Monitoring conversions is crucial to calculate Cost per Conversion (CPA) and Return on Investment (ROI) figures, which in turn determine success or failure of your campaign and online venture. However, most businesses and webmasters wrongly calculate the Life Time Value (LTV) figures based on complete conversion data available on their hands till-date.
However, LTV figures will not be accurate and in fact be inflated if you fail to exclude repeat customers in your lifetime value multiplier calculations. Customers that have already made a purchase and come back to your website for repeat purchases have already been included in your LTV calculations and including them with each new transaction will merely deliver an inflated and inaccurate report.
You need to create a new Excel spreadsheet or create one using Access in order to separate first-time new conversions from repeat customers since Google Analytics, AdWords, and AdCenter do not have the necessary tools to separate the two types of transactions. Your new database should include vital fields such as Channel, number of visits, cost, total conversion rate against total orders, and a breakup showing new orders and percentage of those new orders.
This move might seem tedious, but will certainly reward you with far more accurate LTV figures that actually show the true picture of your campaigns instead of projecting rosy figures that might have been achieved mostly through repeat customers. You can create the new database after matching order numbers against your existing customers to locate new conversions as well as repeat customers.
The above conversion tracker would certainly require time and effort, but will enable you to get a precise figure on the current position of your campaign. Your long-term plans and calculations can be compared with your current findings to confirm if you are indeed on track or merely enjoying the fruits brought in by repeat customers.
Your conversion tracking figures need to differentiate between new conversions brought in through your campaign and repeat conversions that have already been calculated during their very first order. This move will require constant tracking and further fine-tuning based on your business model, but will help you to track and improve your campaign in a far precise manner than ever before.