KPIs for a Successful POD Marketing Team

Anna Navolokova, Marketing Manager in Multi-Programming Solutions  •  8 min read

Sometimes even charms may be measured, especially if you own a magic wand. To count the progress or productivity of the POD biz, one spell is not enough, and you have to do the math. Read this guide about why the science of science is the best of all the software to detect success levels.

One of the best marketing strategies is the key performance indicators (KPIs) research, which predetermines possible risks and develops the power of the objectives. These data points may number in the hundreds for POD, but it is significant to keep in mind that what you are doing makes sense.  Print on demand business KPIs are not a quick-enrichment scheme but a preventive step that allows the shop to adapt to all situations. 

Because the foundation of each biz is labor and niche-appropriate goods, the entrepreneur must constantly monitor vital points. For the combo of winning items and audiences to work, you should extract the actions that probably lead to a piece of luck from the occurring metrics. Read on how to do this.

Table of Contents

What is a KPI and why you need it in your POD marketing processes?

What makes an effective KPI?

POD KPIs to start with

Conversion rate

Cost of customer acquisition

Average order value

Shopping cart abandonment rate

Customer lifetime value

Gross profit margin

Conclusion

What is a KPI and why you need it in your POD marketing processes?

Marketing performance metrics are usually applied to obtain more info about user behavior. But the well-known indicators from Google Analytics (GA), such as bounce rate or page traffic, are not enough in the business of print on demand because they only demonstrate the process. To calculate performance, it is worth utilizing KPIs. They shape the future of your website and represent how it reaches its purposes. 

The importance of KPIs lies in the sufficient comprehension derived from analysis - you may more precisely develop tactics to increase online sales and understand the risks involved. 

KPIs often describe five severe business manipulations:

• Sales;
• Customer service;
• Marketing;
• Production;
• Project management.

Each aspect involves a qualitative or quantitative measurement of your business's profit. By testing a new collection, you can track the productivity of a particular channel and understand whether the items pay off. Gross profit, product affinity, or relationship will concentrate you on sales and make appropriate solutions. 

The power of marketing indicators is predictions. Since launching a collection often involves a lengthy client acquisition process, you should calculate CAC or customer acquisition cost, which means how much you expend on attracting each new client. If it turns out that you have attracted a few people at a high price, then you probably should reconsider your tactics.

For the user to have a pleasant impression of the brand, it is necessary to have a great experience through the smooth operation of the support service. Let's determine which item your clients are asking for the most, analyze the problem of the appeal, and fulfill appropriate modifications. If there are any questions related to the size grid or clarification of details, enter them in the description on the page - so purchases will be made faster, and the experience of interaction will be higher. 

It would seem that why would an entrepreneur or a white label drop shipper think about production facilities? It's simple: your costs, quality, and delivery time depend on it. For instance, to examine the reliability of a supplier, note the following indicators:

1. Cycle time to push manufacturing capacity.
2. The non-compliance occurrences will explain how secure your partner is.
3. First-time yield (FTY) and first-time through (FTT) will show how well the units are made. 

So you discern the possible risks and may prevent them before they arise.

To discover how good an initiative is, pay attention to how much it takes. Plan your budget or cost performance index (CPI) to estimate if your attempts are worth the assets invested. 

It is needful to recognize suitable for a concrete niche among the hundreds of KPIs. Depending on the purpose, website characteristics, and demand, they may differ, but they share a familiar pattern. For instance, your purpose is to enlarge purchases by 15%. To do this and determine the drawbacks of your store, begin with an ordinary thing: continue tracking the sales for a definite time. Learn the conversion level. These two points are connected with the traffic you attract to the site. If they are low, you will most likely have to take several tactics to prevent clients from leaving.

Do not forget about a regular site audit, which will indicate weaknesses in on-page and off-page SEO. Such objective-setting and solution-seeking may sometimes initiate the creation of your own unique set of KPIs. It's simple: use task templates, so you don't get confused and have the right impact on any given situation.

How to Motivate Your Existing POD Customers to Buy More?

What makes an effective KPI?

Most innovative companies daily manage data on Timeline and Dashboard screens, generate consolidated reports, analyze market needs, etc. But web analytics will be doomed to failure if you do not understand how effective or useless data points are for a particular research milestone. To define the functionality of concrete KPIs, follow these five characteristics.

• Simple

An easy to count and simple metric will prompt quick solutions rather than additional questions. For example, "How many clients have been added to the database for a certain period?" is straightforward. Do not forget about the team, on which depends the achievements: precise tasks and their breakdown into smaller tasks will be a valid tool for reproducing the desired result.

• Relevant

Niches, audience segmentation, and the remote team's peculiarities dictate the rules for selecting the proper KPI. For instance, conversions are directly related to cross-selling within the available client base. Relevancy ensures that users will discover the additional offers or be concerned about new products, which enlarges the likelihood of success. 

• Aligned

Overall purposes characterize the most important KPIs. They do not unintentionally undermine each other but instead work together for a shared vision. A customer service-oriented store may pay little attention to developing other sales channels. So it's worth asking, "How many customers were able to attract in a certain time?" 

• Actionable

Unattainable goals, overly complex tasks, and an inability to dilemma lead to the breakup of teams and the loss of professionals. So to objectively evaluate progression, you should know how realistic your expectations are.

• Balanced

KPI should be balanced between leading and lagging points. You simply will not be able to assess the state of affairs if the interrelated points diverge. 

The relative sense of these points set for business analytics is greatly enhanced when a brand understands how different metrics are utilized and how they affect the general picture. Pay attention to the shopping cart abandonment indicator to manage orders. Why didn't the user finish the conversion, considering that the item put in the cart sucks? Find the answer by reading the following section.

POD KPIs to start with

If you're not obsessed with math, not an accountant, and not a marketer, but want to study your KPIs, calculate the general points for the POD. They will define possible misfortune and the possibilities to benefit. So, let's talk about measuring marketing performance by applying data points.

Conversion rate

At first glance, the conversion rate (CR) may seem trivial and a very mediocre measure of a client’s activity on the page and their interest. It lets you dig deeper profound and delve into the depths of human psychology. Why do people buy or not buy your products? Do they give them special meaning or consider them only a beautiful addition? What motivates people to purchase more?

This point reflects those who have performed some actions (e.g., filled out a form, opened a PDF file, and wrote their data for feedback). In essence, it's about the quality of the customer's experience during the session. Usually, this KPI is worth backing up with other metrics, such as session duration, the traffic on specific channels, or even the average cost of the cart. Together, they will better demonstrate the interaction chain and help test page improvements. 

This is one of the most significant KPIs for sales descriptions. Globally, the CR for online shoppers is 3.31%. So, every 100 users are converted into 2-3 clients. Increasing it by only 0.5% will enlarge an income by tens of thousands of dollars. So, divide the total conversions by the visitors and then multiply by 100. 

Cost of customer acquisition

This term looks like CAC in abbreviated form and demonstrates the client’s value. That is, how much money you need to make a possible client purchase.

Suppose you expend $500 on ads and attract ten clients. Its price was $50 to draw each of them. So choosing among the most appropriate KPIs for your marketing tactics, you stumbled upon the indispensable CAC. If your common order cost is $2,500 and you expend $500 on referrals, you'll need to discover a method to cut the CAC. Plus, you may predict how many clients you can attract in a week and then plan your outgoings. Indeed, you may enlarge sales by investing more in growth digital marketing KPI. Nevertheless, your income will be decreased, and your website will be facing the gates of destruction. 

So, we should not go with the wind of this indicator, but it is not purposeful to lose sight of it. 

Let's summarize all of the above: to uncover this quantity, please, divide your investment in attracting clients by their number. 

Average order value

Another marketing key performance indicator is the average order value (AOV). It demonstrates the desire of clients to spend more in your shop and is corresponded to conversions. It indicates the average amount of money outlay on one order. The bigger this KPI, the more effective you are at closing sales and the more earnings you make. 

It works as follows: divide the income by the completed orders. 

Shopping cart abandonment rate

Among KPIs for marketing, cart abandonment seems to have become the most painful because sometimes it's hard to recognize why an ideal client is not matched with a relevant product. First, think about your audience and make out their problems. An item that a person has been looking for turned out to be expensive or poor quality.

Don't be upset if your website’s rejection rate is very high. The average failure rate on the web pages is 70%! An impressive amount only means a lack of motivation for the possible client and, therefore, not a good enough user experience. Accordingly, conduct a site audit and analyze the niche, audience segments, and channels you promote goods. Perhaps your webpage is too slow? Or is shipping expensive? Nevertheless, savvy sellers can restore about 63% of this lost income.

Customer lifetime value

This marketing KPI refers to the net earnings a client may bring over his lifetime. It is utilized to better understand another indicator - return on investment (ROI). It lets you define your brand's importance to the clients and how good your campaign is at saving old ones.

To discover it, multiply the order value by the number of times a client purchases. 

Gross profit margin

There is one aspect you should never lose sight of - an income. This digital marketing KPI demonstrates your business's profitability and earnings. 

For instance, if you are a reseller and expend $10 to produce an item, and its sale brought you $15, your earnings would be $5. To find this value as a percentage, divide the difference by the income multiplied by 100%.

Conclusion

KPIs can sometimes seem like dark woods, especially when considering the hard-to-calculate metrics that only experienced marketers and accountants can do. But in POD, you don't need these hundred thousand different indicators to define how efficient your business is, what to think about, and what to modify. We've written a guide to KPIs in marketing and which points are worth applying to print on demand.