Have you finalized your holiday marketing plan yet? If you don’t have a marketing strategy and tactical activation plan in place to boost holiday sales, you’re already falling behind your competitors. Managing customer engagement is an even larger challenge for businesses as they wrap up their digital capabilities to meet customer expectations.
So, what will your business do to make sure your products or services are top of mind as your customers are making buying decisions throughout the holiday season from Black Friday to Boxing week?
Here are 7 easy ways your business can build holiday marketing campaigns that help you better engage with your customers and increase holiday sales this season:
1) Special discounts to loyal customers
Offer special discounts to your best or most loyal customers. Offering unique promotions your best customers can’t refuse on items they buy the most is a great way to say Happy Holidays and thank you for their loyalty. As noted in a recent OutboundEngine.com research study, acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer, and increasing customer retention by 5% can increase a brand’s profits from 25-95%. One approach to increase holiday sales is to offer your loyal customers a discount when they refer your business to family or friends, and those referrals make a purchase.
2) Personalize emails to your customers
A great strategy at any time of the year is to personalize emails by including your customer’s name and any pertinent details. Perhaps they’ve been a customer for more than a year, or they routinely placed an order a few times a month. If your customer always makes a similar order, personalize the email with a recommendation for a complimentary item, and tell them why you think they’ll like it. Email segmentation based on your customers’ transactional history or personal details such as their birthday can be a powerful tool.
3) Be creative with your promotional campaigns
Create a holiday gift guide - help your customers find the perfect gift with a mini-catalog of your best products grouped around a theme and various pricing options.
Offer a personalized combination bundle - create a personalized holiday combination bundle for every individual customer. This is a win-win for both you and your customers. You can boost your sales, while customers can conveniently purchase combination bundle products and save money.
Offer free shipping – promote free shipping and free holiday gift wrapping to your customers. If you sell low-priced items, you can set a minimum-spend threshold for free shipping.
4) Inject emotions within your marketing campaigns
Consumers make buying decisions emotionally after which they justify their decisions with reason. We are persuaded by reason, but we are moved by emotion. Several studies concluded that up to 90% of the decision we make are based on emotion. We use logic to justify our actions to ourselves and others.
A successful holiday marketing campaign should align with emotions common during the holiday season such as a sense of community, social goodwill, friendship, giving back, gratitude, and being home for the holidays.
5) Using digital media channels to connect with your customers
Online influencers – Consumers trust bloggers more than a commercial because it is perceived to be more authentic. Try approaching bloggers to help you get in front of a potentially untapped audience
Social Media – Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest, try to invest in the social media audience throughout the year to establish a meaningful relationship with your audience. This way you can increase the likelihood that your post will be seen during the holiday season
Email Marketing – Timing is crucial, try sending them an email before, during, and just around the time your holiday sales are about to end. The thought of missing out on a great holiday sale is a powerful way to get some last-minute sales volume. One solution brands could look at is Einstein Recommendations from Salesforce as it provides send time optimization capabilities, making it more likely for brand emails to be seen at the top of a customer’s inbox
6) Create a consistent experience across all channels
Building a marketing campaign across all your channels means you are providing your target audience with a seamless and consistent experience whenever they go and see your messages. It’s vital to create a consistent user experience regardless of which channels your customers are using. Consumers expect to receive a consistent experience, whether they are online, reading email, engaging with you via social media, or visiting your store. There is more than simply recreating your branding and messaging in ads, the holiday promotional offers need to stay consistent, too.
7) Marketing segmentation is essential
Not all customers are created equal. Avoid wasting profit margins by sending discounts to shoppers who just look for a one-time deal and never come back. As you build customer profiles throughout the year, it’s easy to segment your customers by lifetime value. Any investment you make for higher-value customers will result in higher ROI. However, don’t forget that for your less loyal customers, you can build campaigns with content that is relevant for them. Segmenting your customers for a truly personalized experience by making your campaigns easy to be shared and by delivering hot online deals that are consistent across all your channels, you are positioning yourself for maximum success this holiday season.
What are some ways to increase your holiday sales?
Offer special discounts to loyal customers
Personalize emails to your customers
Be creative with your promotions
Inject emotions within your marketing campaigns
Use digital media channels to connect with your customers
Create consistent experiences across all channels
Marketing segmentation is essential
The Holiday season is the largest opportunity for brands to boost their revenue. Create promotional offers that persuade customers to stick around and keep them coming back long after the eggnog is finished, gifts are unwrapped, and the tree is out on the curb.
When you have the right omnichannel eCommerce capabilities in place, you can personalize offers to your customers targeting customers online, right where they are.
Success story: Burton Snowboards, a snowboarding gear, and apparel manufacturer, changed their business from almost exclusively wholesale to a mix that also included Direct-to-Consumer. The company launched its digital transformation to become a consumer-centric, digital-first retailer of the future. This multi-cloud integration allowed Burton to gain a 360-degree view of the consumer across Commerce, Service, and Marketing, enabling them to deliver a more sophisticated cross-channel and customer-driven service experience. This digital transformation allowed them to increase productivity, which set the stage for personalizing their communications, ultimately enabling 350 to 400 daily online orders.