How to set up a Conversion campaign
In this article you will learn how to set up a Conversion campaign with Sponsored Products in the Ad Manager on zDirect.
Set up a Sponsored Products campaign for the Zalando catalogue and product detail pages (PDPs) via the Ad Manager. You can strategically position your articles for high relevance and visibility, increasing the likelihood of clicks and conversions as well as achieve significant Return on Ad Spend (RoAS).
Automatic placement: Ads appear in high-visibility spots on Zalando’s website and app.
Effortless setup: Use existing product feeds, no additional creatives needed.
Conversion-driven: Boost performance by reaching customers actively browsing for articles.
Broad reach and visibility: Place your articles where customers are already browsing, ensuring they see your brand’s items within relevant search results and pages.
Flexible targeting and budget options: Select global or country-specific budgets and tailor your approach for SKU promotion to boost your sales effectively.
Conversion-focused: This ad format is optimised for maximum article views and conversions, making it ideal for driving immediate sales and attracting new customers. Use smart automation or control levers to increase your impact.
Campaign setup options
Drive your performance by creating advertising campaigns based on your objectives.
Conversion campaigns give you two ways to allocate your budget. The Global budget set up lets the Ad Manager distribute your budget across countries automatically. Country budget, on the other hand, gives you full control over how your budget is allocated by enabling you to do it manually.
Global budget campaign set up
Simplify your campaign setup and management and benefit from an automated budget distribution in the markets you have selected.
Define a total budget for all markets, the algorithm automatically distributes the budget along the runtime across markets based on the performance.
You can flexibly choose in which markets your campaign will run. Campaigns have the same start and end dates across selected markets.
Country budget campaign set up
Set predefined budgets for each country yourself.
Define maximum budgets for each market.
Country budgets campaigns help you, if you want to set certain budget limits on a country level. For example, if you have defined maximum budgets per country.
Set different campaign start and end dates for each market. Best suited when running campaigns for sales events with varying schedules.
Article selection options
Choose your preferred article selection and create advertising campaigns based on your objectives by either promoting your full assortment of your chosen brands or only promote specific articles.
You can currently add articles to your campaigns using two methods, Dynamic Sponsored Products or Selected Sponsored Products.
Dynamic Sponsored Products
We promote the SKUs from your chosen brands and categories with the highest predicted performance based on an automated, smart article selection.
Dynamic Sponsored Products lets you promote the entire assortment of one or more brands which you supply. Our machine-learning advertising technology automatically selects the best articles for your campaign based on our data.
Our systems monitor article performance, availability and further factors in near real-time, making sure that articles with the best chance of driving your performance and sales are promoted in your campaign.
If you run a Global budget campaign: next to promoting your full assortment, you can also focus on certain categories such as Clothing, Shoes, Accessories, Underwear, Sports and Beauty.
Selected Sponsored Products
Selected Sponsored Products allows you to choose specific articles, for example your key styles and bestsellers, or articles with high stock levels. You can also mix your selection across different brands.
During the campaign setup you can filter by Brand, Country and Article Type (or Category) in order to discover the article you are looking for and then add them to campaign.
Campaign setup step by step
1. Log into zDirect and navigate to the Marketing module.
2. Click on the New campaign button to reveal the drop down menu.
3. Choose a name for your campaign.
4. Select your budget preferences
Global Budget: Define a total budget for all markets. This budget will be automatically distributed across the selected markets.
Country Budget: Specify the budget for each country. Select the countries where you plan to run the campaign. Assign the campaign budget (in Euros) for each selected country. You can modify your selections at any time by adding or removing countries as you refine your campaign structure.
5. Set the duration of your campaign.
Based on campaign insights, we recommend that the daily budget is more than 35 EUR per market, with a campaign runtime of 3-4 weeks for optimal results.
6. Select the articles you want to promote by using one of the following options.
Option 1: Dynamic Sponsored Products
Select the brands to be included in the campaign. You can optionally focus your assortment on categories like Clothing, Shoes, Accessories, Underwear, Sports and Beauty.
Option 2: Custom article selection
1. Your entire assortment will be displayed on the Article selection page.
2. Filter articles by Brands, Genders, Article type (or category) and Country.
3. Select specific articles by ticking the check box next to the article or bulk select all articles at once.
4. Click Add articles to add your selection to the campaign.
5. Review the articles you selected for the campaign. Make sure you double check your selection and remove articles you accidentally added in this step. Optimise your SKU selection through filters and data-driven insights:
You can filter your assortment by Eligible, Best sellers, Newly added and Longest online in order to promote articles from these categories.
Easily refine your SKU selection by using the Estimated return rate filter. Create a custom article selection by setting an estimated return rate range from 0% to 100% to exclude high-return items. This allows you to focus on profitable items, boost overall campaign performance and business results.
Identify sustainable articles by applying the Sustainability filter. The data is refreshed every two hours for more accurate campaign planning.
Option 3: .csv file upload
You can upload a .csv file, containing all SKUs you want to promote, eliminating the need for manual selection.
The required file format is .csv and has to contain Zalando article IDs (SKU) separated by comma.
Good to know
Please refer to the sample .csv file available for download in the lower left corner of the interface.
How to edit and optimise a running campaign
If a campaign is not in stage Ended, you can edit it via the Campaign breakdown page.
When hovering the cursor over the campaign line the Edit Campaign button will appear on the right side of the line.
Campaigns can be paused or resumed at any time, with Global Budget campaigns allowing this action across all or specific markets. Country Budget campaigns can be paused or resumed per country.
Stay in control over your campaign's performance by analysing and steering towards your objectives. Update and change the following aspects of your campaign to achieve the best possible results.
Budget
To offer you greater flexibility in managing your campaign performance, you can decrease or increase your budget at any time. The already spent budget is shown on the campaign edit page in near-real time.
Country Budget campaigns can shift their budget between countries based on the performance of the campaign or your priorities.
To maximise your campaign outcome, Global Budget campaigns are automatically optimised per market, based
on your overall budget. You can increase or decrease budget pressure by adjusting the campaign runtime.
Good to know
As your campaign is spending budget while you are editing it in real time, we have added a buffer to the spent value. You cannot reduce the budget below the amount that is already shown as spent.
Budget pacing
Budget pacing is a control option for Sponsored Product campaigns. Based on your campaign's ongoing performance, you can increase or decrease the daily budgets with the pacing factor to achieve the right balance between budget spending and results.
Optimising daily spent budget
1. Define if your key goal is visibility, conversions, or a specific Return on Ad Spend (RoAS).
2. Analyse insights from previous campaigns in terms of your desired performance
3. Edit your spending with Budget pacing:
You are satisfied with the current RoAS and wish to expand your outcome, increase budget pacing, so more budget is allocated in the coming days.
You are experiencing a period of low sales and low RoAS, and want to save budget, reduce the budget pacing to allocate less budget in the coming days.
4. Continuously monitor the performance in the Campaign breakdown and adjust if necessary.
Countries
Add new countries to your already scheduled or running campaigns. For Country Budget campaigns, you will be able to set an associated budget, start and end dates for each market.
Articles
For Selected Sponsored Products campaigns, you can add/remove SKUs also during the campaign runtime. If you run a Dynamic Sponsored Products campaign and promote specific categories, you can adjust the categories during the campaigns runtime as well.
Best practices
To make the most of your Conversion campaigns we recommend considering the following points:
Budget amount
While we recommend that the daily budget is more than 35 EUR per market, there is no fixed maximum budget.
For Partner Program Partners, we recommend investing a minimum 7% of your net merchandise value (NMV) sales target or 12% for high growth targets/stock pressure/during sales events¹.
For Wholesale Partners, we recommend investing a minimum of 7 to 10% of your Zalando Order Budget per season.
Campaign duration
Run campaigns for at least 3 to 4 weeks. This allows for optimal data collection and algorithm optimisation.
Planning
Ideally, start campaigns 2 to 4 weeks before sales events, e.g. End-of-Season Sale. This boosts engagement, such as add-to-wishlist actions, beforehand.
Data-driven optimisation
To ensure the best performance, a smart algorithm ranks your articles in the Collection teaser on the Zalando homepage. This automatically personalises articles based on customer preferences, which typically increases the click-through rate (CTR) by 30-40%.
Measure your campaign performance with these key point indicators (KPIs):
Brand Followers
Traffic to PDP
Add to Wishlist
Add to Basket
New Customers
Maximise the visibility of your Collection
Highlighting your articles in a Collection before a Conversion Campaign improves the outcome of that campaign. Familiarising our customers with your article range before direct advertising is a great way to increase your performance.
Article eligibility and requirements
You need at least 20 articles (SKUs) live on Zalando to be eligible for a Brand Home account. Please note, a Collection can hold from 9 to 999 articles (SKUs).
Find out more
You have more questions about Sponsored Products? Find answers in this dedicated FAQ article linked below.
Discover more details by downloading the Ad Manager partner guide from the download section on the left.
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7% in NMV is equal to minimum of ~ 3% GMV before returns, 12% in NMV is equal to minimum of ~ 5% GMV before returns.
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