Preparation now means a better holiday season later. The lazy days of summer are exactly when you have to start planning ahead for fall and winter.
Why now
Q4 is the busiest time for the overwhelming majority of retailers. It is during the final three-month months of the year that they generate sales linked to three major holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
As the demand for online ordering has grown for holiday shopping, the smart eCommerce business owners know that preparation and a plan for marketing are essential to making the most of the busiest time of the year.
Summer is not too early to start thinking about holiday marketing. In fact, Facebook released its 2021 holiday guide in June. It identified the months leading up to the start of the shopping season in late October as the time to lay the groundwork for a successful Q4.
Build on the digital momentum of 2020
Digital sales skyrocketed by 50%, year over year. Spending increased more than $300 billion compared to 2019, according to Salesforce.
To keep your eCommerce growth up, it is essential to retain those customers won over in 2020 in the 2021 holiday season. Remarkety enables you to do that by tracking all your customers and determining which products and offers get their attention to make sure your holiday messaging is on target.
Segment your customers
To get the most return for your communication strategy, you need to be able to identify and connect with the customers most likely to make holiday purchases. Those who use Remarkety know that it makes it easy to set up a campaign suited to your segment.
Key segments to target include your CLV or VIP status customers — the ones who spend the most on a regular basis — and the ones who have set a pattern of buying this time of year. Accordingly, you’d put in those features to be sure to reach out to those who are most likely to convert by sending them a series of holiday emails, texts, newsletters, and Facebook ads.
That is extracting the value of the data you already have with Remarkety’s capability for intelligent segmentation. But you can also capitalize on the interest shoppers have in finding what to buy when hunting for Black Friday and Cyber Monday specials to gain new customers.
Remember: customers respond better to personalized recommendations than generic ones. Salesforce reports that personalized product recommendations garner a 26% higher average order value among shoppers who click on marketing messages.
Try Remarkety free or book a demo.
Be ready to hop on Mega Sales Days
Facebook recognizes that Mega Sales Days, occasions like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, etc., which they refer to as MSDs are incredibly powerful at drawing business. It found out that MSD shoppers are 1.4x more likely to be big spenders and 3x more likely to buy something for themselves than those shopping on other days.
In this year’s holiday planning guide, Facebook added that such days “are redefining the shopping season.” Because they are so highly anticipated by shoppers, nearly half of holiday shoppers make a purchase, often a more substantial one, on an MSD.
All these MDS have occasioned billions in sales for eCommerce for the last several years. Though it’s been increasing each year, it broke new records in 2020.
These are the MSD eCommerce sales figures for 2020 from Statista:
- Thanksgiving $5.1 billion
- Black Friday: $9 billion
- Small Business Saturday:$7 billion
- Cyber Monday: $10.8 billion
Given that trajectory, we can predict that eCommerce sales will top $33 billion in 2021.
Your holiday checklist
Santa’s not the only one who has to make a list and check it twice. Any retailer that plans to have a successful holiday season needs to make a comprehensive list that includes the following:
Calendar for drop dates of new products and collections- Plan a gift guide that can offer helpful guidance for shoppers
- Plan for holiday-themed landing pages
- Plan for holiday newsletter and when to send it out automatically on Remarkety
- Holiday-themed emails that can work off Remarkety’s template
- Dates of sale events beyond the big dates on the calendar like Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- A variety of dynamic coupon codes to fit different customer responses
- Facebook/Instagram Social ads
With Remarkety, you can set up your holiday campaign to automate your customer’s marketing journey and use AI to serve the right message to the right person at the right time. By getting started early, you have the opportunity to test results with A/B testing and take advantage of Remarkety’s reporting to see which messages prove most effective.
Conclusion
The eCommerce sellers that will see the best return from the increase in online shopping are the ones who will be ready to meet the demand of their customers. That calls for a strategy of communication that is built on making the most of the hype surrounding the key selling days with a data-driven communication strategy powered by Remarkety.
