The thirty-minute review template
Within two weeks of the campaign closing - sooner if you can - sit down with the brief, the three logged numbers, the platform reports and the inbox of enquiries. Walk through six questions, in order. Don't drift into general business questions; the review is about this campaign.
The thirty-minute review
- 01Did the campaign hit its objective number? By how much, in either direction?
- 02Which channel produced the most enquiries and the most customers? Was it the channel you expected?
- 03What was the cost per customer compared with average customer value? Is the campaign genuinely profitable?
- 04Which asset performed best - the email, an ad, the landing page, the print piece? Why, in plain language?
- 05What broke or surprised you mid-campaign? What would you change next time?
- 06Repeat, refine or retire - one decision, written down with the reason in one sentence
The repeat-refine-retire decision
Repeat if the campaign hit at least eighty per cent of its objective number, the cost per customer was within budget and nothing fundamentally broke. Refine if it hit between fifty and eighty per cent of its objective and you can name two or three specific changes that would plausibly close the gap. Retire if it hit below fifty per cent of its objective, or if the cost per customer was significantly above sustainable, or if the moment turned out not to be a real campaign moment for your business after all.
Don't refine campaigns that should have been retired. The temptation to keep tweaking a campaign that nearly worked is one of the most common drains on small business marketing time across a year. If the underlying shape doesn't fit your audience, three more tweaks won't fix it - retire it and put the slot toward a campaign that earns its place.
Building the library
Every campaign that gets a 'repeat' or 'refine' decision goes into your library. Keep it simple - a single document or page per campaign with the brief, the three logged numbers, the channel mix, the asset list and the review notes. After two years of running campaigns honestly, most small businesses end up with three to six repeatable shapes that cover their main calendar moments. Planning next year's campaign then becomes pulling the relevant shape from the library, updating dates and offers, and refining one or two things based on the last review - rather than starting from scratch.
The library is also where new ideas get tested. A new shape gets one campaign cycle to prove itself; if it lands a 'repeat' or 'refine', it joins the library; if it lands a 'retire', it doesn't get reinvented next year under a different name.
When the campaign worked but the business didn't notice
Sometimes a campaign hits its objective number cleanly and the rest of the business doesn't feel it. The team is busier in the way they're always busy. The owner doesn't notice extra customers walking in. The bank account looks the same. This usually means the campaign worked but the gain was absorbed by the underlying churn or by other channels softening at the same time. That's still a successful campaign - the counterfactual is what would have happened without it - but it's worth noting in the review so you don't conclude the channel didn't work just because it didn't feel transformational.
When the campaign disappointed but you learned
A retired campaign isn't a failed quarter. The honest review of a campaign that didn't work usually produces two or three of the most useful learnings of the year. The audience that didn't respond. The channel that didn't carry the offer. The message that landed flat. Those learnings save you from running the same campaign next year, and they often unlock a much better campaign in the same calendar slot. The library is as much about retired campaigns as kept ones, because the retired ones are why you don't repeat the same mistake.
What to do this week
If you have a recently closed campaign that hasn't been reviewed yet, run the thirty-minute review on it now, before the memory blurs. Write the repeat-refine-retire decision in one sentence. Start the library if you don't have one - one page per campaign is enough. Put the next review date in the diary against the next campaign that will close. The review only ever happens if it's in the calendar before the launch ends.
Recurring principle: review results and improve the system. The library is the year-after-year version of that principle. The next eBook in the series, Marketing Calendars and Seasonal Campaigns, picks up from here and shows how the library plugs into the broader annual rhythm of the business.
