A seller in the Hobby & gifts category on eMAG Romania: mostly "gift" products, so the calendar rules the sales. This case shows how to enter the season at full power and leave it without a loss.
At the start of the series the account made about 100 campaign orders a month. The products were cheap (a basket of about 55 RON), so there was no room for high bids - what counted was product page conversion and timing.
The key product is a typical gift. Demand grows several times over before the gift season and drops just as quickly. A campaign that runs all year "on the same budget" burns money outside the season and fails to use the peak.
Goal: make the most of the season, then bring the budget down afterwards so that ACOS does not rise. The measure was the number of campaign orders at the peak and ACOS after the season.
| month of cooperation | campaign orders |
|---|---|
| M1 | ~100 |
| M2 | ~750 |
| M3 | ~600 |
| M4 | ~1,000 |
| M5 | ~350 |
| M6 | ~200 |
| M7 | ~200 |
The peak in the fourth month is the gift season. The decline after it is planned - we brought the budget down with demand instead of defending it.
The flagship product got its own keyword campaign and a separate budget - it was the one meant to make the season. Before the budget started we polished its product page - with a basket of about 55 RON it is the page, not the bid, that decides whether a click becomes an order. The rest of the catalogue went into the product campaign.
Before the peak we launched a set of automatic campaigns for the rest of the gift range. After the season they were paused - in the reference month only two campaigns were still active.
In the peak month we raised the budget daily, as long as ACOS stayed below the threshold. The effect: over 1,000 campaign orders in a month, ten times more than at the start.
After the peak the budget came down to a few hundred RON a month. The number of orders fell to about 200, but ACOS dropped to ~4 % - the account earns instead of defending volume.
After the season the budget fell to a few hundred RON, and advertising costs about 4 % of sales. Volume is a function of the calendar; efficiency is a function of decisions.
If you sell gift products, plan your campaigns around the calendar: a separate budget and campaigns for the season, switched off right after it.
The flagship product deserves its own manual campaign - it makes the result, while the rest of the catalogue runs on the Product & Category Targeting campaign.
A drop in orders after the season is not a failure if ACOS drops with it. The failure is a double-digit ACOS after the season because someone defended seasonal volume.
Start with an eMAG account audit - we will show you where the money sits in your campaigns before you spend it.
Order an account audit