At Aspect Web Media, we pride ourselves on planning – ensuring that when we execute a promotion, we call on all available assets in order to provide the maximum return for our clients. Nothing highlights this more than a recent Grand National campaign with Paddy Power.

In 2011 we achieved significant success on this campaign and a decision was taken in March 2012 to ensure that we were well prepared ahead of the race on 14th April. The team analysed the performance from April 2011 to ascertain what had worked especially well and most importantly, when it had worked. The focus for this year was to achieve a 100% increase in sales delivered the year previous, whilst spreading the risk where possible. Last year, 74% of all volume delivered by Aspect Web Media originated from the day of the race.

During the weeks prior to the Grand National we spoke with many publishers and data owners with a view to acquiring access to a large number of email records at a cost effective CPM. This was essential considering that any revenue generated by Aspect would be via a CPA and so would pose a risk. We selected a mix of data partners to offer exposure via CPA, CPM and CPO coupled with regular email broadcasts to our internal data base, starting on the Thursday and gradually building to the morning of the race when most of the sales would be expected. Knowing that hitting an inbox on Saturday would already give a high probability of success, we chose publishers who could also offer a route to prospective customers on the Thursday and Friday to help spread the risk and increase overall sales volume.Over Thursday and Friday we executed a number of email broadcasts, applying the logic that the end of week wind down plus likelihood of office sweepstakes would generate interest in the campaign.  This approach, along with the beginning of our in house promotion and CPM buys increased the return for Friday compared to what was seen in the previous year (26% vs 25%), yielding more than 900 sales – over 60% of the total volume delivered last year.

On the day of the race itself, all publishers were advised to apply maximum effort and combined with a successful in house campaign a further 1900 sales were delivered taking the total over three days to over 2800.  On average there were just over 3 sales per minute from our top performers between 8am and the beginning of the race; with the busiest period between 1pm-1:30pm (9% of all volume) and half of all sales generated coming between 11am and 1:30pm at a rate of almost 4.5 per minute. In 2012 not only did we reduce the emphasis on volume from Saturday (down from 74% to 68%) but total volume for the three day period was just short of double what was seen before – an increase of 99.3% on 2011.