The final push of the Holiday season is quickly approaching! Can you believe that Thanksgiving just under a week away?! By now, most of your Holiday catalogs are already at the printer and on their way to mailboxes, but that doesn’t mean you should be sitting back and waiting for the orders to roll in. For many retailers, this is the most significant time of year. Making sure that your channels are firing on all cylinders is essential in having a stellar season. In this article, I’ll provide my top 10 strategies that will help you cross the finish line this holiday season.
- Black Friday Arrives Early: If you are planning on only promoting on Black Friday, unfortunately, you will be behind the promotion window. Many retailers scheduled their Pre-Black Friday weeks ago! Instead of sitewide promotions, you can select categories with high margins and sufficient stock positions to create specific category sales.
- Consistency Across All Marketing Channels: If you’re mailing catalogs or direct mail during the Holiday season, make sure all your digital marketing efforts sync with print. Featured covers, an inside spread, back cover, and other merchandise efforts should feature prominently on the website and across digital retargeting efforts, especially during the in-home window of those mailed pieces.
- Promotions Are in Sync: Ensure that all of your promotions are the same or similar across marketing channels. There is nothing worse than simultaneously receiving one offer via email and receiving a different one through retargeting efforts.
- Email Segmentation: A challenge for many retailers is the lack of segmentation occurring within their email database. If nothing else, separate past purchase behavior vs. no purchase behavior. Email cadence to active customers vs. non-purchasers will be very different, and the level/type of promotion might be different based on the kind of buyer or subscriber that you are emailing.
- Reminder and Extension Emails: Always send an email reminder that a sitewide promotion is about to expire. Open rates and conversion rates are always relatively healthy. If your brand is promotional, one trick is extending a promotion another day. It’s a great way to continue to increase demand.
- Abandon Cart/Browse Series: One of the most critical email drip series campaigns in your arsenal, make sure the feed is working and creative is reflective of the season! You’d be surprised at how often these links get broken and go unnoticed. Then, make sure you have a good cadence flow and follow up your best offer to non-openers on your last email in that series.
- Order Confirmation Email: Often, these emails tend to be dull, generic, and uninspiring. Spice them up with bestselling or customer favorites to help guide them back to the site and make another purchase. Don’t miss out on the opportunity!
- Checkout Page: This is a great place to upsell before the customer places their order. Include top sellers on the checkout page to help boost the performance of this page.
- Homepage and Gateway Pages: Remember the 80/20 rule where 20% of merchandise drives 80% of demand. Meaning, make sure your best-sellers are easily found and that they are located on top of the fold and in search queries.
- Stay Engaged Via Social Media: The Holiday season is hectic, we’re often wearing multiple hats, and things get pushed aside. Don’t ignore your social media platforms during the Holiday season. I know as a customer (and prospect) of many brands, I often check their social media pages to see what they’re up to and see if they’re running any promotions to help me make a purchase.
**Bonus**
- A fun promotion we did during my NapaStyle days was “12 Days of Christmas.” We would mix promotions around specific products with great margins/inventory position, BOGO, GWP, and other creative content to help boost daily sales leading up to the final day of standard shipping.
I know I covered a lot here, but hopefully, you’ll use (or are already using) one of the above tips for your Holiday season. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at bslattery@cohereone.com