15 Jul Not another math problem…
Yesterday I published a post and offered dealers a free Google Analytics review. This dealer reached out within a few minutes of my post. He was concerned about the quality of the traffic coming to his site from his new conquest email provider.
Here are the red flags I found:
1. An insane amount of traffic over just a couple of weeks.
Any traffic source ranking higher than Google should send a major red flag to anyone. But 6 times the amount of google traffic… impossible. More importantly, this email vendor’s campaign was set up to target 100,000 consumers in the dealer’s market. Email open rates when marketing outside of a dealer’s database run between .5% – 1.5%. Click-through from opens is about 10%. Do the math. One would expect to see about 100 click-throughs… but with this campaign, almost half of the audience has supposedly clicked through.
2. The locations of the traffic were far from the dealer’s backyard.
50,000+ sessions. over 12,000 of which are coming from Boardman OR. Google “Boardman web traffic.” The dealer’s backyard came in at city number 608. Out of 50,000 sessions from “in-market” buyers…. FIVE visits came from the dealer’s city.
3. Mobile / Tablet / Desktop mix is suspicious.
We should be seeing a 50/50 mix of Mobile/Tablet vs Desktop traffic. This campaign is 97% desktop.
4. Mobile devices are extremely out-dated, especially for an affluent metro market.
Go take a quick walk around your office and ask your co-workers how old their phones are, and what types of phones they use. With few exceptions, you’ll find most of the devices to be less than 2 years old.
5. ZERO lead form submissions.
How is it possible that out of over 50,000 sessions to this dealer’s site from this one provider NO ONE completed a lead form? Robots don’t submit leads.
Don’t pay the bill…. PAY ATTENTION.
Use these same data points to evaluate your other paid traffic sources. This store was seeing issues with one of their banner & display providers sold by a local advertising rep.
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