During the holiday season there’s a lot to consider, from customer support and promotion calendars to e-commerce optimizations and digital marketing launches. If you need help to convert more holiday shoppers here are a few quick and dirty tips to help you meet and exceed your sales goals.
1. Set clear expectations in your email campaigns
Email is an essential component of your digital marketing program. “Often, it generates the highest amount of revenue of all marketing channels and a 38x ROI for every dollar spent on email marketing,” according to the Data and Marketing Association.
In your promotional email campaigns give holiday shoppers insights and set expectations on the types of promotions you are running this holiday season. Don’t leave shoppers guessing or confused about how to do business with you. Holiday promotional emails to subscribers should include:
- Shipping info (including final delivery dates)
- Gift card services, if applicable
- Gift wrapping options, if available
- Customer service contact details
- Easy access to your return and exchange policy
2. Create persona based gift guides
If you already know your buyer personas, it’ll be easy to segment your products or services into helpful gift guides. Holiday gift guides work well because they let your subscribers and customers easily find products and services that interest them most.
For instance, you can divide featured products and services, by gender, age, price or interests, such as techies or travel addicts. Your gift guide doesn’t have to be extensive, but it should be useful and easily shareable.
3. Leverage co-marketing and smart collaborations
Brands are racking up sales by partnering up with complimentary partners to leverage the power of cross-promotion. Co-marketing is when two businesses collaborate on promotional efforts for a co-branded offer. In a co-marketing partnership, both companies promote a piece of content or product, and share the results of the promotion.
If you own a local gym, consider partnering with a health-based eatery on a holiday incentive that drives foot traffic to your gym and patrons to their open tables. In the retail industry, collabs pay dividends. Consider the success of successful H&M collaborations, including Karl Lagerfeld, Balmain, Marni, Kenzo, Versace and Erdem and most recently, Moschino. Activate your own collaboration with a local business or global partner this season and dedicate mutual promotional efforts across key channels.
4. Deploy live chat on your website
During the holidays, shoppers want quick answers to their questions and concerns. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll wait around for a delayed email response or complete tedious contact forms. According to Econsultancy, 79% of consumers say they prefer live chat functions because they don’t have to wait on hold. They prefer to get their questions answered immediately. This is why your business will benefit from the use of live chat tools.
Talk with your customers in real time and increase your sales by deploying live chat software during the holiday season. For example, Tidio offers beautiful and customizable chat features for website visitors alongside a powerful and simple dashboard that makes it easy to communicate with customers, no matter how they reach out.
Olark is another popular live chat solution that offers real-time reporting, automated messages, and straightforward team management tools. Ultimately, choose a live chat platform that is highly customizable, so you can adjust it to fit your branding and business needs.
5. Pay close attention to holiday social media metrics
Do you know which holiday messaging and visuals work the best? If not, now is the time to start segmenting and tracking your holiday content. The simplest metric you’ll need to track are the number of likes and shares that your content receives across your top platforms.
Next, focus on lead generation. A large part of social media marketing revolves around sharing content. However, you want your biggest fans to do more than look at your posts and never engage with your business. Track the number of people that visit your dedicated landing pages from your social media accounts, as well as which social media platforms generate the most leads.
Another creative way to track holiday social engagement is to create a branded hashtag. Invite shoppers to share their unboxing, gift experience, or first usage of your product or service. Don’t underestimate the power of user generated content. There are hundreds of YouTube channels dedicated to it!
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