How To Analyze Past Performance and Complete a Marketing Audit for Retail Holidays and Ecommerce Events

Ah, retail holidays. When your team faces a frantic scramble to launch promos, blast emails, wrangle last-minute product pages — and then suddenly, it’s over. Boxes are shipped, dashboards are full, and before long, it’ll be time to do it all over again.

But buried within all that post-holiday chaos? An opportunity: to stop pouring time and money into what doesn’t work, and double down on what does.

Many brands make the mistake of treating ecommerce holidays like short-term sprints. But a proper marketing audit doesn’t just help you make sense of what happened; it sets you up to run these campaigns smarter, leaner, and more effectively in the future.

This post takes a closer look at how to audit your holiday campaigns — without overwhelming your team with data fatigue.

Why Holiday Marketing Audits Matter

Retail holidays (particularly at the end of the year) can generate 10% to 25% or more of annual revenue for some ecommerce brands, per Statista.

As such, a post-mortem marketing audit can help teams avoid the perils of “Groundhog Day” marketing — or, in other words, simply repeating the same strategies year after year, without a clear understanding of which efforts drove results and which just drained budget.

These audits often reveal critical patterns that can go unnoticed. For example, you might discover that conversions reliably spike the day after an email campaign, not the day it’s sent. Or, that a campaign with a low return on ad spend (ROAS) still absorbed most of your budget. Or, that a product that quietly outperformed never made it into the spotlight of your promotions.

By identifying which elements of your campaign delivered and which flopped, brands can make smarter decisions about where to allocate budget moving forward. Over time, these audits can also help refine your campaign calendar, particularly by identifying when customers are most likely to buy.

How To Review Past Holiday Campaign Performance

Start by pulling data from your ecommerce platform, analytics tools, and customer relationship management (CRM) tool.

From there, zero in on revenue patterns (e.g., how sales trended by day, how they compared to previous years, and where new customer growth showed up).

Don’t just measure success in totals — look at what moved. Which products led the charge? Did gift sets or bundles outperform expectations? Were you surprised by what didn’t sell?

Then, trace where your traffic came from. Search, email, social media, affiliate links, and others all play different roles in the customer journey, and their effectiveness can subtly shift over time. Layer that with engagement timing: What exact days — or even hours — saw the biggest lifts in site activity and conversions? That timing can tell you a lot about when your customers are most likely to buy.

Next, consider elements like geography, which might reveal differences between markets that weren’t quite so obvious during the rush. Conversion rates often split hard between mobile and desktop. And if you run multiple campaigns or promo codes, line them up and compare them directly — some may have delivered more than you bargained for (in a good way).

Last, dig into behavior. Did people linger before buying? Did conversions spike after last-chance messages? Those patterns can also paint a helpful picture.

Measure What Mattered Most: Metrics and Channel Performance

Once you’ve reviewed the big-picture outcomes, it’s time to get more precise.

Focus on your core performance metrics first. Conversion rate is certainly one of the clearest indicators of success, but it’s important to look beyond the average rate — instead, break it down by landing page, traffic source, or campaign. ROAS analysis can also helpfully surface which ads or tactics were actually worth the spend.

Email performance is worth a closer look, too. Subject lines, CTAs, send timing — every variable plays a role in whether someone clicks or ignores. Same with cart abandonment. If shoppers bailed before checkout, what might’ve caused the drop-off? Long load times? Shipping costs? A return policy buried in fine print?

After that, zoom out and assess your channels. Paid ads often get the lion’s share of budget, but is that justified? Were conversions driven by Meta or Google, or did TikTok outperform expectations with less spend? Organic social may not always show up in last-click attribution, but formats like reels or product tags can drive valuable engagement earlier in the journey.

As you evaluate performance, look for mismatches. Channels that were overfunded but underdelivered — or underfunded and surprisingly effective — deserve a second look. That’s where the next round of gains often comes from.

Evaluate the Customer Experience: Offers, Inventory, and Fulfillment

Discounts and delivery don’t just affect conversion rates — they can shape the customer’s entire perception of your brand. Indeed, if something goes wrong during the most high-stakes part of the year, it’s not just one sale on the line, it’s any future benefits you would’ve realized from those once-returning customers.

Consider your promotions — which types actually drove conversions? Compare the performance of approaches like BOGO deals, sitewide discounts, flash sales, and limited-time offers. Did threshold-based perks like “free shipping over $75” move the needle? Did loyalty-focused incentives — like early access or double points — generate more meaningful connections?

Be honest about what actually created urgency and what may have trained customers to wait for the next sale. Not all discounts are worth it — especially if they come at the cost of margin without delivering real volume.

Then, look at fulfillment. Were any sought-after products out of stock at critical moments? Did you over-order inventory that didn’t sell, or underestimate demand for items that did?

Shipping and returns data can also tell you a lot. How many orders were delayed? How many customer service complaints were tied to fulfillment issues? And was your return policy clear, reasonable, and actually used — or did it quietly discourage people from buying again?

A poor fulfillment experience during peak season can undercut everything you did right. And if it’s a customer’s first interaction with your brand, that impression is hard to reverse.

Turn Insights Into a Smarter Retail Holiday Strategy

Once you’ve surfaced what worked and what didn’t, the next step is simple: act on it. That could mean shifting budget toward high-ROAS campaigns, rethinking your email timing, or retiring promos that failed to convert.

Even a basic playbook — your top-performing messages, strongest channels, and peak conversion windows — can give you a clearer path into next season.

So, don’t start from scratch. Start from the data.