Ho Ho Promo – Tips to Optimize Holiday Customer Communications and Promotions
by: Martin Vilaboy
Although intense all year around, the fight for customers’ short attention is at a peak during the holiday shopping season. That’s also a time when buying intent is at its highest, but customer patience can be at its lowest. Add to matters the importance of fourth quarter sales for most retailers, and effective holiday communications can literally make or break a fiscal year.
It’s a lot to think about in today’s highly fragmented media environment, where weak promotions are quickly swiped by, bad ideas can spread like wildfire and the channels of communications are fluid and growing. Certainly, what works most of the year can work during the weeks leading up to Black Friday through the weeks after New Year’s. At the same time, shoppers’ wants and needs can be pretty specific during “the most wonderful time of the year,” so retailers that tailor their promotions and customer communications accordingly stand the best chance for marketing victory. Fortunately, data and analysis from prior holiday rushes can be used to gain a better understanding of what is likely to work during the upcoming weeks.
Coming as little surprise, mobile matters more and more every year. According to Custora’s E-commerce Pulse of the 2015 holiday season, nearly a third (30.4 percent) of online purchases during holiday 2015 were made on mobile devices (smartphone and tablet), up from about a quarter or less during the prior 12 months, including the fourth quarter of 2014. On Black Friday alone, which Custora re-dubs as “Mobile Friday,” mobile devices accounted for 36.1 percent of online sales, up from 30 percent in 2014. Analysis by IBM’s Watson of millions of online sessions and transactions on Black Friday likewise found mobile accounting for 36.2 percent of Black Friday online sales, an increase of nearly 30 percent over Watson’s findings the prior year.
And it’s not just purchasing. According to Watson, Black Friday mobile traffic exceeded desktop traffic, accounting for 57.2 percent of all online traffic, an increase of 15.2 percent over 2014. Smartphones alone accounted for 44.7 percent of all online traffic, three and a half times that of tablets at 12.5 percent. Smartphone also surpassed tablets in sales, driving 20.6 percent of online sales (up nearly 75 percent over 2014) versus tablets at 15.5 percent.
The trend toward mobile shopping was even more pronounced – albeit at a significantly less dollar volume – on Thanksgiving Day, when orders on phones and tablets constituted about 40 percent of all e-commerce transactions. That might seem intuitive, since would-be shoppers might be reluctant to leave a house full of family members or hole up in the home office to shop, yet they have ample time to thumb through their phones while on the couch watching T-Day football or recovering from a tryptophan overdose.
Of course, retailers that have yet to invest in advanced mobile capabilities or mobile payment options are unlikely to deploy these m-commerce options by late November. But no worries, as Prosper principal analysts Pam Goodfellow suggests, retailers looking to prioritize for holiday 2016 may want to emphasize promotional programs over mobile payments.
“Our research suggests that consumers in general just aren’t completely comfortable with the idea of mobile payment yet,” said Goodfellow. “However, expect consumers to take advantage of mobile offerings that provide them with perks: an exclusive deal, special sales and the ever-popular coupon code. I think consumers may also rely on inventory tracking capabilities, especially for any in-demand items.”
In other words, before adding new capabilities, focus on site performance and mobile compatibility. Data from DirectBuy reveals that smartphone and tablet users are five times more likely to abandon a task if the site isn’t mobile optimized. Retailers need to make sure the on-the-go, smaller screens are being considered, at least to some degree, across all digital campaigns, coupons and customer communications, including any social media efforts that ultimately link back to an internal Web site.
RELATED: Survey Suggest Strong Holiday Spending
Not Dad’s Email
Mobile’s largest impact on retail holiday promotions could stem from its role in accessing emails. Nowadays, more emails are opened on smartphones than on desktops, and make no mistake, as the Grand Daddy of digital marketing, email remains a top means of retail customer communication and acquisition. That includes interactions with younger cohorts. Per a study by marketing technology provider Adestra, nearly 68 percent of teens and 73 percent of millennials said they prefer to receive communications from a business via email, while more than half of each group says they rely on email to buy things online. Not surprisingly, those figures are similar to the number of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers who say the same.
In turn, email marketing’s role within holiday promotions cannot be underestimated. According to Custora figures, emails to a house list led to 20 percent of online orders during Holiday 2015, making it the second largest channel for sales after organic (free) search (21.5 percent). Its influence peaks during the big opening weekend when, as the primary driver of sales, emails led to 23.3 percent of online orders, including 25.1 percent on Black Friday and 22.1 percent on Cyber Monday.
That compares to 1.8 percent of all e-commerce orders directly attributed to social media campaigns last holiday season, which is similar to 2014, when social media drove 1.9 percent of orders. Certainly, social platforms influence purchasing and can be effective at generating interest, creating buzz and allowing for discovery, and we are in no way ready to give up on “buy buttons” on social sites. Up to this point, however, social media has yet to connect directly to online purchases the way legacy digital platforms, such as email and search, have.
Of course, customers tend to receive a boat load of retailer emails from mid-October through mid-January. A full 77 percent of retailers send mobile-optimized emails during the holidays, according to the Omnichannel Retail Index, up from 55 percent in the summer. So it pays to have some guidance as to how, what and when to blast out. According to
According to analysis of the email marketing campaigns of 30 major retailers, Cyber Monday- and Black Friday-themed emails deployed in the few days leading up to each day tended to perform very well, despite the abundance being sent. Open rates on emails deployed in the weekend immediately prior to Cyber Monday averaged 14.9 percent, the highest in the holiday period, shows the analysis by Yesmail Interactive.
Meanwhile, a relatively newer “shopping holiday,” Green Monday (or the second Monday in December), has been touted as the third-largest online shopping day of the year (behind Black Friday and Cyber Monday), yet only 10 percent of retailers in this Yesmail study deployed Green Monday-themed emails in the three-day period surrounding the shopping day.
“Those deployments paid off in terms of engagement as they generated significantly higher open rates than base communications over that period,” said the Yesmail study. “In addition, in 2015 Green Monday emails significantly outperformed the ones from 2014 – another reason for marketers to consider implementing them this year.”
RELATED: October Imports Spike as Retailers Stock Up for Holidays
Black Friday-themed emails that were deployed after the Friday, in the weekend immediately following Black Friday, also did particularly well, significantly outperforming base communications. This seems to suggest there might be some remorse marketers can tap into among those who feel they “missed out” on Black Friday deals. The same cannot be said for Cyber Monday, as post-Cyber Monday emails, with an average open rate of 11.1 percent, had the lowest engagement over the period. Somewhat unexpectedly, Free Shipping Day emails underperformed compared to base communications and experienced a steep drop in open rates compared to 2014. Yesmail researchers attributed the poor performance to the increasing prevalence of free shipping, particularly during the holiday season, and generic subject lines that failed to indicate any uniqueness to free shipping.
Christmas-themed emails, meanwhile, tend to perform better the deeper the calendar moves into December, show Yesmail figures, garnering their best open rates in the days preceding and just following December 25. General holiday emails, or those that reference the holiday or winter season without specific mention of a holiday, have become increasingly popular among retailers and brands yet elicit lukewarm reactions from consumers. They tend to generate open rates similar to those of base communications but lower than specifically themed emails.
Overall, as marketers get closer to the end of the year, their email volumes tend to increase significantly week-over-week. Yesmail suggests avoiding such a late season ramp up in favor of a more consistent and level approach, since open rates tend to decrease as the volume increases and holiday marketing “burnout” sets in among recipients.
Email open rates also provide insight into the type of content that will resonate with shoppers during the holiday rush. And more than anything, those shoppers are looking for ways to deal with the time crunch and stress typically associated with the season. For instance, when Deloitte asked holiday shoppers to name desirable attributes for sales associates, 63 percent of respondents said “help me check out quickly.”
That overarching attitude likely explains why emails with vague subject lines such as “Shop Online Specials” or “10 Percent off Cyber Monday Purchases” underperformed while emails that focused on a sense of urgency or a fast approaching deadline tended to be higher performing, shows Yesmail data.
RELATED: NRF Forecasts 3.6% Holiday Sales Increase
“Marketers can spur action by reminding users of an impending deadline for a sale or delivery guarantee,” say Yesmail researchers. “However, they should avoid overuse or subscribers may not view them as genuine or worthwhile.” Ultimately, whether it’s a subject line, viral video campaign or Instagram post, marketers would be wise to focus on providing shoppers with “holiday help,” rather than incessantly pounding them about discounts and savings. (It’s doubtful most specialty businesses are interested in chasing discount hunters, anyway.) Help can come in the form of holiday guides and how-to articles, gift suggestions, deadline reminders and checklists. In other words, a message built around “gift ideas for grandma,” is much more compelling than “20% discounts storewide through Monday.” A video campaign, for instance, could highlight a shopper’s journey through a store and all the gift ideas she discovered (with help from a staff member, of course), or a product video can demonstrate the fun a gift recipient can have playing with their new gizmo out of the box.
Surveys also suggest that shoppers are looking to save time during the holidays almost as much as they are looking to save money. That’s largely why the ability to check in-store availability of a product online is widely desired by holiday shoppers, although it remains a somewhat unmet demand. Emails or posts about the restocking of popular items carry a similar appeal.
Likewise, special extended hours for VIP customers, such as an hour before opening or after closing, can be seen as a way to alleviate the holiday time-crunch, as can shopping appointments with expert staff members, who can be armed beforehand with customer profiles or gift recipient lists. Ultimately, anything that can be done just to get people to walk into the store will likely prove beneficial for the retailer. Among consumers who attended an in-store holiday event, such as a fundraiser or movie screening, nearly 60 percent also make a purchase. And overall, holiday shoppers reported to making 43 percent of their purchase decisions during the shopping experience, according to Prosper Insight figures.
And whatever you do, don’t forget procrastinators when devising inventory and promotional strategies. Certainly, every year a good percentage of shoppers wait until the proverbial last minute. As much as 40 percent of 2015 holiday season sales took place in the last 10 days before Christmas, according to analysts at Retail TouchPoints. With Christmas Eve falling on a Saturday this year, that percentage could be even bigger in 2016, as we expect Christmas weekend to be crazy-busy this year.
Stay tuned for our outdoor enthusiast holiday gifts ideas…
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