How to create your best selling e-commerce holiday promotion ever
Actionable advice on how to set yourself up for a successful holiday season.
Ho-ho-holidays. It’s the time of the year again when streets light up in golden lights, the smell of cinnamon is omnipresent, and every single retailer is fighting for the shoppers’ attention.
The predictions for this year are especially promising for the e-commerce industry:
In the US, 53%* of holiday shopping is expected to be done online this year. And we’re talking big bucks — on average the US consumer plans to spend $862* on holiday gifts.
But how do you convince shoppers to spend at your store? Here’s some actionable advice for planning your holiday campaign strategically by answering the “who / what / how”…
WHO are you building the campaign for?
Think about your audience — the people who come to your store, who are they? What are they looking for? How are they making their choices? What was their previous purchasing behavior? Are there certain categories they show interest in the most?
The better you know your audience the stronger your marketing efforts get.
Ask yourself, who in your audience is most likely to respond to a holiday campaign?
For example: “Everyone on my contact list who has shown interest in buying something in the past, but has not yet made a purchase.”
WHAT are you trying to achieve?
A campaign should have one specific goal behind it. Not 4. Not 3. Just 1. Campaigns that aim to achieve more than 1 goal tend to split and not achieve any, so pick your most important outcome and optimize around that.
Setting a specific goal will also help you to measure the performance of your campaign. You can then figure out which customer touchpoints led to sales, analyze the opening-rates of your emails, your call-to-actions, your subject lines, etc.
The trick for goal setting is to be specific, realistic and time-limited. For example: “In this 1-month holiday campaign I aim to convert 10% of my prospects into buying customers.”
HOW are you going to convince them?
Once you know who you are targeting and what you want them to do, you can get to the “how”. Most people start with the “how”, but if you consider your objectives first you’ll be able to make smarter decisions that are more likely to be successful.
Here are some thought-starters that can boost profits:
1. Personalize your messages
You’ll get the most out of a campaign when your content is personal and relevant instead of using one-for-all messaging. By combining data from your customer profiles, previous purchases and customer behavior you can start to predict what messages and offerings will work best.
2. Utilize “dynamic messaging”
In order to display personalized content, you won’t have to write hundreds of different emails. With the help of software, you can use the same structure but replace certain elements to tailor to your segments.
3. Use multiple channels
It’s proven that multi-channel campaigns deliver the best return on investment. This doesn’t necessarily mean paid media, a budget-friendly option is to combine email and web banners for example.
4. Choose the right offer
This is strongly connected to your main goal. If your only objective is to generate new first-time customers, offering an attractive discount is probably your best bet. Conversely, if you want to increase profits a margin-friendly option like free shipping, extended guarantees or bonus items might be the right choice. To increase average order size, consider bundling. And if you are going after your loyal customers to increase frequency you might not need an offer at all.
5. Think about timing
Somebody showed interest in your product? Strike while the iron is still hot. If it leads to purchase don’t send another reminder, if it doesn’t it’s worth reaching out again. Think of timing from both a customer’s perspective (e.g. when they are likely to buy) and an internal point of view (e.g. days left in the campaign).
6. Create a consistent experience
Think about the experience throughout the full customer journey of your campaign. Use the same wording and the same visuals to ensure consistency over multiple touchpoints.
7. Map it all out
Drawing out the whole campaign is a great logic check plus it will help you to spot any inconsistencies. Be as specific as possible. Include all the different emails you will have to write and when to send them in order to be relevant to each of your segments.
So, to tie these considerations back to our example, you might say “In this 1-month holiday campaign I aim to convert 10% of my prospects into buying customers by offering a 30% discount through a dynamic campaign that includes emails and web banners.”
You can compare your holiday campaign to hosting a Christmas dinner: you probably wouldn’t go shopping without knowing what the menu is going to be (plan ahead), you wouldn’t offer your vegetarian guests a piece of the turkey (tailor to your audience), and you wouldn’t ask them if they want a second serving if their plate is still full (get the timing right).
The only downside is it takes a ton of time and effort to create a holiday campaign that delivers results. Big retailers have whole teams to analyze data and create proper campaigns. As a small business, you have a lot more on your plate and simply not enough hours in the day to do all the planning work. This means you’re missing out on one of the biggest opportunities of the year to haul in a big profit windfall.
Luckily, we built Pathfinder to solve this for you. Think of Pathfinder as a virtual employee that can be hired to take on several marketing tasks for you. Creating sophisticated and dynamic campaigns will become an exercise of just a few minutes for you, while Pathfinder does the rest.
Pathfinder works by studies your store and your customers and writes personalized emails using the most effective subject lines — all in the look and feel of your store. It knows how to time the emails and will create matching web notifications & banners, ensuring a cohesive experience for your audience. While it’s able to do all of that autonomously, you will always have the final say over what goes to market.
Lastly, it tracks all the results of your campaign, shares them with you, and even makes suggestions for improvements. Imagine a strategically planned, profit-boosting holiday campaign set up for you in just a few minutes — completely stress-free.
Sign up now and follow these 3 simple steps:
- Create a free account here
- Connect your Shopify store
- Answer a few questions in the Pathfinder meeting room — Holiday promotion done in less than 10 minutes!
*Source: OpenX holiday report 2019
