Days are getting longer, and the temperature is getting hotter. Summer is on the horizon, and that means it’s time to plan a marketing strategy for the season. Take your cues from the calendar, the outdoors, and popular activities to connect with your customers with emails and texts that remind them how you meet their seasonal needs.
Here are some pointers to make the most of the summer selling season by tying your marketing to key aspects of the season. Remarkety’s features make it easy to adapt your messaging to fit the changing seasons and the changing needs of your customers.
Before you turn the page to June
Though summer technically only begins at the summer solstice in the third week of June, in the minds of most people, it starts on Memorial Day. That means that you have to start thinking about your summer-themed marketing already in May.
This is the time to start planning your summer collections and seasonal updates on your site. Throw in some scenes of the beach, summer blooms, a clear swimming pool, or chilled lemonade to suggest all the pleasant associations people have with the summer season.
With Remarkety you can also easily set up summer pictures to appear on your email templates or your MMS texts. Use them to announce your new summer products and promotions.
Summer holidays and celebrations
Summer holidays are great opportunities for eCommerce companies to promote their products and run themed sales. We’ve already seen the potential offered by Memorial Day with themed promotions. Something similar can work for July 4th and the holiday that marks the end of the summer season, Labor Day.
But while the calendar is set to June, we have Father’s Day and graduations. Those are great occasions for marketing a wide range of products that customers will be shopping for.
Summer is the most popular time for weddings. June and August are the most popular months for tying the knot, closely followed by May, July, and September.
Even if your customers are not planning on nuptials for themselves, odds are good that they will be on the guestlist for someone who is. That offers tremendous marketing potential for wedding gifts, as well as for what newlyweds tend to have to buy for the big day or the honeymoon.
Capitalize on the celebrations of summer with targeted promotion sent via emails and texts with coupon codes to generate sales. Plan to start promoting each holiday at least two weeks in advance.
Summer collections
Now’s the time to plan your summer collection or category. Make it easy to find such items on your site by grouping them together. Point your customers in that direction with an email, text, or targeted social media ad.
For example, Target includes a “Faves for summer” collection that is highlighted in its marketing email. Clicking the link brings customers to a wide range of products like outdoor furnishings, inflatable pools, and even a portable record player.
Linking up your different products around the summer theme has several advantages:
- The most obvious advantage is directing the spotlight on your new arrivals for the season. Customers thinking about what to get for summer can see everything gathered in one place on the site.
- It can bring new attention to products you’ve been carrying in a new context. Take the Target example, the record player has probably been on the site for a while but is getting new eyes on it as a summer accessory to take music outside.
- It is an effective way to cross-sell. For example, seeing the outdoor chair alongside the outdoor cushions and tables makes the shopper consider getting them all together to complete the set. You can even suggest that at checkout or in a follow-up email if they only purchased one.
Summer newsletters
Write a summer newsletter that includes ideas of what to do outside and inside when the weather doesn’t cooperate. Include activities for adults and children, easy recipe ideas, and guides to turn a backyard or urban rooftop into a summer oasis.
Summer safety is also a good topic to include in a newsletter, covering topics like avoiding sunstroke, keeping hydrated, reminders not to leave children and pets in hot cars, pool safety, barbeque safety, etc. If you can relate these to your products, put in links to them to bring your customers over with just a click.
A general summer celebrations newsletter is also an idea, particularly if your store carries items used for parties and weddings. Beach weddings are very popular, and offering ideas for making them fun and memorable is a great way to win over customer loyalty with helpful information.
Feelings of loyalty will make customers think of your brand first when shopping and so is a valuable investment in the LTV of your customers. However, if you want to jumpstart your seasonal revenue, try including a coupon in your newsletter to drive traffic to your site and generate more immediate sales.
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Buying guides
Create buying guides that help customers plan out what they need for different scenarios. Summer offers many options for this. Summer gift guides can be general or tailored for summer occasions like dads, grads, newlyweds, etc.
Consider these categories:
- Camp buying guide including clothes, shoes, accessories, linens, packable toys, sunblock, and treats.
- Vacation packing list: summer is the time most people getaway, so they can use a reminder of what they should bring along.
- Backyard update: a collection of products to make the most out of one’s share of the outdoors. Those can include gardening tools, outdoor cooking and dining equipment, all forms of outdoor furniture, lanterns, outdoor toys, and sports setups, etc.
- Office update: when the warm weather beckons, some people would like to shift from working from inside their homes to working outside or to be able to get some work done while they’re away from home on vacation. A guide on the equipment needed to make that happen would be useful for them.
- Wardrobe refresh: time for cool clothes, sandals, sunglasses, and hats in this season’s colors. Even if people don’t replace their entire wardrobe, they’d like to refresh it with something current.
- Makeup and cosmetics buying guide: Makeup palettes change with the season, as do skincare regimens. Now is the time to promote anything with built-in sun protection.
Offer incentives like BOGO or escalating savings with greater percentage savings for larger purchases to incentivize larger total orders when promoting your buyer’s guide. Send the right guide to the right person with segmentation enabled by Remarkety’s comprehensive data on your customers.
Summer clearance
At some point in July, most stores start running clearance sales to make room for their new fall merchandise. That means customers are primed to look for bargains that you can promote for your online store.
Send out emails to let customers know the dates of the big clearance event. Follow up with emails and/or texts that highlight specific products and how much they are discounted or with coupon codes to save even more on the sale.
That way you get to move merchandise and let customers know that new items are on their way. You can even combine the summer clearance with a fall preview to get a sense of what catches your customer’s eye to better plan your inventory.
By the beginning of August, you switch gears to promote back-to-school and Labor Day sales focused on your new fall line. But for now, it’s time to slip on those sunglasses and sandals and use Remarkety to launch your summer marketing campaigns.
