How to evaluate whether marketing activities will bring profit to the store

Increasing turnover is an urgent task for any retailer. To solve it, they most often resort to marketing tools - the use of loyalty programs, the formation of various promotions and special offers. However, it’s not enough just to develop and launch a promotion in the store, it is equally important to evaluate its effectiveness. We tell how to do this at the level of the front-office system.

Our experience shows that most of the promotions are directly related to price incentives - that is, lower prices for goods that do not sell well. Equally popular are special offers for products arriving at a reduced price from suppliers, products with expiring expiration dates and sets (promotions aimed at increasing the average bill - a discount on a set of goods, N + N, an inseparable couple, a gift for a purchase).

Moreover, most often retailers prefer to set a date for a promotion within a month, run weekly promotions a little less often, and Happy Hours special offers usually come in third place.

Accordingly, it is during this indicated period that there should be a noticeable change in two criteria, the most important for any effective stock:

• increase in turnover;

• growth in the number of purchases made by customers of a store.

Promotion analysis reports

For high-quality analytics of the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, marketers are usually interested in such values ​​as:

• the amount of the average purchase in the store (usually its value is stable, and deviation in any direction is a serious basis for analyzing the situation);

• comparing the recorded deviations of the amount of purchases with the situation in the previous similar periods (comparing the indicators of the previous weeks or months. This way you can determine whether the change occurred is a result of the promotion or relates to seasonal fluctuations);

• assessment of the growth of turnover (another criterion that allows you to build up from seasonal fluctuations).

Sales results, including the information necessary to study the effectiveness of ongoing promotions, are stored in the database of the front-office system. Based on them, you can generate reports using the internal tools of the system, or use this data for analysis in the BI system.

For example, in Profi-T cash register software there are standard reports on revenue and the number of purchases for a fixed period (day, week, month, year). Suppose a retailer has launched a Happy Hours promotion to sell its own cooking shop. Then the report on the number of purchases at certain hours will allow him to compare the data with the period preceding the start of the promotion.


The illustration shows the increase in the number of customers during the hours of the promotion - from 17:00 to 21:00.

This report allows the marketer to obtain primary information about the relevance of the action and the response of visitors. If you see a surge in purchases, then everything is going right, and the promotion can continue. Otherwise, to amend the conditions, for example, by choosing a different time or target audience.

Another example is promotions for specific days of the week. Let's say a store decided to set discounts for a certain group of goods on weekdays. In advance, marketers informed buyers of a new opportunity to save. Now they need to understand whether the promotion has brought effect and whether the store’s traffic has increased. The answer to these questions will also help to get a report.


As the illustration shows, starting on Tuesday, the number of customers in the store has increased. The peak days were Thursday and Friday.

If the store uses a loyalty card program - bonus or discount - then its effectiveness will be determined by the following indicators:

• the number of cards issued;

• number of actively used cards;

• the growth dynamics of the average check on the map.

Most modern point processing process accumulate information on the number of newly registered customers, the history of existing purchases, and segment these data on various grounds (gender, age, frequency of purchases). For example, “Profi-T Points” allows marketers to receive reports in .csv format by:

• points;

• to customers;

• sales / return operations;

• burning points;

• the number of points written off in the store;

• age of customers;

• the number of email addresses in the database.

Based on these metrics, we can draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the loyalty program used and outline measures to improve it.

Personalized promotions help strengthen the effect of the loyalty program. For example, in Profi-T, the Promo Server, the promoter constructor, is responsible for this task . With its help, a marketer can both easily create stocks and receive initial data on the success of their operation. So, the report on goods for the period of action of the shares allows you to determine not only popular events and the amount of discounts provided in each of them, but also the results of changes in sales volumes of selected product groups.


The illustration shows a report on the number of goods sold as part of the promotion, as well as the total amount of purchases before and after applying the discounts.

The reports that we talked about allow the retailer to make a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of marketing activities in his store. And in case of failure, correct the situation in advance and not waste money.