2010 Guide to Holiday Campaigns: 14 Tips to Increase Holiday Revenue

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1 2010 Guide to Holiday Campaigns: 14 Tips to Increase Holiday Revenue , Listrak By Megan Ouellet, Director of Marketing September 15, 2010 Online retailers will face another challenging holiday season acquiring site traffic, increased sales goals, increased competition and more-savvy, cost-conscious customers; but with the right strategy and tools in place there is tremendous opportunity. By now you should be finalizing your holiday marketing strategy and preparing for the busiest time of year. Here are 14 tips to help you fine tune your strategy before your first holiday campaign is deployed. Tip 1: Review last year s campaigns Take some time to look at last year s creative, messaging, offers, deployment schedule, and metrics, paying close attention to conversions and any spikes in opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and complaints. Also review your segmentation tactics to identify what worked. Finally, look at s that were forwarded and shared with social networks the most. Knowing what worked for you last year, and what didn t, will help you build a successful strategy this year. Tip 2: Set yourself up for success Now is the time to start gathering the data you need to make your holiday campaigns truly relevant. Ask customers to update their information in your preference center or send out surveys or product reviews and closely monitor results. That way, you ll be able to target each subscriber with personalized, relevant offers to increase conversion and sales. You should also start testing your campaigns in advance before your deployment schedule gets too hectic. You could also promote holiday reward programs early to increase registrations and to get your customers engaged with your brand before your upcoming holiday campaigns.

2 Tip 3: Follow the phases of the holiday Your messaging should be progressive and follow the phases of the season: August to October Holiday messaging should be included in your campaigns, but only as a secondary message as mentioned in Tip 2, not as the primary content of the November to December Holiday messaging should be the primary focus of the campaigns Thanksgiving Don t overlook the Thanksgiving holiday; create a specific Thanksgiving-related Black Friday While you can send Black Friday teaser messages, you should consider a specific campaign to deploy the day after Thanksgiving, possibly offering subscribers a special discount they can use in store or online Cyber Monday Like Black Friday campaigns, you can announce your sales early, but be sure to send a specific on Cyber Monday Shipping Deadlines As the holidays approach, send messages about shipping deadlines for standard, express, and guaranteed delivery dates Christmas Day A friendly wishing your customers happy holidays lets them know you appreciate them while keeping your brand top of mind After Christmas After the holidays, don t just promote your sales and exchange policies, but take advantage of the opportunity to cross-sell, up-sell and send gift card redemption reminders Tip 4: Decide on a deployment schedule early and stick with it Almost every online retailer plans to increase their deployment schedules during the holidays. Don t just increase the number of campaigns because everyone else is. Instead, put detailed plans in place before the first deployment outlining your message and deployment schedule. Working ahead lets you automate campaigns to free up time and resources and ensures that all of your messages work together to increase revenue. 02

3 03 Tip 5: Pay attention to basic best practices The holidays are the busiest time of year. You re probably planning to triple, quadruple, or more, the number of s you re sending. But that s no excuse to let basic best practices slip. Don t rush through creation and miss important aspects like ALT tags, broken images and links, and other inaccuracies. Pay close attention to: Subject lines Stand out in a crowded inbox with clever, unique subject lines, and be sure to mention offers and discounts CTA Use a single, clear call-to-action in your messages and resist the urge to pack your s with too many products, offers, and alerts Headers/footers Use holiday-inspired headers and footers that link to gift centers, customer service, shipping rates, and delivery schedules Deliverability Monitor bounces, complaints, and unsubscribes as the increase in the number of deployments can cause these numbers to spike and may damage your reputation Update automated campaigns If you re running any automated drip campaigns, review the creative and messaging to give it a holiday flair Take the time to test provides almost instant results, so take the time to perform some tests, but run the majority of your tests in September and October before your deployment schedule increases Tip 6: Design effective landing pages Getting a customer to click on a link in your message is only half the battle. Getting them to make a purchase is your true goal. Landing pages must be designed to entice and encourage a sale, and must make it very easy for the customer to complete the purchase. Just like your s, your landing pages should be direct and focus on the product linked from the . If you require your customers to search for the item you ll lose them. Also, be sure to include links to Live Chat and/or a phone number to reach customer support so your customers have alternative purchasing options. You can also reduce shopping cart abandonment rates by offering shipping information and delivery schedules up front.

4 Tip 7: Create a consistent cross-channel campaign is still the best option for engaging your customers, but it s not your only option. To maximize sales you must communicate with your customers across multiple channels mobile messaging, social networks, online and print ads, in-store displays, etc. Most importantly, you must be consistent in the content and messaging. You can use a different voice but be sure that the main message, such as prices, dates, specials, etc., remains the same. Your multi-channel campaigns should be designed to work together and support each other they shouldn t work against each other. Tip 8: Engage your customers, don t overload them with information Over-communicating with your customers and subscribers can be detrimental to your campaigns as you may be training your audience to tune out instead of tune in. The problem isn t simply sending too many campaigns you must take into consideration the number of times people are hearing from you across the different channels. Your different marketing campaigns can t exist in a vacuum; you must put a tactical schedule in place and control the cadence of all of your communications carefully. Tip 9: Launch a special holiday series Creating a holiday campaign, such as 12 Days of Christmas, and promoting it as a special series lets your audience know what to expect in terms of the increased sending schedule and gives them a way to opt-out of the series without leaving your list. There are several ways to implement these campaigns. You could promote it on your website, , social networks, and mobile messages and require subscribers to opt-in to the series or you could send it to your entire subscriber base and provide a way for recipients to opt-out of the series without opting out of your list. Tip 10: Segment your audience by purchase habits Every subscriber isn t created equal. Some are your best customers; some have never purchased but have shown interest in your products. These groups shouldn t receive the same communications from you. Segmenting your audience by purchase habits helps you create targeted messages surrounding purchase intent. Using the discount ladder approach, you can then maximize your profits by applying larger discounts where they re needed to encourage a sale, and smaller or no discounts where they aren t. You can remarket to your one-time buyers with cross-sell, up-sell, or replenishment opportunities as it s easier and cheaper to sell to a previous customer than a new one. 04

5 Tip 11: Put an automated shopping cart abandonment solution in place If you don t already have a shopping cart abandonment solution in place, it is crucial that you implement one. You could be losing half of your potential sales to abandoned carts; but an automated reachback campaign can recapture those sales, directly impacting your bottom line and holiday revenue. Our customers are experiencing 20% conversions, 27% increase in the average order value, and an incredible 500% ROI through their shopping cart abandonment campaigns and these numbers are expected to increase over the holiday season. 05 Tip 12: Perfect the soft sell in your transactional messages This holiday season, don t let the one-time buyers come and go. Instead of sending a generic order confirmation , include links to related products and special incentives to order more gifts. Or, reward the customer with a special discount for themselves. These offers should be secondary in the message and should be included as a value-added service, not as an attempt to force another sale. Tip 13: Stand out from the crowd with viral messaging components The inbox is crowded especially during the holidays. To stand out, consider implementing a daily sweepstakes or online scavenger hunt across your campaigns, website, Twitter, and Facebook page. Not only will people look forward to receiving your messages, they ll share them with their networks, instantly expanding your audience and increasing your profitability and ROI. Tip 14: Drive in-store sales with Finally, your s shouldn t just encourage an online sale. Use your profile fields to send messages that are customized with each subscriber s local store information address, hours, buy online/pick up in-store details, local customer service, special promotions, etc. The more targeted your s are, the better they ll perform; and one of the easiest segmentations you can perform is location-based.

6 If you need help planning or executing your holiday strategy, contact us online, via , or call. About Listrak Listrak is an marketing firm providing the solutions, software, and expertise to optimize the value of . Listrak works with clients like Waterford, Wedgwood, Royal Doulton, Wolfgang Puck, and Movies Unlimited to develop engaging marketing that goes beyond the inbox to the individual, to deliver the extra percent in effectiveness and ROI. Visit to learn more. 06