Unlocking the power of data-driven marketing is the key to boosting customer engagement by 74%. Backed by a recent Forbes Insights and Turns report, this statistic shows the high potential of leveraging data in your marketing strategies. With Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting, you will receive the tools and knowledge needed to harness this potential for your business's success. This blog will guide you through the main features of the Ako’s Dashboard, equipping you to kickstart your marketing journey, track your strategies' effectiveness, and measure campaign performance. 

1.Customizing Your Start & End Dates

One of the foundational steps in data-driven marketing with Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting is to customize your start and end dates. It allows you to set the time frame for your analysis, giving you a focused lens to evaluate your campaign's performance. After adjusting the start and end dates, you'll gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing strategies and data analysis process.

Source: Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting App

On the left side of the dashboard, you'll find a range of customization options to tailor your analysis to your specific needs. Here, you can select from various formats, including Collection Ads, Image Ads, and Carousel Ads.

Screenshot displaying the ad conversion retargeting page, showcasing metrics and options for targeted advertising strategies.


Source: Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting App

Each ad type offers different opportunities for engagement and conversion, so it's essential to understand how they perform within various time frames. For instance, analyze the performance of Collection Ads over several days, such as Day 1-3, Day 4-7, and Day 8-14. This segmentation allows you to track the effectiveness of your ads over time and identify any trends or patterns in your audience’s behavior.

2. Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting Funnel: 

illustration of Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting Funnel

Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting Funnel is a customized customer journey model with actionable insights from becoming aware of a product to loyal customers. Imagine each time frame (Day 1-3, Day 4-7, Day 8-14) as a checkpoint in your marketing strategy with an endpoint of loyal engagement. With Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting Funnel, you will have a deeper understanding of your customers’ behavior and find new ways to unlock strategic optimization.

Day 1 - 3 (Prospect Targeting): During the first three days, your goal is to make a memorable impression and spark interest in your brand among potential customers. Therefore, we will help you to reach potential customers across Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube who have expressed interest in products similar to yours, even if they haven't visited your website In this stage, you can examine your performance in Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting’s Dashboard, such as impressions, clicks, and website visits. 

Day 4 - 7 (Website Visitors Retargeting): As we progress to the engagement stage, we want to deepen the connection with potential customers. Here, customers will explore your product, seek information, and consider their options. Therefore, we will help you to retarget the audiences who have visited your Shopify store with advanced sequential retargeting. Analyzing metrics such as ad clicks, viewed products, and added to carts will provide you further insight into your customers’ behavior, guiding you in nurturing your leads towards conversions.  

Day 8 - 14 (Dynamic Product Retargeting): In this final stage, your focus shifts to driving conversions towards loyal customers. Therefore, we will deliver product videos/images to the people who have just viewed the products or abandoned the carts. You can start examining your performance through our metrics, such as revenue, return on ad spend (ROAS), and purchase data, to assess the efficiency of your conversion strategies and optimize maximum impact. 

3.Understanding Types of Ads:

Understanding the various ads available in Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting will help you craft and choose engaging campaign strategies. After selecting the most suitable ad formats, you can communicate your brand’s message and captivate your target audience across various platforms and channels. 

Collection Ads

facebook collection ads

Source: Agorapulse 

Collection ads offer a compelling ad format that seamlessly guides users from discovery to purchase. These ads encourage engagement and facilitate product exploration by featuring a more extensive cover image or video paired with smaller product images. Their key benefits include a seamless browsing experience, product discovery, and the opportunity to show a product catalog. These ads captivate attention and foster engagement by offering a full landing page experience.

Image Ads


facebook image ads

Image ads offer a straightforward yet impactful way to showcase your product or service using a single photo and an optional footer. These ads can increase brand interest through eye-catching visuals, raise product awareness, and deliver a clear and concise message, whether purchasing or engaging with your services.

Carousel Ads

A collection of Facebook ads showcasing various print design concepts and creative layouts for effective marketing.

Source: Creatopy

Carousel ads offer flexibility in showcasing various aspects of a business, from highlighting multiple products to narrating compelling stories or explaining intricate processes. Each carousel card features its headline, description, link, and call to action. These ads support a wide range of business types and objectives, including featuring multiple products, highlighting product features, storytelling, explaining processes, creating immersive ad experiences, and showcasing the benefits of services. Leveraging carousel ads enables businesses to expand their reach, drive engagement, and achieve their advertising goals effectively.

4.How to Read Your Metrics?

The Ako Marketing dashboard displaying key performance indicators and ad insights, designed for easy navigation and analysis.

Source: Ako Marketing App 

Understanding the nuances of your metrics is vital for enhancing your marketing efforts. These metrics provide insights into your campaign's core performance, illuminating your ads' effectiveness. They act as a guide for making informed decisions and refining your strategies to maximize impact. By meticulously monitoring these indicators, you can discover opportunities for improvement, utilize successful tactics, and steer your marketing efforts toward achieving your goals with precision and sophistication.


Impressions: Have you ever wondered how often your ads have caught someone’s eye? How usually do your messages reach? These numbers tell a story of connection and opportunity, guiding you to understand how far your words travel. This insight helps shape your strategies, ensuring your ads don’t just appear but truly resonate with many. Think of it this way: if you tally up 1000 impressions, that means 1000 times people have glanced at your ad. This number helps you understand how far your message spreads, guiding you to make even more people notice.
Ad Reach:  Ad reach is like your ad's shadow, stretching far and wide. It tells you how many people have seen your message at least once. It's like casting a net across the sea of potential customers, catching their attention and bringing them closer to your story. This number helps you understand how far your voice travels and who listens. Think of ad reach like this: your ad is a flier posted on a community bulletin board. It was posted 90 times, and 45 people glanced at it at least once. So, while the flyer was seen multiple times, it still caught the eye of 45 individuals in the community.
Ad Clicks: Ad clicks are like small hellos between your ad and the viewer. It's the moment a casual look transforms into a real interaction, a first step in what might become a longer conversation and a deeper connection. Think of ad clicks like this: your ad is a button on a website. It was displayed 100 times, and 10 people clicked on it. So, while the button appeared numerous times, it prompted 10 visitors to take action and navigate to your website.
Revenue: Revenue is the money you make from your ads. The total amount of money comes in from people interacting with your ads—clicks, views, etc. Each dollar represents a bit of success, showing how well your ads perform. For example, if you make $1000 from your ads, it means they're doing a good job of catching people's attention and turning it into money. 
CPM (Cost Per Mille): CPM is simply the cost of getting a thousand people to see your ad. It's like paying for a thousand glances or whispers from passersby. This number tells you how much you spend to reach a large audience. For example, if the CPM is $5, it means you're paying $5 to get enough exposure for a thousand views to notice your ad. It's like paying for a shout in a crowded place, hoping to grab attention and generate interest.
CPC (Cost Per Click): CPC, or Cost Per Click, is like the price of a single, meaningful handshake in a crowded room. It's what you pay each time someone notices your ad and reaches out to engage with it, expressing interest. This cost tells you how much you invest every time someone takes a step closer, intrigued enough to want a closer look. Imagine you're at a market, and each handshake is someone stopping to talk to you about what you're selling. If your CPC is $2, it means every time someone comes over to hear more, you're spending $2 for that interaction. It's like offering a cup of tea to entice a conversation, paying a little to draw each curious soul closer.
Ad Spent: Ad Spend is the total amount you pour into the river of your advertising efforts. It's the sum of money you invest to sprinkle your message across the winds, hoping it will catch the right ears and eyes. This investment is your commitment to broadcasting your story, casting nets wide in hopes of a fruitful catch. Imagine filling a basket with seeds you scatter across a wide field. The more you fill, the wider you can scatter and the greater your chances of sprouting new connections. Each dollar is a seed; your total spend is the promise of gardens to come, flourishing with the blooms of new customers and opportunities.
Profit: Profit is the sweet harvest you gather after sowing your investments across the fields of commerce. It represents the bountiful return on your endeavors, the sum that blooms after all expenses are paid—the seeds of Ad Spend have been sown and nurtured. This fruitful yield remains, echoing the success of your strategies and choices. Suppose your ad campaign is a garden. You water it with your Ad Spend, caring for and cultivating the land. When the season turns just right—warmed by customer interactions and nourished by clicks—your profits grow and remain after all costs are covered. Like the ripe fruits hanging from the branches, ready to be picked, each dollar of profit is a testament to the health and wealth of your garden. Profit remains after all expenses are paid, like counting the apples left after paying for the market stall and transport.
Viewed Products: Viewed Products are the items that potential customers have looked at but have yet to purchase. It's like counting the number of people who stopped by to admire flowers in your garden but walked away without picking any. Each view is a moment of interest or consideration, a possibility for future engagement.
Added To Carts: Added to carts is the step where customers show a deeper interest by selecting your products and tentatively placing them into their shopping carts. It’s like picking fruits from your garden and putting them into a basket, signaling a readiness to consider a purchase, though not yet finalizing it.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): It is like measuring your garden's bounty after you've invested in seeds and soil. It reflects the fruitfulness of your efforts, telling you how much revenue you've harvested for every dollar poured into the fertile advertising ground. This metric blossoms from your strategic placements, sprouting insights into the effectiveness and efficiency of your campaigns. It's a tale of cultivation and growth, revealing whether the seeds of your ads have found fertile soil or if they require new strategies for a richer yield. If your garden thrives, so does your return, painting a vivid picture of how bountiful your advertising efforts have been.

5. Optimization Strategies

Navigating digital advertising requires more than just launching campaigns. It demands an understanding of metrics and strategic optimization. This section will discuss maximizing your advertising efforts through effective optimization strategies. With these techniques, you'll gain insights into your campaign performance and unlock the potential to drive meaningful results and achieve your marketing goals.

1) A/B Testing: A/B testing is a method that pits two different versions of an ad against each other to determine which one resonates most with the audience. 

Imagine you're running a campaign for a new product and creating two variations of the ad. In the first version, you feature a lifestyle image with a CTA of "Try Now!" In the second version, you opt for a close-up shot of the product accompanied by the phrase "Limited Edition!" Now, it's time to put them to the test.

You launch both ads simultaneously and monitor their performance closely. After a period of observation, you gather the data:

- First Variation: 3% Ads Click, 100 Conversions

- Second Variation: 4% Ads Click, 120 Conversions

Upon analysis, it becomes clear that the second variation, with its "Limited Edition!" message, outperforms the first. Despite both ads attracting attention, the one emphasizing exclusivity drives a higher click-through rate and ultimately leads to more conversions. 

an illustration of an A/B testing, showing what an effective marketing looks

Source: Towards Data Science

2) Ad Placement Optimization: Ad placement optimization is like navigating a bustling marketplace, where you carefully observe which stalls draw the most crowds and adjust your spending accordingly. Imagine going through the Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting Dashboard, where you can assess the performance of your ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. You examine key performance indicators like CPA, ROAS, and ad clicks and add to carts to gauge each placement's effectiveness. Here’s a step-by-step guide to optimizing your ad placement: 
  1. Use the Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting Dashboard to analyze the performance of your ads across different platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
  2. Delve into key performance indicators (KPIs) such as CPM, ROAS, and ad clicks, and add to carts to gauge the effectiveness of each placement.
  3. Once you've identified top-performing ads, strategically reallocate your budget to amplify their impact. Increase spending on ads delivering the best returns or ROI while scaling back on underperforming placements. Stay agile by continuously monitoring ad performance and making necessary adjustments. 
  4. Continuously monitor the performance of your ads across different placements and make adjustments as needed. Test new placements, ad formats, or targeting options to optimize your campaigns over time further.

Conclusion: 

Becoming proficient in using the Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting Dashboard can significantly enhance your marketing approach. By understanding how to interpret data-driven insights and apply optimization techniques, you'll gain the confidence to navigate the digital realm effectively and expand your business. Our comprehensive guide gives you the necessary knowledge and tools to elevate your marketing endeavors. Ready to take your marketing to the next level? Sign up for Akohub today for a 14-day free trial to unlock the full potential of your campaigns. We wish you all the best in your marketing journey!

About Akohub:

Akohub provides an all-in-one Shopify loyalty retargeting app - Ako Marketing: Loyalty & Retargeting, to foster the growth of Shopify stores. The Ako Loyalty Program enhances customer retention with VIP Tiers and various points-earning opportunities like Referrals, Signups, Reviews, Birthdays, and 1-Click Social Login. Key features include seamless points redemption at checkout, Instagram Automation for shoppable messages, a CRM Dashboard for deeper insights, and the Ako Marketing Funnel to boost retargeting conversions while reducing ad costs. Feel free to try it from the Shopify App Store!