With the deafening buzz around the holiday season, it can sometimes be hard to remember that there are three other seasons. While the Black Friday and Christmas rush can be big money-makers, the others deserve some recognition too. The NRF estimates that Americans will spend $21.6B on Easter-related purchases like gifts, candy, greeting cards, and decor. So with spring just about upon us, how can you reinvigorate your marketing strategy and refresh your offerings? Here are some ideas to get you started:
Themed content marketing
Content marketing can be a huge driver of inbound traffic, and keeping your content fresh with the changing seasons is a great way to continue driving traffic and sales. Theming your content marketing will depend in part on what your products are, but there are tons of creative and fun topics you could tackle for spring.
If you sell clothing or accessories, posts about spring fashion trends, colors, and styles are no-brainers. With people desperate to get outside after being cooped-up all year, any company that sells outdoor products will have a goldmine of topics to choose from. There are quite a few holidays in spring – more on that below – ripe for writing about, be it recipes, outfits, party themes, decor, however you can tie in your products with the holidays.
If you’re not sure how to, feel free to consult with one of our partners: marketing consultant for e-commerce
Social media spring rebrand
Everyone loves a nice fresh color palette, and spring colors are extra fun to work with; Easter-y pastels, florals, and bright fun hues that banish the winter blues. It’s the perfect time to do a fun rebrand.
To execute a successful eCommerce rebrand, you need to approach it with an omnichannel perspective. Think about every visual element of your brand – your logo, infographics, social media posts, product photography backgrounds, website graphics, devices, and everywhere else that your followers and customers will see associated with your brand.
Once you pick a color palette and theme, think about how you can tie in all of those visual elements to support your new look. Rebrands can be visually striking and engaging for your followers, so they are more than worth the work involved when done right.
Spring-themed email and SMS marketing
Speaking of every communication your customers see, your email marketing strategy deserves a lot of love. Email marketing is just as relevant as ever, despite being one of the oldest digital marketing strategies, and it’s the perfect place to focus your springtime energy.
When you’re brainstorming fresh email marketing ideas to win your readers’ attention, a gold mine of inspiration can be found from your other upcoming spring ideas. It’s the perfect opportunity to shout out a fun spring product launch, a can’t-miss sale, or your latest spring-y blog post. Part of a cohesive marketing strategy is to think about all your interactions with your potential customers holistically.
Combining email and SMS marketing is a great way to utilize complementary tools to boost your engagement. 70% of customers have said they prefer to be in contact with businesses by text; you can leverage texting in strategic ways, like alerting them to an upcoming spring sale (more on that in the next section).
Spring-themed sale
Spring-cleaning is the perfect opportunity to draw people in with a sale. While people everywhere are shaking out their curtains and dusting in corners, they’re also keeping an eye out for great deals and making room for new things they’re going to love. Out with the old, in with the new should be the motto for eCommerce in spring!
Your spring-themed sale can take shape in a couple of different ways: you might have a boatload of holiday products sitting around because your inventory forecast was off. The other possibility is you have an exciting new product rollout, and you want to build some extra momentum to get it flying off the shelf. Everyone loves a great sale, and savvy shoppers will be on the lookout for products they know they’ll be able to put to great use later on in the year. The upside of clearing up space with a sale (besides making for some very satisfied customers) is it cuts the cost of warehouse storage.
On the other hand, highlighting the newest products can help you stay on theme for spring, and you can get a little more creative with how you’re going to promote a sale on new products. Kitting, for example, can be a great option to bundle together new or popular products and still give your customers that feeling of a great deal.
Spring Holidays
When planning for spring, don’t forget to pay homage to the surprising amount of holidays that happen during this season. Not only do Passover and Easter happen in early spring, both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day happen just a few months later. And, while not officially a holiday, US tax refunds tend to happen during this time as well — there’s a lot of extra cash sitting in shoppers’ pockets this time of year.
With all these heavy hitting holidays, it’s not hard to find inspiration for upcoming sales, product launches, content marketing topics, and visuals to keep your customers engaged and excited.
Post-pandemic rush
It’s worth considering if you think your traffic patterns will change this year due to the pandemic. With all signs pointing towards the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, your customers are ready to get out and live their lives again. Their spending patterns may change, and that could directly impact your business.
You likely already saw an unusual surge over the past year as people quickly became intimately familiar with ordering everything they needed online. Latecomers to the eCommerce space have now been fully integrated and possibly converted for life. eCommerce had an incredible boom over the last year – growing an incredible 44% – and those gains are not likely to disappear (though growth will probably not match what we saw in 2020).
Conclusion
After a break from the holiday rush, it’s important to refocus and put just as much energy and attention into the other seasonal changes. Spring can be a great time to reinvigorate stale visual themes, get followers and customers interested in new products, and capitalize on great opportunities for driving traffic.
Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, a fulfillment warehouse that was born out of eCommerce. He has years of experience in eCommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.
