Create your campaign strategy step by step

Building a successful campaign strategy requires clear objectives, smart market prioritisation and a balanced approach to your assortment and discounting. This guide walks you through the essential steps to optimise your performance with Zalando Marketing Services (ZMS).

Start by defining the ideal outcome of your campaign. A clear objective ensures every decision you make aligns with your business goals.

Currently, the Ad Manager supports conversion and consideration formats.

• Conversion: Focus on turning interest into sales to drive revenue.

• Consideration: Encourage customers to keep your brand in mind while they shop.

If you want to run an awareness campaign with a budget over €50.000, please speak with your ZMS partner consultant or submit an inquiry via this form.

Group your markets into two categories to spend your budget effectively:

To spend your budget effectively, you need to know which markets offer the best return. Use your data to categorise your regions into core and high-potential markets.

Review your Net Merchandise Value (NMV), Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), product detail page views (PDP) and return rates. This helps you identify where your brand is most active and profitable.

Break down your performance into three areas:

1. Brand consideration: use Click-Through Rate (CTR), Add to Wishlist and Add to Cart metrics to measure customer interest.

2. Conversions: track sales, attributed revenue and ROAS to understand how customers buy your products.

3. Net profit per country: always factor in return rates to calculate your true profit in each market.

Optimise your budget by focusing on the regions that drive the most value for your brand.

• Reduce investment in low-performing markets: scale back in areas with high return rates, low profitability or where you don't have a strategic growth plan.

• Focus on high-engagement markets: reinvest your budget into markets with strong customer engagement and sustainable returns to maximise your campaign's impact.

Your assortment is the foundation of campaign success. Optimise your performance data and analyse your product range as a whole.

Look at factors like SKU count, average item price, stock turnover and delivery costs. Then, calculate the net profit for each category after all costs and returns are deducted.

Your pricing decisions influence both your brand equity and your campaign performance. Use a smart discount strategy to balance profitability with customer engagement.

• Protect your brand equity: avoid constant discounting. If your brand is always on sale, customers might perceive the discounted price as the true price and won't buy at full price later.

• Increase profits with black prices: sell more full-price (non-discounted) items between major sales events to strengthen your margins.

• Optimise stock through smart discounting: apply discounts where you need to clear stock, then combine these with ZMS campaigns to speed up sales.

• Align with the Zalando Sales events calendar: sync your discounts with our major sales events to gain more organic visibility and engagement.

Improve your ROAS by combining smart targeting with continuous optimisation.

Use these levers to ensure every euro you invest generates the maximum impact:

• Analyse and redirect spend: review your campaign data to see which markets, SKUs and formats deliver the best results. Move your budget away from underperforming areas and into high-performing ones.

• Monitor efficiency: regularly check your CPC and conversion metrics to fine-tune your bidding strategies.

• Focus on assortment quality: your campaigns will perform best when you promote items with high demand, healthy margins and plenty of stock. Remove low-performing SKUs and replace them with new, profitable ones.

• Leverage automation: set up campaigns aligned with your specific market groups. Use Global Budget campaigns to automatically distribute your spend across these markets for better efficiency.

To drive revenue growth, focus on high-coverage assortments and automation.

Use these levers to capture maximum market demand and increase your sell-through:

• Include top sellers: ensure your campaigns include all your top-selling SKUs to capture as much demand as possible.

• Use Ad Manager automation: leverage Dynamic Sponsored Products to optimise article selection. This ensures your strongest and most relevant items are always promoted. Combine with Global Budget campaigns to allow the system to distribute your spend across markets, directing investment toward the regions with the highest conversion potential.

• Maintain healthy stock: keep enough stock across all variations to support sales velocity and avoid missing out on sales.

• Optimise your assortment: regularly remove low-performing items and add high-margin, high-demand products to keep your campaigns profitable.

Increase the number of items you sell by maintaining a strong market presence and driving efficient conversions. Focus on these three areas to grow your volume:

• Offer a high-coverage assortment: prioritise your top-selling products across all categories. This helps you capture steady customer demand and ensures your ads are relevant.

• Maintain stock momentum: keep a high volume of stock and variations available. This supports the increased sales volume your advertising generates and prevents missed opportunities.

• Use Ad Manager automation: leverage Dynamic Sponsored Products to automatically optimise your article selection and placements. Combine this with Global Budget to automatically distribute your spend to the best-performing markets.

Start building a campaign plan that drives sustainable growth by defining your objectives, prioritising markets and optimising your assortment.

With the Ad Manager, you have the tools to make data-driven decisions and unlock new opportunities for your brand across all markets.