Ready for the Fall?
Executing a holiday or seasonal campaign? Knowing how to prepare well in advance in order to ensure you’re able to keep up with orders and customers is a common hurdle. Because autumn for many can entail even more of the usual day-to-day work involved in running a business, it’s best to have everything in place beforehand so that when the busy season rolls around you’re able to strike while the iron is hot. It’s a good opportunity to look at the timing of your own online activities — which strategies can get you out of a rut, or help you sell more? What are the most important signals worth keeping an eye on?
The right timing and an advanced knowledge of the market enables a company to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors who may invest much more into their advertising. The goal is to be in the right place at the right time, to spend less and to attract the right customers. Nowadays, the calendar year is full of special occasions and bank holidays. Therefore, it’s necessary to do your homework in order to act accordingly and to be able to take advantage of rising demands.
Knowing as many important days, bank holidays or upcoming events related to your business as possible is, of course, a key component of this. Take some time to create the right offers and target the right customers. Some of these holidays can increase sales by upwards of double-digit percentage points. Some, on the other hand, may cause a sudden drop in sales and website visits.
During specific campaigns, merchants often see upward trends in orders and sales. Sales often tend to reach their peak right before the holiday. On the actual day, conversion rates as well as website visits will most likely decrease (since people are celebrating and spending time with family). However, certain exceptions to this rule may occur. Some people go shopping on the day of the actual holiday — this applies to offline sales in particular — hoping for shorter queues and less crowds in supermarkets. Additionally, the day after many holidays when prices decrease can be a good time to try and unload stock because people are looking for a good bargain.
Let’s take a look at the four most important ecommerce days in fall to get you prepared.
Halloween
- Heavily commercialized by English speaking countries, the popularity of Halloween has spread to the rest of the world. Every year on October 31st.
- Preparation: a month in advance
- Anticipated growth in sales: October
- Last year in the US: $8.4 billion
- People mostly buy: sweets, decorations, flowers, costumes, cards
Thanksgiving
- Related to the colonial history of North America circa 1621. Every year on November 23rd, celebrated in the UK, US, Canada.
- Preparation: a month in advance
- Anticipated growth in sales: 14 days in advance
- Last year in the US: $1.93 billion
- People mostly buy: food, decoration, small gifts, cards
Black Friday
- Friday after Thanksgiving, a traditional day of sales at stores and the biggest shopping day of the year. This year on November 24th, worldwide.
- Preparation: 6 weeks in advance
- Anticipated growth in sales: Thursday, Friday
- Last year in the US: $3.34 billion
- People mostly buy: electronics, home equipment
Cyber Monday
- Monday after Thanksgiving, similar to Black Friday, just for online businesses. This year on November 27st, worldwide.
- Preparation: 6 weeks in advance
- Anticipated growth in sales: Monday
- Last year in the US: $3.45 billion
- People mostly buy: electronics, home equipment, clothes
Now that you know when and what to be prepared for, what are the most important things to help you get ready before the holiday season? And how can a smart app like MonkeyData help you with that preparation?
1. Ensure you have the bandwidth for traffic spikes
If your website is slow or crashes, you could lose lots of valuable customers. Make contingencies for handling extra traffic in order to prove your site performs well under the extra pressure.
TIP: Go to the MonkeyData app to see last year’s traffic flow as well as its impact on sales. You can monitor from which devices visitors check your store in real-time — keep in mind that a responsive web design is a must these days.
2. Make sure your inventory is ready
Develop a robust forecast of which products will sell at which time and avoid late arrivals of your products. You can find out what to expect based on your last year’s performance.
TIP: Go to the MonkeyData application Orders & Product dashboards to see your last year’s numbers — check your orders, AOV, product trend and best-sellers. Then fill your stock accordingly with proper amount of the right products.
3. Complement your staff to handle increased orders.
Calculate staff capacity and ensure that it can handle the worst-case scenario. This goes for handling orders as well as answering customer queries.
TIP: Go to Orders dashboard in the MonkeyData and check your average order processing time, rush days, and peak hours. It will help you with planning shifts and speeding up dispatching orders.
4. Boost your email marketing & PPC advertising, optimize your SEO
The holiday season is the best time to hit your buyers up again. Send out great holiday-related content via newsletters to entice people to shop. In case you need inspiration: Omnisend (previously Soundest) recently updated their study of 1,400+ email subject lines sent over the BFCM weekend to see which phrases were the most effective last year.
Attract new buyers to your store with Facebook Ads and AdWords, and beat your competition by launching your campaigns early. Don’t forget to increase your visibility by adjusting your SEO and be as active as possible on social media.
TIP: Go to AdWords / Facebook Ads dashboards in the MonkeyData app, or ideally, check Advanced Insights to view the results and correlations to previous campaigns. Find out which worked the best and try to reproduce it.
By now you’ve probably got your own style of campaigning down, so learning how to adapt and improve is the never ending task that drives the eCommerce industry. That said, going back to basics can always be helpful as well, so if you need a quick recap, we’ve included one right here!
5. Don’t underestimate offline marketing
Strong networking and speaking engagements can help drive traffic to your store, you can also utilize old-school tactics such as print publications and cold calling.
TIP: The results of offline marketing can be extremely difficult to measure, but it’s often less expensive than traditional online marketing. Go to MonkeyData to check your Facebook & Twitter followers and newsletter subscribers, send them invites to local events, and don’t be afraid to meet them face to face.
Special days, bank holidays and various regular events provide a great template for timing the marketing strategies of your online business. Apart from those listed in this article, you can also benefit from campaigns related to lesser known holidays and other smaller or regional occasions (Oktoberfest, National Coffee Day, the end of Daylight Savings Time). Or take the initiative and make up your own traditions based on autumn themes!
The moral of the story is: don’t put your money at risk by letting the right moment slip through your fingers or by spending too much. While it’s possible the costs of advertising might increase, being able to weigh your budget and make informed choices also means you won’t miss out on the important opportunities that holidays present.
