The holiday shopping season is already here, with festivals like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve all lined up within these two months. Shoppers will be eager to buy gifts for their loved ones while retailers will be looking to achieve their revenue targets for the year. While this may not be a typical holiday season, retailers will still have to be prepared for the holiday rush.
This holiday season is unlike the previous ones due to the coronavirus pandemic. Shoppers changed their buying patterns, and many businesses had to adapt their marketing strategies accordingly. The holiday shopping season does not look much different despite the lockdown restrictions slowly easing. According to BazaarvoiceOpens a new window , about 61% of retailers expect more engagement and purchases through social platforms. Hence, as a retailer, you need to prepare your holiday marketing strategies and campaigns, keeping these changes in mind.
Here is a checklist to help you prepare for the holiday shopping season.
1. Evaluate and Set Your Goals
Before you start creating your campaigns, it is necessary to identify what you want to achieve this holiday season. Go beyond the obvious of gaining more customers and profits. As more shoppers will be looking to shop online this year, you may want to improve your website performance. You may like to offer more personalized content for shoppers. Have you lost customers owing to the pandemic? Then, you may want to look at winning them back. See if you want to improve customer loyalty this season.
Additionally, look back to 2019 and see what worked and what did not. Set your goals accordingly. For example, you may have achieved some success with your email campaigns. See if you would like to improve its effectiveness. Look at how you can reduce cart abandonment. Look at what other marketing tactics you want to improve this holiday season.
Learn more: In-Store Shopping Still Relevant This Holiday Season Finds Oracle Survey
2. Create Strategic Promotions and Campaigns
Once you are ready with your goals and KPIs, plan your marketing campaigns and promotions for the season well in advance. Create strategic campaigns keeping in mind the changes in customer behavior and the new reality this year. The following are a few things you should do as part of planning your campaigns.
- Add contests and giveaways. It is an excellent way of improving customer engagement and delight while boosting your sales.
- Have a reward or loyalty program for your customers. These programs will give your existing customers incentives to stay with you. It is also an excellent way to convert your one-time shoppers into long-term customers.
- Reach your customers on social media through unique and creative content.
- Send personalized emails to your customers for your holiday sales, promotions, and offers.
- Send text messages to your customers. Use the first-party data your customers share to send them promotions and offers.
3. Optimize for Mobile Devices
Mobile devices have played a significant role in shopping over the last few years. According to eMarketer estimatesOpens a new window , mobile commerce is expected to touch $2.91 trillion in sales by the end of 2020. It is further expected to touch $3.56 trillion in 2021.
Mobile ecommerce sales
Source: eMarketerOpens a new window
With the growing role of mobile devices in retail commerce, you must optimize your website for mobile devices. Further, making your portal mobile-friendly makes the purchasing experience seamless for a significant number of customers. One way to optimize your portal for mobile devices is to build a responsive website. Further, implement accelerated mobile pages (AMP) that are smoother and quick to load on mobile devices.
4. Run Email Campaigns
Direct mail is still considered one of the best ways of engaging with your customers. In fact, according to StatistaOpens a new window , emails became one of the primary methods of business and personal communication in 2020. Hence, email marketing should be an integral part of your marketing campaigns. To use emails more effectively:
- Make sure that your audience can easily subscribe to your emails wherever they are.
- Have a definite plan on what emails you want to send, when and how frequently you want to send them.
- When sending emails, give your subscribers insights into what promotions you are running and what they can expect this holiday season.
- Use personalization and relevancy in your email. Research shows that people unsubscribe from emails that are irrelevant to them.
- Use cart abandonment emails to attract the shoppers back to complete their purchase.
5. Plan Your Social Media Campaign
The holiday season is the most suitable time for social media marketing, as this is when social platforms are most active. Retailers who use social media around this time report it to be the most effective channel for their campaign.
To use social media more effectively during this holiday shopping season:
- Identify the platforms you want to use more actively for your promotions. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are a few platforms you can use.
- Post engaging and creative content on your social page regularly. It could be textual, image, and video content.
- Mention your offers and discounts on various products and services clearly.
- Use compelling CTAs such as ‘Shop Now’ or ‘Buy Now’ to create readiness among your audience.
- Use creative ways such as contests and to engage your social media audience.
- Monitor social media conversations to understand what people are talking about and what is trending. It will help you position your offerings accordingly.
 Learn more: Walmart Store Redesign: A Retailer’s Guide To Boost In-Store Shopping Experience
6. Plan for Holiday Traffic
In the post-pandemic era, you may not see the shoppers stampede during Black Friday or Cyber Monday, like the previous years. Yet, there will be a variety of traffic you will have to prepare for. For example, if you have an online portal, expect more shoppers to buy products and services from your online portal. According to a studyOpens a new window by Digital Commerce 360, 58% of online shoppers plan to shop more online in the coming few months.
Then there are people looking for Buy Online, Pick Up in Store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup. According to a studyOpens a new window by Incisiv, 80% of shoppers are expected to increase BOPIS or curbside pickup over the next 6-12 months. Some shoppers prefer to make in-store purchases. Hence, make sure that you are prepared to handle increased traffic, both online and offline.
7. Improve Customer Shopping Experience
Ensure that your customers have a seamless shopping experience, irrespective of whether they make an online or offline purchase. To improve your online portal’s shopping experience, the following are a few things you should do.
- Keep the products and website design updated to give a fresh look for the holiday season.
- People love personalization. According to InstapageOpens a new window , personalized shopping cart recommendations influenced about 92% of customers. Hence, focus on providing personalized recommendations to your customers.
- Use customer data to provide product recommendations to your customers. Also, focus on upselling and cross-selling relevant products based on their buying pattern.
- Ensure that your website infrastructure can handle customer traffic. No one likes it when the website crashes in the middle of a purchase.
- For both online and physical stores, ensure that products are easily identifiable and accessible.
8. Make Checkout More Convenient
Cart abandonment is a challenge retailers face frequently. According to statisticsOpens a new window by Barilliance, the average cart abandonment rate during Black Friday in 2019 was 73.78%. According to OptinMonsterOpens a new window , some of the reasons shoppers commonly cite include:
- Unexpected costs such as shipping, additional taxes, and fees
- Lack of guest checkout option
- Complicated checkout process
- Non-visibility of order total upfront
- Lack of deals
Reasons for cart abandonment
Source: OptinMonsterOpens a new window
Hence, it is necessary to make the checkout process simple, friendly, and convenient for your customers.
You can reduce cart abandonment rates by offering deals such as discounts or free shipping. You can also offer more payment options for your customers to make payments conveniently.
Brick-and-mortar stores, too, can offer more convenience for customers to make payments. People are still wary of making physical contact in the post-pandemic era of shopping. Hence, consider adding touchless payment options and self-checkout kiosks.
9. Build Customer Trust
We are in times where customers are losing trust in brands at a rapid pace. According to Edelman Trust Barometer 2020Opens a new window , customers are losing faith in brands across all industries, and more so in 2020. As such, you need to win customer trust to succeed. So, how can you build customer trust? Here are a few ways.
- Be transparent in how you use their data. If you need to collect customer data, tell them how it will help them. Research shows that customers are willing to give their data if they get equal value in return.
- Respond to customer reviews and feedback proactively and acknowledge your mistakes.
- Build social proof in the form of customer reviews. A good reputation goes a long way in attracting customers.
- Offer a consistently positive customer experience.
- Offer reliable products/services to your customers.
- Stand for a cause. The 2020 Zeno Strength of Purpose StudyOpens a new window showed that consumers are 4 times more likely to purchase from purpose-driven companies. Hence, aligning yourself with a genuine social cause will build more trust for your brand.
Learn more: U.S. Election 2020: How Brands Can ‘Stay Woke’ With Millennials and Gen Z
10. Measure Your Campaign’s Success
Once the holiday season is over, it is time to measure your campaigns and promotions’ performance. Measuring performance against the KPIs and metrics you set at the beginning of the campaign helps you identify what percentage of your goals you achieved. It also enables you to make the necessary improvements for your future campaigns. Here are a few aspects of your campaigns and KPIs you can measure.
- Ecommerce success – Conversion rate, sales, shopping cart abandonment rate, bounce rate, traffic (new vs. returning), traffic source, etc.
- Marketing success – Pay-per-click (PPC), email open rate, click-through rate (CTR), social followers, number of positive reviews, banner ad CTR, etc.
- Offline stores – Sales per square foot, conversion rate, products sold, average transaction value, foot traffic, customer retention, etc.
Final Thoughts
This holiday shopping season is one of the most anticipated seasons for most retailers and store owners. It presents an opportunity to regain some of the lost business this year due to the COVID pandemic. There will also be more shoppers looking to place online orders irrespective of whether they will have their products shipped or pick them up from stores. Hence, you need to be prepared and have your strategies and campaigns in place to capitalize on the seasonal rush. Use this holiday marketing checklist to make your marketing campaigns and efforts successful.
What other things do you think should be there on the holiday marketing checklist? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .