CedCommerce in Ecommerce

Marketing tactics to prepare you for festive shopping promotions

Festivals are symbols of celebration, and people find an escape from their day to day life to rejoice the day. Shoppers and sellers always have been crazy about holidays. On holidays buyers get a reason and excuse to pour out their pockets and buy their favorite items. Every year we wait for opportune moment to plan our holidays and festivals. Though in this era, everyday feels to special.

Everyone makes the plan according to their needs. Sellers find huge potential on holidays as people get time to shop for leisure or need, and they keep stocks for it with offers, discounts and amazing deals. Buyers are excited, as they get days off to shop, buy their favorite items, and get to celebrate with new things in hands.

As a seller, you need to be focused and ahead of time to plan for the festive shopping promotion. I will help you in planning for this year’s ecommerce calendar. So, let’s start from here and make the plan for this year holiday season.

1# List of festival & holidays

4th July – Independence Day
22nd July – Parents Day
20th August – Back to School
3rd September – Labor Day
22nd September – First day of Fall
8th October – Columbus Day
16th October – Boss’ Day
31st October — Halloween
11th November — Veterans Day
22nd November — Thanksgiving Day
23rd November — Black Friday
26th November — Cyber Monday
21st December — First day of Winter
25th December — Christmas Day
26th December – Boxing Day
31st December — New Year’s Eve

2# Year 2017 & 2018 Potential

Revenue for Cyber Monday in 2017 touched $ 6.59 Billion with Year on year growth of 16.8% as per Adobe Digital Insights 2017. As per ADI, the best items bought on particular days. Christmas Decor on Pre Thanksgiving. Apparels, Computers and Sporting Goods on Thanksgiving. Appliances, Jewelry, Tablets, and Televisions on Black Friday. Toys on Cyber Monday. Top 5 selling products on Cyber Monday were Nintendo Switch, Chromecast, Roku, Hatchimals & Colleggtibles, and Amazon Echo.

Here is the holiday season desktop ecommerce sales volume in United States.

During the Holiday season in second quarter of 2017 online sales grew by 16.2% and accounted for 8.9% of total retail sales. eMarketer claims 3.1% growth in total holiday sales just because of heavy discounts offered that will change consumer buying behavior during peak of holiday season. 2017 also witnessed the trend of self gifting, where ecommerce played a huge role. During holiday season people bought a lot for themselves that too online with the ease of shopping rather than juggling through stores and shopping for others.

Fourth of July is the best time of year for summer clothing clearance sale. As per NRF Nearly 9 out of 10 americans plan to celebrate Fourth of July this year. Younger consumers are more likely to celebrate Independence day this year. 27% of Americans plan to purchase patriotic items this year. Households spent on an average of $370 on Fourth of July in 2016.

Back to school covers sales of wide gamut of retail items from school supplies to dorm furnitures. In 2016, back-to-school ecommerce sales went over $64 billion in the U.S. alone. More than 44% of back-to-college and 45% of back-to-school consumers choose and did their shopping online in year 2017. Holiday sales never ceases to surprise, hence sellers should plan their Festive shopping promotions for the entire ecommerce calendar.

3# Let’s have a look at your Business Type

Done with the listing and potential of the festivals, now let’s get on to your business type.

It is very necessary to keep your business type in mind so that you can plan for particular holiday season. Say, if you are dealing in medicines then obviously, you are not going to promote your supplements for Christmas Eve. You must be aware of your Targeted day on which your product will have the maximum sales.

For example, sellers selling electronic home appliances will make a plan and prepare their deals and offers for the Microwave Oven Day as there are chances for more sales on that day.

We must be focused on our business type and try to target the audience which will be more interested in that day and the products that we are selling.

4# Time to outreach the audience

After knowing the more about your business type and analyzing about your target audience, you should start reaching them. To outreach your audience you should focus on the following marketing and promotion strategies:

Emails: Plan and then design a proper invitation email for your regular buyers so that they will get the information of all the special offer and deals that you will offer on your products. It is a necessary and important part of marketing as every single seller reach out to the buyers and make them aware of the hot deals they are offering.
Landing Page: Be prepared with your website’s landing page. As soon as the buyer reach out your website he/she must be influenced by your offers and deals.
Publish blogs: Not only your regular buyer, also try to real who do not know well about you. Try to post on your blog and get your hands dirty in guest blogging. This way you will maximize your reach and brand awareness. You can include links to your website in your blogs and talk about the offers that you offered last year and the offers that you will be providing this year.
Affiliates/Influencer: An influencer can make your day, if your offerings and his communication blends to make an impact on his audience. You can also search for affiliates but when compared Influencers are more impactful for promoting your business as people don’t like hard selling and there is always a better way to sell.

5# Try to engage your Audience and/or buyers

One of the most important step is to keep your audience/buyers engaged with your offers and deals so that they just not read and forget, but take some action on it.

You need to work on the following to keep your buyers busy till the time festival end.

Direct Emails: Regularly send them email and keep reminding them about your offers and special discount. Do not disclose all your special offers in single email try to make the buyer eager for the day of sales by your strong content.
Coupon Code: Start displaying your coupon codes and the special offers on different places to make your offers get stuck to the mind of your audience.
Google Ads: The most common and most used promotional strategy is the Google ads. It is common but most effective as every single user of mobile, laptops, tablets and computer use the Google so they will get to know about your deals.
Hangout Places: Try to cover most of the hangout places by your offer banners and display advertisement for your products.

6# Influencer Marketing Pitch

Influencers can make a day for you if guided in right direction. Influencers stand apart from other marketing techniques due to their reach, credibility and impact. People trust their influencers and rely on them while making their next purchase. While pitching to the influencers you must keep few things in mind, such as.

Be double sure that you have the right influencer and he caters to the same niche of products as yours.
Get to know their work, as what content they produce, or what is their tonality, what is their Social Media metrics, follow their comments.
Personalize the pitch, and try to build a relationship rather than business.
Keep the influencer marketing campaign more lively. Make sure that your Influencer tries your product before he preaches about it. By sending them free samples.
Power of Recommendation is better than a sponsored content. Try to keep the campaign more informative and not biased.
Keep the KPI’s metric driven, to ensure you get the expected results from the campaign.

Here is sample email that could be your next pitch to influencers.

Hi [Name],

My name is [Your Name] from [Company]. I have been following your Blogs and Social Media Channels since 2016.

Everytime i read your blogs or social media posts [Can include link], it resonates with me in terms of the audience my company caters to. I really thought that such content will be appreciated by my audience, so i shared it and yes they responded well.

We are at a start of launching a new product and it falls into the category you cover frequently. Hence i recognize an opportunity where we can work together for mutual benefits. I would like to send a sample of my product to you for review, and few extras to give away to your audience.

I think you would be a great ambassador for our brand, and we would propose this deal exclusively for you [Your offering in Monetary terms, plus metrics you would like input from].

I believe this could be a great start for our relationship and a way you can monetize your influence. Would love to hear back what you think of it.

Thanks for your time,

[Your Name]

7# Email Marketing

Email forms to be a perfect medium for communication, when it comes to pitching your products. As per a study by a study by Experian Data Quality and eDataSource, Email campaigns are instrumental in two-thirds of all sales made online.

Here is a short list of stats from this research

58% of American adults check their email first thing in the morning
Email subscribers who get a “welcome email” are 33% more likely to engage
Personalization improves CTR by 14% and conversion rates by 10%
Email drove more Black Friday conversions in 2015 than any other source
Email with a personalized subject line gets 26% more opens

Here is the total number of email users in United States

As per Mailchimp for ecommerce, Open Rate averages around 15.66%, Click rate around 2.07%, and unsubscribe rate around 0.24%.

Ecommerce email marketing benchmarks, as per Remarkety,

Newsletter Email Metrics

This includes email blasts sent to entire contact lists and segmented lists.

Open Rate: 23.4%
Click Rate: 17.8%
Conversion Rate: 1%

Order Follow Up Email Metrics

This can include feedback campaigns, order replenishment campaigns, review requests and reward campaigns.

Open Rate: 46.1%
Click Rate: 16.7%
Conversion Rate: 5%

Abandoned Cart Email Metrics

This includes all abandoned cart campaigns and applicable follow up campaigns.

Open Rate: 46.6%
Click Rate: 28.7%
Conversion Rate: 5%

Member Follow Up Email Metrics

This can include new user registration campaigns along with welcome series.

Open Rate: 39.2%
Click Rate: 22.4%
Conversion Rate: 2.7%

We have some resources for you to design your next best email.

Hubspot Email Templates

Collection of 22 Email templates to inspire your next campaign

We also have case study for email marketing designed around holidays

How MVMT Watches increased Holiday Revenue gains 262% with optimized content

Here is a sample email that you can take help of for forming your next campaign.

Going through this blog we have learned what points should we keep in mind while preparing a marketing calendar and the key marketing tactics that need to be focused when you have to prepare your store for the holiday season.

Wait! One more thing!

For the ultimate solution on the best way to excel on Walmart Marketplace this holiday season, check out our eBook: Step By Step Guide To Selling On Walmart Marketplace. Look for regions of improvement yourselves, or let us help. Reach us with your query at apps@cedcommerce.com

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