keywords 1.80% 1.60% 13%
Emails 2.70% 5.00% -46%
Affiliates 6.60% 7.30% -10%
New Visitors 2.70% 2.80% -4%
Repeat Visitors 3.40% 4.10% -17%
Outdoor and Sports Global 2.60% 2.50% 4%
Keywords 1.80% 1.80% 0%
Emails 2.70% 3.10% -13%
Affiliates 5.40% 5.30% 2%
New Visitors 2.40% 2.30% 4%
Repeat Visitors 2.70% 2.70% 0%
Software Global 2.90% 2.60% 12%
Keywords 1.50% 1.50% 0%
Emails 1.60% 2.60% -38%
Affiliates 0.00% 0.00% 0%
New Visitors 3.30% 2.80% 18%
Repeat Visitors 2.50% 2.30% 9%

Posted at at 3:43 AM on Sunday, April 1, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Online Purchase made in Travel Industry - APAC Region

Online marketing in Travel industry is influenced by various factors like:
    • Seasonality, Economical Condition, Political Stability/Instability, Competitor Behavior, Online Ad Spend, News and Media Influence, etc.
Consumer behavior in travel industry vary from country to country hence it is important to study the market behavior before actively engaging online marketing. The country which a travel product seller must target in APAC region are listed below. Japanese national are purchasing travel products frequently this doesn't mean that Vietnamese and Indonesian national are to be ignored. There is abundant opportunity in those market as the competition would be less. Hence the products should be targeted not only based on the markets where the online purchase is frequent but also the right product should be available to target the travel market.

Please find below the  APAC region ranked based on travel purchase -

Rank Country
Rank Country
1 Japan - 73%
8 China - 46%
2 New Zealand - 71%
9  Philippines - 45%
3 Australia - 66%
10 Hongkong - 40%
4 Singapore - 62%
11 Thailand - 37%
5 Malaysia - 57%
12 India - 36%
6 Taiwan - 51%
13 Vietnam - 35%
7 Korea - 47%
14 Indonesia - 34%


The graph below represents the consumer purchase behavior for male and female in APAC region:
Overall in APAC region Female tends to buy more than Males. Female are more active travelers than male or let us put it another way around, Female are purchasing travel products more.

  • Females buyers are 49% while 

  • Male are 46%

  • Others 5%


If we take a look at a breakdown we will see that:

  • Females are active buyers of Travel products in the following regions:
    • AU, CN, HK, IN, ID, MY, NZ, PH, and TH
  • Male are active buyers of Travel products in the following regions:
  •  JP, KR, SG TW, and VN


Posted at at 9:37 PM on Friday, March 23, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Internet Usage and Online Shopping in Thailand

Online shopping seems gathering momentum in Thailand. The usage of internet in Thailand has grown significantly so has the mobile usage:
Internet users: 20 million – increase 27% over last year (2010 vs. 2011)

  • Apple iOS (mobile devices) responsible for half of the daily mobile internet browsing sessions in Thailand. 
  • The total number of internet sessions (per day) from mobile devices is broken down as follows:
    • 200,000 iPhone
    • 45,000 iPad
    • 57,402 Nokia
    • 22,000 BlackBerry

The interest of internet usages in Thailand has been seen over various arena. The rankings have changed little over past few years:
  • 38% of Thais are most interested in entertainment content
  • 12% online games
  • 10% blogs and web boards
  • 6.3% shopping
  • 6.1% news and information.
The four least popular categories are property at 0.03%, health 0.26%, adult entertainment 0.32%, and government 1.14%. Google remains Thailand’s favorite search engine with a 99% share, while Microsoft Bing had only 0.53%.

More details about the behavioral of Thai consumer :
  • Purchase Online vs. Purchase Offline:
    • Female purchase more or Male?
  • Do they research online and purchase offline or vice verse?
  •  Research to purchase behavioral of Male and Female?
    • Male are into: Clothings & Accessories, Footware and Gifts, Flowers & Greetings and Beauty Products?
    • Female are into: Clothings & Accessories, Beauty Products and Gifts, Flowers & Greetings. Female are not into Footware?
Please find below the detailed presentation about Thailand Internet Usage and Online Shopping:

Posted at at 3:51 AM on Thursday, February 9, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:

Why measure Perfomance with Pre and Post Click Attribution Model?

As Newtons Third Law of Motion says: "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction". The theory always reminds me that altering traffic being sent to site would impact conversion over the site. However the only thing doesn't fit with the theory is the metric are not reacting in proportion as the quality of traffic,  seasonality and performance factors would play a very vital role.

These conversion metrics are results of traffic being received on the site. The traffic beig sent over the site should be measured and grouped as Pre Click and Post Click. This will allow us to classify the traffic if there is any cannibalization over the traffic or even conversion.

For instance, there is a massive traffic flowing from your new partner and the bounce rate is way above the average of the site. There are major impact over the traffic and overall the website as the partner is resulting into following:

  • Immense amount of traffic leading towards manipulation the click share being delivered by the different channel.
  • The traffic being delivered has a bounce rate way above the average bounce rate for the site in the end leading towards skewed bounce rate.
  • The higher traffic flow has brought down the entire conversion rate of the site which is way below the industry standard.
  • The traffic flowing is fluctuating over different categories which is leading towards unstable KPI which was set earlier.
The question is what do we do next? 
  • Switch off the partner?
  • Separate the traffic from the reporting?
  • Major total traffic being sent and total conversion and consider case by case to switch off over selected category?
The answer to this question would be, do not switch off the partner, nor separate the traffic from the reporting and not even consider switching off the partner over selected category. The argument would be that the traffic is going to be stable overtime. It is going to be follow a similar trend hence the conversion rate and other related metrics would have a overall new benchmark for the site. Although they would be way below the industry benchmark it is going to benefit the site in the long run. The question raised would be how?

Following reason: Multi-Channel Attribution Model
  • Start to measure the pre-click and post-click from the partner.
  • Gather data for all those new visitor result of this new partner and create a segment and start viewing total conversion delivered by these visitors.
    • This would allow to measure if the traffic being delivered by this new partner is helping other channel to convert.
  • Overall it is always good to keep in mind that the traffic being delivered by this new partner would play essential role for re-marketing or re-targeting campaigns. As all these visitor dropped on the website are going to receive the cookies and which in return would help the Brand awareness.
Hence measuring the performance with Pre-Click and Post-Click is essential as in long run it will help analyze the channels delivering traffic and overall the impact of these channels in assisting conversion.

Posted at at 5:53 AM on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 by Posted by Rabin Gupta | 0 comments   | Filed under:
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