2019 Holiday Season Takeaways and Ecommerce Marketing Action Items

The 2019 holiday season has concluded, and once again ecommerce experienced record-breaking sales. This online holiday season registered just above $142 billion in online sales, a 13% increase from last year, according to Adobe Analytics.

But what made the 2019 holiday season so successful, and which trends have become the new normal? Let’s explore.

The Subtle Nuances of November

In sports, subtle moves with a major impact are called the “game within the game,” which succinctly describes the continuing evolution of Gray November’s monthlong series of discounts.

We started seeing pre-Black Friday deals and other heavy discounts start in late October. But once we entered November, we started seeing this “game within the game” begin to play out.

Black Friday is Now a Week-long Event

The concept of Black Friday week started in 2018 and became an official thing this year. Many retailers started their sales on the previous Sunday, and many others jumped in on Monday.

Beginning that day, more than a quarter of subject lines in my personal retailer tracking inbox had the term “Black Friday.” It’s possible that Black Friday week was a result of the day falling later in the year, but it continues the trend of a growing sales event. Expect this to be the new norm. 

The Cyber Five Expands to the Cyber Ten

The Cyber Five (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) now accounts for 20% of the holiday season’s ecommerce revenue. But this period has morphed into the Cyber Ten, thanks in part to Black Friday week.

The ten days from the Sunday before Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday accounted for seven of the top online sales days of the entire season, with six of them hitting $3 billion+ in ecommerce sales and accounting for 27% of the total holiday revenue.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday Remain Tentpoles

Black Friday recorded $7.4 billion in ecommerce sales, falling just short of Cyber Monday 2018’s record-setting $7.9 billion day.

But this year, shoppers propelled Cyber Monday to $9.4 billion in ecommerce sales, meaning both days grew nearly 20% year-over-year. While consumers show a willingness to shop early, they’re also willing to shop often, especially on these tentpole days.

The New Daily Online Sales Benchmark is $2B

Only a couple of years ago, $1 billion in one-day ecommerce sales was the benchmark to hit during the holidays. In 2018, only the period of Dec. 22-25 failed to reach that mark.

But in 2019, only Christmas Eve missed it, with $850 million in ecommerce sales. Two billion dollars is now the new online sales benchmark, with 29 days reaching it, including each day during the Cyber Ten.

Mobile Revenue Grows, Smartphones Gain Share

Mobile continued its march toward the dominant shopping method in the 2019 holiday season. However, tablet’s share of mobile was replaced by smartphones.

• In 2019, purchases on smartphones accounted for nearly 35% of revenue, according to Adobe, while tablets accounted for 5%

• In 2018 season, smartphones made up 31% of revenue, and tablets 9%

We saw this same shifting pattern for mobile devices in web traffic:

• In 2019, smartphones accounted for 58% of retail web traffic, while tablets hit 5%

• This was up from 51% in 2018, when tablets made up 8% of the traffic

I have repeatedly said if you’re not mobile optimized, you’re not optimized – and we’re clearly at the point now where smartphone optimization is table stakes. 

Consumers Continue to Value Email

Email marketing continued to drive ecommerce sales, accounting for 17% of online revenue this year, nearly half of which (49%) came from smartphones. To put this in context, social media drove less than 2% of sales. You can see why email marketing is a powerful promotional tactic.

Email volume continues to increase year over year, confirming that Gray November is alive and well. This season, average daily sends began to increase the last week of October and continued through November. Overall, there were 10% more emails sent in November than in October.

Emails sent from the Bronto Marketing Platform supports the notion that Black Friday week is a promotional event. In November, there were 54% more emails sent during Black Friday week than in the previous weeks. This represents a significant increase in sends during the week of Black Friday compared to previous years.

Of course, discounting in email remained the top tactic. Eighty-four percent of consumers said they’re more likely to open emails with discounts, and 58% felt that relevant email offers had a higher likelihood of purchasing.

2019 Holiday Season Takeaways and How to Use Them

Analyzing the 2019 holiday season does no good unless you implement the lessons learned to further your marketing program. From the takeaways above, here are opportunities for some marketing reflection and optimization throughout 2020:

$2B is the New Daily Ecommerce Sales Benchmark

Question: How do you plan to attract new customers and increase AOV to take advantage of this increase in consumer spending?

Email Marketing Needs to be a Major Program Component

Question: What specifically can you do to improve your email program throughout the year?

The Cyber Ten replaced the Cyber Five

Question: Do you have enough value-adds and promotional strategies to take full advantage of this extended sales period?

Smartphones Took Over Web Traffic, Getting There for Online Sales

Question: Are your website, emails, popup forms and paid search strategies optimized for mobile users?

Now is the time to dive deep into the types of offers customers responded to, the types and timing of automated email messages (i.e., abandoned cart, post-purchase, etc.), subject line tactics, paid search strategies, and the traffic sources and devices.

These tactics will allow you to test hypotheses and roadmap improvements to your overall marketing programs, giving you an early start on next year’s planning while driving increased sales year-round.

3 Holiday Promotions That Keep Subscribers Opening Your Emails

There’s no shortage of promotions retailers can choose when planning their holiday email marketing strategy. However, the holiday season is long, so retailers need to find ways to not only increase sales but also keep subscribers opening their emails.

Here are three kinds of promotions that I expect will be heavily used by retailers throughout this upcoming holiday season to accomplish these goals.

1. Category and Daily Deals

Category-specific sales, promotions where one category of products is discounted, have been an increasingly popular holiday promotion over the past several years. With Black Friday sales now lasting the entire week for many retailers, category-specific sales are a way to keep the discounts new and exciting, which keeps consumers checking their emails.

If you do plan to offer daily deals, there’s no need to leave them a mystery. Consider letting people know early on which categories will be on sale and when. This approach allows the consumer to better plan their purchases.

Sure, they may want to wait two days to purchase sweaters at an additional discount, but many will want to consolidate purchases, especially if there’s a free shipping threshold they need to reach. Use a sense of urgency in your marketing by reminding people that items may sell out quickly to encourage order consolidation.

Offering daily category sales can also help you plan additional ad campaigns and year-end promotions later in the holidays. By knowing that one category of products didn’t sell as expected, you can begin to offer deeper discounts on these products throughout the season or feature them in year-end closeout promotions.

2. Free Shipping

Free shipping has quickly become a consumer expectation. According to Deloitte, it was the second-most appealing discount to shoppers last holiday season, behind only price discounts.

This likely explains why, according to eMarketer, there was a year-over-year increase in holiday orders that were shipped free, starting with Black Friday week and continuing through Christmas Day.

Last season, there was a noticeable increase in retailers’ advertising free shipping as a primary incentive. Consumers will once again be drawn to free shipping, and you’ll want to be ready to take full advantage of it.

As the season begins to wind down and expedited shipping becomes necessary, consider offering free or upgraded shipping as the primary incentive, not as an add-on to another promotion. You may want to lower or remove the spend threshold to qualify for these offers, as many retailers did last season.

In a lot of cases, you may find consumers spend above the previous threshold as they round out their gift buying. Just be sure to promote free shipping in both the subject line and email body copy.

3. Buy Online Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS) is for everyone

Whether you’re an omnichannel retailer or not, BOPIS affects you. Forty-one percent of consumers used this service last holiday season, and 50% of consumers decided where to shop based on whether BOPIS was a fulfillment option.

If you are an online-only retailer, you need to account for your competition who offer it — and maybe even alter your free shipping strategy to account for it. If you’re a retailer who offers it, you’ll want to use this to your advantage.

According to the NRF, the No. 1 reason consumers chose BOPIS was to avoid paying for shipping. If you’re an omnichannel retailer, promote BOPIS as a stand-alone incentive, potentially offering a discount, gift card or free gift for BOPIS orders.

As the season winds down, focus on those holiday procrastinators by encouraging a sense of urgency and pitting free in-store pickup against costly next-day shipping offered elsewhere.

Source: National Retail Federation, “2018/2019 Winter Consumer View,” Jan, 2019

But this value-add does not have to be saved until the end of the season. Consider giving the service a little customer-friendly pizzazz, such as by offering free gift-wrapping on these orders or in-store coupons at time of pick-up to encourage unplanned purchases, or even by providing complimentary hot chocolate, coffee, tea, and holiday cookies.

If you offer BOPIS, be sure to promote it wherever you can:

• In a dedicated section of your emails

• Embedded into your primary email creative

• Even in lifecycle messages, such as in a welcome series.

And, of course, clearly provide a link to a store locator in your emails, such as in the header or navigation bar.

Wrapping It Up

The holiday season is long, but by planning promotions that can last the whole season and provide competitive differentiation, you can keep subscribers opening your emails and be ready to earn as much of the shoppers’ wallet as possible.

The Most Important Things to Know About Holiday Email Planning

The holiday shopping season is upon us and, like last year, this year is expected to once again break online sales records — reaching $142 billion, according to eMarketer. For companies big and small, email marketing is going to have a significant hand in helping drive those record sales.

But planning for a long holiday season takes consideration and time. Regardless of whether you’ve already started the planning process or not, here are some of the key things you need to prepare your email marketing program for a successful holiday season.

Gray November, Cyber Monday, and the Cyber Ten

Gray November is no longer a trend — it’s the norm. But this year it becomes a bit longer. There are fewer days, only 27, between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Plan for a long month leading up to Black Friday Week.

The Cyber Ten

Last year, 19% of online holiday revenue was generated from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, often referred to as the Cyber Five. Not surprisingly, these five days were the top five online sales days of the entire holiday season.

Twenty-three percent of Cyber Five sales came from email marketing. Looking at my inbox, the Sunday before Black Friday received the lowest number of emails for not only the entire week but for the following nine days. There is an opportunity to jump on early sales by increasing your email sends on this day.

But this year you should look beyond these five days and focus on a longer period. The ten-day period from November 24th to December 3rd will be an extremely busy shopping period. Let me introduce you to the Cyber Ten!

Here’s why:

• The day after Cyber Monday was the sixth busiest shopping day of the year, generating nearly $3 billion in online sales. This was only a slight difference from the fifth-busiest day.

• The day before Thanksgiving saw year-over-year growth of 32% and generated $1 billion in incremental sales. Expect this to be a major online sales day this year.

• Black Friday has finally morphed into Black Friday week, with many sales kicking off on the Monday before.

• The Sunday before Black Friday also saw an increase of $1 billion in incremental sales, meaning people were not only excited about the early deals but they shopped them.

Cyber Monday

Each year, Cyber Monday sets the record as the largest online sales day in history (nearly $8 billion in 2018). This year will be no exception. Your Cyber Monday email strategy should be to plan early and plan late.

• Last year more than half-a-billion was spent online by 7 a.m. PST.

• The most active shopping period of the entire year was from 7–11 p.m., ringing up $2 billion in online sales during that time.

• Last year, the Bronto Marketing Platform saw a 21% lift in year-over-year Cyber Monday emails sent, totaling more than a half-billion emails in one day. Plan on sending multiple emails!

• Many email marketers tend to relax a bit the day after — don’t. Remember, the day after is one of the biggest online sales days of the season.

Hot Promotions Of The Season

Throughout the holiday season, most retailers will run a multitude of discounts. According to Deloitte, the three most appealing discounts to shoppers last holiday season were price discounts, free shipping, and free gifts — and these were certainly noticeable last year.

Here are a few messaging strategies that were prominent last year, and that I expect to see this season too.

Daily deals

With holiday deals starting early, daily deals have always been a way to keep subscribers checking their emails. By offering special discounts on specific products or categories of products, subscribers may check their email more often to ensure they’re not missing anything.

One trend from last year was promoting categories that would be on sale throughout the entire campaign. For many of those that offered a week’s worth of daily deals (often coinciding with Black Friday week), they promoted at the onset which categories would be going on sale, and when. This way, subscribers who were planning on making a specific purchase could plan accordingly.

Free shipping

Free shipping became a major focal point in promotions last season. As mentioned, consumers found free shipping to be the second-most appealing promotional offer. This is likely why, according to eMarketer, there was a year-over-year increase of holiday orders that were shipped free, starting with Black Friday Week and continuing through Christmas Day.

As the season inched toward a close, free shipping — including expedited shipping — turned from an additional incentive to a primary one. While many retailers stipulated a minimum spend for the order, not all did. With free shipping, you have options to test.

Use free shipping as both an add-on incentive and a stand-alone one. Seeing as holiday discounts run for nearly two full months, using free shipping as a promotional tool may provide your program with another way to prevent your promotions from going stale.

Buy-online pickup in-store (BOPIS)

Forty-one percent of consumers reported using BOPIS last holiday season, and its year-over-year usage increased by 47% from November 1st through December 19th. According to the NRF, 64% of consumers choose BOPIS to avoid paying for shipping fees, which echoes consumers’ desire for free shipping promotions.

If you have the capability, promote your BOPIS service in your emails, on your website and in any other marketing channel you use — especially as the season winds down.

Last year, I saw retailers offering discounts for online and BOPIS-only orders to secure an immediate sale while still driving customers in-store, where 85% of shoppers said they made an unplanned purchase while picking up BOPIS orders.

Five Holiday Subject Line Strategies You Should Use

Knowing the inbox will be crowded throughout the holiday season, retailers must catch their subscribers’ attention. Emojis, even after all of these years, continue to be a good way to gain inbox attention. Here are a few ways to effectively use emojis in your email messages.

1. Use one single emoji to start the subject line. This can catch readers’ attention without being overwhelming or distracting.

2. Use repeating emojis to make the email pop. Don’t worry, this won’t cause deliverability problems.

3. Use emojis to bookend subject line text. In the same vein, using, increasing and decreasing sized emojis as you move toward and away from the text can make the text stand out even more – even if the emoji lacks color.

4. Include repeating emojis in the preheader text. This not only stands out in the inbox pane but also allows you to use more text in the subject line.

5. Use an emoji in the “send from” name. This is used far less often but adding color to the sender name can make your email stand out.

Three Other Notable Holiday Marketing Tips

• Ensure your emails and website are mobile-friendly. Mobile generated nearly 40% of online revenue last season and accounted for more than half of all retailer web traffic for the first time. It also accounted for more than $2 billion on Cyber Monday alone.

• The new benchmark is $2 billion. Last season, only four days (12/22-12/25) failed to reach the $1 billion daily benchmark but none missed by more than $120 million. It seems that $2 billion is becoming the new benchmark, with 26 days reaching that mark in 2018 – that’s nearly double from the year prior.

• Send on the weekends. According to my own inbox analysis, most Saturdays and Sundays in November recorded the lowest volume of email sends for the entire month. Even with lower send volumes, every day in November still recorded online sales of $1 billion. Bump up your email sends on these days to take advantage of a less crowded inbox.

There you have it, some Rudolph-approved holiday tidbits to help guide your email marketing program this holiday season — you didn’t think I’d forget the obligatory holiday cliché, did you?

Data Dive: How to Personalize Email & Navigation for Maximum Impact

Segmentation data is an essential element of delivering relevant email messages, but deciding which pieces of information to use can present challenges. And how do you personalize emails when you have too little information, such as with new email subscribers?

For email marketers, finding opportunities to collect background on your customer can deliver a more personalized email experience. While this information exists for every retailer — whether they sell apparel, footwear, jewelry, or insects — marketers often overlook customer background data widely available to them.

Stop ignoring the information in front of you and start segmenting your email subscribers by focusing on some behavior-based alternatives.

Collecting Background at Sign-up

There are some surprisingly simple ways to collect useful, usable information from new subscribers at the onset. Look no further than the email subscription process. Asking for a single piece of data on the actual sign-up form, such as gender or product size, provides an immediate segmentation opportunity.

Here’s how. Imagine you are an apparel retailer selling clothing for both men and women. Capturing their gender allows you to send a welcome email tailored to that specific gender. You can personalize with different hero images, navigation links, secondary content and product recommendations.

If your company sells both B2B and B2C, consider asking which group the subscriber falls into. Options like this exist for most retailers — you just need to decide which piece of information makes the most sense for your brand.

You can also capture the product category the user signs up from. For example, if a subscriber is viewing engagement rings on your site and then decides to sign up for your emails, knowing this information can help you tailor your welcome messages for this subscriber while providing a different set of messages to shoppers browsing watches.

Beyond the Simple Navigation Bar

Your email navigation bar holds a lot of value for collecting segmentation data, because clicking on navigation links tells you a lot about customers’ immediate interests. But capturing and using segmenting data is about more than just customizing navigation bars, it is about making all emails more relevant.

When an email subscriber clicks on any link inside of an email, their behavior tells a story. Your job is to help them navigate it. Here are some effective ways to provide them a more personalized storyboard.

Using Non-Traditional Navigation Bars

Traditionally, navigation bars contain links to a brand’s primary product categories — but they don’t have to. Consider what other types of links inside of your emails might be useful for customizing messaging.

For example, knowing a customer’s shoe size might be helpful for a footwear retailer. Instead of including links to your primary categories, you could instead link by shoe size. Then, you could segment subscribers by the size they indicated when clicking on a particular link. This would allow the marketer to use dynamic content in future emails, such as using a more traditional navigation bar with size-filtered links.

In this scenario, subscribers who click on the size 6 link in the navigation bar are placed into the size 6 segment. In future emails, the navigation bar has more traditional links, such as links to dress and casual shoes. However, when the subscriber clicks on the dress shoes link it would direct them to the dress shoes landing page, but with the products already filtered to size 6.

This is just one example of using navigation bars for the sole purpose of gathering customer background. Whether it’s shoe size, dress size, or type of pet, think of ways your brand can apply this same segmentation and email strategy.

Lifecycle Messages

Automated lifecycle messages outperform promotional messages because they’re based on customer action, like an email sign-up. And when customers sign up for your email program, they often plan to make a purchase soon, from either you or someone else.

Using some of the data already mentioned, you could send the subscriber a more relevant welcome message. But instead of sending a generic message two, three and four, you could use click-behavior inside of the emails themselves to customize subsequent messages.

Let’s use the apparel retailer from the earlier example. They capture gender at sign-up and send a gender-specific welcome message. But, instead of sending a generic second message in the welcome series, they could use click behavior from the welcome message to determine the next message.

For those who click the “jeans” link in the welcome message, they would receive a jeans-focused email that helps them select the right style and fit; it could even showcase some customer favorites. For those who click on swimwear, they would receive messaging around the hot new styles for the season and swim accessories like cover-ups.

And that manage preference message so many retailers send during the welcome series? It’s likely no longer needed now that you’ve collected some of this very same information.

This type of click-based messaging can apply to a variety of lifecycle messages, such as birthday, lapsed-purchase, browse recovery, and post-purchase messages.

Promotional Emails

Using this information in everyday promotional messages is also manageable. Even though the main content of the email may be generic (e.g. 30% sitewide sale), you can cater secondary content in each email to the individual based on these same data points.

For those in category-specific segments, like swimwear (either from sign-up, click, browse, or purchase), you can show swimwear banners or product recommendations. For those in particular size, gender, or customer categories, you can them content most appropriate for them.

Go Get Started

With a good marketing platform, this information is at every marketer’s fingertips and can easily be used by even the most time-strapped email marketer. If done well, you should expect these more relevant messages to increase conversions.

How to Start Segmenting Your Emails

I receive hundreds of marketing emails each day, and I immediately notice how much, or little, segmentation is in a company’s email strategy. Consumers increasingly expect more relevant emails from retailers, but too few actually take the time to segment their emails — even just a little.

From my experience, the reasons for the lack of segmentation usually center on time and resources — too few people handling email and not enough time to execute the strategy. With only two people in the email department, it isn’t realistic to consistently send seven varieties of messages each time.

But that doesn’t mean a company can’t segment their emails. They just need to start in a manageable way and grow from there.

You have to start somewhere

Companies need to understand the obstacles that prevent them from achieving a consistent segmenting strategy. Is it the lack of time needed to segment, lack of data, or the marketing tool’s ability to segment? Maybe it’s not knowing where to start.

Should someone start with segmenting lifecycle messages or promotional messages? While there are a lot of ways to segment lifecycle messages, I find most companies struggle most with segmenting the day-to-day promotional messages.

But they don’t have to. Here are three simple segments any retailer, regardless of the resources available, can use to begin their email segmentation strategy.

Isolate your recent purchasers

Create a segment of those who recently purchased from you, say within the last five days, and withhold them from promotional sends. This can be a great first step in creating a better customer experience.

Rather than asking someone who just purchased from you (especially if it is their first purchase) to immediately buy more, you provide them a few days break from the promotional email onslaught. This gives them time to be excited about their purchase while not treating them like you do the person who has never purchased from you.

Pro tip: To keep these people engaged, and potentially purchase again, create dedicated post-purchase messaging for your recent purchasers. These messages can improve the overall customer and brand experience and generate significant revenue.

Isolate your non-openers and non-purchasers.

Create a segment of contacts who have both not opened an email in a given time (e.g. six months) and have also never purchased, as this behavior indicates a lack of interest in your brand or products. Begin to withhold this segment from some promotional sends.

This can be a permanent suppression until you have a non-opener re-engagement campaign automated, or simply a reduction in cadence (two emails per week instead of five). Doing so can provide a variety of benefits, including:

• Better reporting: When you send emails to non-openers your email open rates are being artificially dragged down and you’re not getting a true measure of how they perform. This is especially important if you are doing subject line testing. While one subject line may look to be outperforming another, having a large number of non-openers in one group may make it appear as if one is performing worse than it is.

• Deliverability: Sending to consistent non-openers can have a negative impact when it comes to inbox deliverability. ISPs like Gmail look at these engagement rates as a factor in determining whether your email makes it to the inbox or spam folder. Be smart about who you’re sending emails to.

• Acquisition source: Try to identify a common theme in acquisition source for these contacts. Did the majority come in from a sweepstakes or from a social promotion? Being able to identify an acquisition source that has a higher-than-average non-response rate can help you prepare a targeted strategy for this set of subscribers moving forward.

Pro tip: Create a never-purchased series for new email subscribers who haven’t made their first purchase. For example, you could automate a series of messages around the four-week mark for new subscribers if they have not made a purchase reinforcing your competitive differentiators, and maybe even offer a steeper discount to entice the first purchase.

Find your customers

Create a segment of your customers. This could be all of your customers, only repeat purchasers, those who have spent over a certain dollar amount, or some other criteria that makes sense for your organization.

You may want to include some factor of recency to this segment. For instance, if a contact has purchased five times from you but has not purchased in the past two years, should they be included? In most cases, probably not. But again, this would be company specific.

When sending emails to these contacts make them feel appreciated. Here are a couple of ways:

• Thank them: Create a small banner at the top of each email recognizing them as a customer and thanking them. This could easily be appended at the top of each email using dynamic content or easily inserted into a duplicate message.

• Offer exclusivity: If you have an upcoming sale, consider giving this segment early access and let them know they are receiving this early access. This can make them feel appreciated and also provides a sense of urgency to make a purchase. You can also run specific sales just for your past customers, such as a flash sale. Again, let them know the sale is just for them.

Pro tip: Consider touting these email-only offers as part of your enticement for joining, or staying a part of, your email program. This can give subscribers a reason to not only remain subscribed but also continue opening your emails — which we know can help inbox placement.

With each of these examples, the segments are not only easy to create but the strategy is also easy to execute consistently, even for those with fewer resources. Even if the segmentation strategy consists more of not sending emails to specific groups than creating new messages, that’s not a bad thing. Many times, an email not sent is better than an irrelevant email.

Email segmentation is important, and you need to start somewhere. Don’t be overwhelmed. Starting in a manageable way will help you feel more comfortable doing it and can help identify roadblocks to further advancing your segmentation efforts.

Removing these roadblocks will help your email team become more efficient, which will ultimately help you drive even more revenue from your email program.

After all, isn’t that the goal?

Don’t You Know Me at All? The Importance of Relevant Recommendations

Imagine this scenario. You’re staying at a hotel, and you visit the concierge for a great dinner recommendation. You give him all sorts of information, including your craving for surf and turf. You tell him about the vintage red wine you like and your wife’s favorite chardonnay. You say you want a relaxed, romantic atmosphere – nothing too loud. After sharing all of those details, the concierge recommends the local sports bar. Wouldn’t you have expected more? Would you think less of the concierge and even the hotel chain as a whole? This same kind of interaction happens between retailers and consumers every day.

Such a disconnect can quickly turn consumers off and send them searching for other options. They are demanding personalized experiences and have come to expect relevant recommendations in exchange for sharing information about themselves. In fact, according to a Bronto-commissioned survey of U.S. consumers, 60% of millennials and 45% of Gen Xers expect retailers to make product recommendations based on their past purchases. Yet just 21% of millennials and 9% of Gen Xers are always satisfied with the recommendations they receive. What a major gap between expectation and reality.

When they’re done well, product recommendations are a powerful tool for connecting with consumers and making them feel like you truly understand them. They can be used in virtually any email, from day-to-day promotional emails and automated lifecycle messages, such as post-purchase and browse recovery, to order and shipping confirmations. They can even stand on their own as recommendation-only emails. And the best part is they don’t cause any additional strain for your likely lean email marketing team.

Let’s explore some of the dos and don’ts.

Make Your Product Recommendations Stand Out

Be specific to the individual. Recommendations are just that, recommendations. But showing me something my neighbor wants isn’t going to necessarily help me. Whenever possible, create recommendations that are subscriber-specific. “Listen” to the data. Email subscribers give you all sorts of digital cues – click activity, browse history, preference data and purchase behavior. This data allows you to generate more relevant results, which is particularly critical when using recommendations in a batch-and-blast message. By nature, these emails are often irrelevant to a majority of recipients. But including targeted recommendations based on individual data can often be enough to capture interest and inspire action.

Combine them with lifecycle messages. Lifecycle messages are already more relevant than standard messages because they’re based on consumer behavior. Recommendations will only take them to the next level. For example, I received a message last year reminding me that my son’s third birthday was coming up. It said finding the perfect toy for a three-year-old can be hard, but they were there to make it easier. It was a timely and engaging message by itself. But what made it even better was it included recommendations for gift ideas for three-year-old boys.

Target your purchase-related messages. Using recommendations in both transactional and post-purchase messages should be a no-brainer. You can offer specific recommendations to sell complementary items. Did a customer buy a pair of boots without waterproof spray or a hat and scarf without the matching gloves? This is the perfect place to cross-sell the customer.

Avoid These Potential Pitfalls

“Just for you” subject lines. Have you ever received a message that claims to be “Just for you?” Yet when you open the message, the results aren’t relevant to you and your behavior, and all credibility is lost? I know I have. If you were to receive another message from this brand containing that same subject line, would you open it? Doubtful. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … you know the rest.

Static recommendations. Using static, non-intuitive recommendations can still benefit retailers if they’re done right. But be mindful of the language you use in your message. When including recommendations as a secondary or tertiary section of an email message, forego the “just for you” strategy for less specific language. Instead, go with something like top sellers, customer favorites, highest rated, new additions, picks of the month, most viewed or staff picks. This will set the right expectation for subscribers.

Recommendation-only messages. As I said earlier, sending a message with nothing but recommendations isn’t a bad thing. They can be great messages, but be wary of how you present the information. When recommendations are irrelevant, you’ll quickly lose your credibility. One such email I received suggested stylus pens and ladies jewelry, which didn’t really go along with the iPhone accessory I had purchased. For these messages, be sure the majority, if not all, of your recommendations are appropriate for the individual recipient. If not, heed my earlier advice and set the right expectations with your subject line and email copy.

Make Email Recommendations Work for You

When it comes to recommendations, ignoring your data is the worst thing you can do. Think of yourself as that concierge. When your customers offer you information, use it to meet their needs and expectations. If you don’t, they’ll begin to feel undervalued and lose faith in your brand. They trust you – don’t give them a reason to stop.

New Year, New Emails, No More Excuses

With email continuing to be one of the top-performing online marketing channels, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that my inbox is overrun with bland, generic emails. Why change what seems to be working? But change is inevitable. If you don’t believe me, just look at what evolving consumer expectations have done to many legacy retailers.

First, a look at some numbers. The Relevancy Group reports that U.S. marketing executives attribute 23% of total revenue in Q2 2017 to email, a 21% year-over-year increase. But other research suggests consumers expect more. A Flagship Research report from 2016 showed that 62% of consumers expect website browsing behavior to be used to personalize emails, and 76% expect the same with purchase history. Relevance matters to consumers, especially when it comes to marketing emails.

Traditional promotional emails can still deliver revenue, but relevant, personalized emails can deliver much more. I know, you don’t have a lot of resources at your disposal. I know, it’s only you running the show. And yes, I know you already have a welcome series (well, really, I hope you do). But I also know an excuse when I hear one.

The fact is, while some strategies require larger resources or investments, many do not – and those that don’t can pay huge dividends. Make 2018 excuse-free. Roll up your sleeves and improve your email program. Here are three ways to get started.

Step 1: Reassess Your Welcome Series

If a 60-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman sign up to receive your emails, will they receive the same welcome series? If the answer is yes, you need to make adjustments. Consumers expect relevance. Sending the same message to both subscribers is not that.

There are a couple of ways to do this. Look at what page, or category, the sign-up came from, and deliver specific messaging based on the acquisition source. If they signed up from the maternity category, customize their messaging to match. If they signed up on the men’s swim trunks page, do the same. Apply this strategy not only to the first message, but the entire series as well. Tracking the source is easy to do with a simple piece of source code, a field identifier or by using a unique sign-up form. The best part is that you can implement this tracking before any messages are even created, which gives you valuable segmentation information on your subscribers before new welcome messages start sending.

In lieu of this tactic, or in addition to it, determine the welcome series based on the actual clicks inside of your welcome email. If a subscriber receives a generic welcome message and clicks on the maternity navigation bar link, the next message should be maternity-focused. The same goes for other clicks. This allows subscribers to control their own onboarding experience. One company that tried this saw increases in every email metric for the customized message versus the generic one. The personalized message generated 140% more revenue than the generic version, while making up only 3% of the volume of sends.

In both instances, setting up the automation and tracking the data are extremely easy to do. And messages can be created and implemented one at a time. Gradually implementing new messages will require fewer resources for execution because it’s not an all-at-once strategy. As a bonus, think about all of the segmentation data you’ll capture with this click behavior while implementing your plan.

Step 2: Personalize Your Cart Recovery Strategy

Should a customer abandoning $800 worth of products receive the same message as the customer who abandoned one $50 item? Their obstacles to conversion and motivations for purchase are likely very different. Yet, in most cases, each gets the same message.

Why not customize the message to overcome potential hurdles? You have a lot of cart data readily available that can help you make these messages more relevant. For products themselves, look at things like cart total, SKUs, product category, margin of products, sale price, what gender would likely use it and/or sale end date. Consider the actual shopper by looking at their purchase history, such as recency of last purchase, lifetime AOV or total number of orders.

Such data can help you determine how to overcome conversion obstacles and what types of messages to communicate to the would-be buyer, including when to send them, how many to send, and what types of incentives to offer, if any. Addressing the shoppers’ needs – for example, communicating about installation and haul-away services for specific cart SKUs – can be a great way to address the individual shopper. Personalizing messages in a meaningful way, while protecting margins, lets both customers and retailers win.

Step 3: Think About What They Want

While relevant lifecycle messages can drive significant revenue, so too can your promotional messages. Crafting 50 segments to use in daily promotional emails isn’t realistic for most retailers, but you don’t have to settle for generic batch-and-blast messaging either. Inserting intuitive product recommendations into your emails is an excellent way to make emails more relevant.

Using product recommendations that take into account individual browsing and purchase history, email content, and even your select business rules can deliver powerful results. Think about your everyday promotional email sends. With a batch-and-blast strategy, each message is relevant to only a portion of the audience at any one time. With individual recommendations, some part of that message will be relevant at all times.

Include recommendations not only in your promotional messages but also in any triggered message, such as order and shipping confirmations, birthday messages, post-purchase messages, and even cart abandonment emails. You can even use recommendations as stand-alone email content. In addition to being relevant, these types of emails provide a nice change of pace from the standard promotional messages.

The best thing about using product recommendations is that they don’t require extra resources, so you can still focus on growing your email ROI. How does generating 33% more revenue from your emails sound? That’s what one company saw from emails sent with recommendations versus those without. People like personalization.

“Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying”

This line is from one of my favorite movies, and it sums up email marketing perfectly. Being complacent with your email program in 2018 is not the key to success. In fact, it may be the ticket to gradual failure. With competition coming from every direction, consumers are quick to tune it out. Personalization can help you cut through the noise. Are your emails differentiating you from your competitors? Do they give consumers what they want? If not, 2018 is a perfect time to ditch the monotonous one-size-fits-all messaging and get personal.

Eggnog and Fruitcake: Holiday Predictions That You Can Stomach

With the holiday shopping season about to begin, I thought this would be the perfect time to share my expectations for the end of the year. After all, planning is all about anticipation, and knowing what to anticipate will help you better prepare for the holidays. Here goes:

More Billion Dollar Days. 2016 saw 57 of 61 days in November and December rake in $1 billion in online sales. This year, I expect to see 60 of 61 days hit that mark. Why not all 61? Everyone needs a day to rest.

More Mobile Sales. Last year, mobile commerce grew nearly 54% during the holidays and accounted for 30% of all online sales. Mobile sales have been increasing year over year, and this trend will continue. Be sure you’re optimized for mobile because I expect it will account for roughly 35% of all online holiday sales.

And Even More Mobile Clicks. In Q4 2016, mobile accounted for nearly 57% of paid search clicks, with 47% coming from smartphones. Expect this to continue. Mobile is no longer a trend; it’s the way most consumers shop – at least some of the time. The smartphone is now the primary device that the majority of internet visitors use to access the internet. And in the not-so-distant future, it’ll be their primary device for buying online.

Promotions and In-Store Sales

Early Sales. Online holiday sales will start in October. Retailers have been discounting earlier and earlier to get a jump-start on their competition, turning Cyber Weekend into a month-long event that I like to call Gray November. But with Amazon taking in nearly 40% of all online sales last holiday season, and Prime memberships continuing to rise, retailers have even more to lose by not getting an early start.

Exclusions Apply. For the past several years, especially last year, I saw a noticeable trend in holiday sales having mass exclusions. As a heavy shopper during this period of time, I found myself frustrated. But frustrated or not, I expect this trend to continue. You will see fewer “off everything” promotions and an increase in discounts on “select items.” If you plan to restrict sales, be clear as to what is – and isn’t – included.

In-Store Exclusives. You may see a rise in brick-and-mortar retailers offering “off everything” or deeper discount sales for in-store only. This allows a retailer to drive that sought-after in-store traffic, while offering shoppers deeper discounts and no shipping fees. Seems like an obvious win-win.

Re-engineering the Brick-and-Mortar Experience. I expect in-store sales to increase from last year, but not as much as ecommerce sales. You’ll see a large push from multichannel merchants to drive in-store traffic, touting extra incentives for shopping in-store and even discounts for in-store pickup. As 65% of consumers make additional purchases when going in to pick up items, the tactic makes a lot of sense. Expect to see in-store-only Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales (likely all weekend long), as well as some in-store price-matching. While never a long-term model for success, many retailers may find it worthwhile during the holidays.

The Big Shopping Days

Black Friday and Cyber Monday. While no longer the start of the shopping season, these days are still known as deep discount days. Shoppers oblige and spend more online on these two marquee days than any others during the year. But which day is bigger?

• Both days will drive over $1 billion in mobile commerce.

• For the first time, Black Friday –not Cyber Monday – will be the largest online shopping day of the year.

• Of course, the marketing and promotions for these days will start on the Sunday or Monday prior.

Thanksgiving Day. This will continue its growth as an online shopping day and cross $2 billion in online sales for the first time ever.

Marketing Tools, Top Gifts and the Obligatory Amazon Mention

Browserless Commerce. Speaking of the Echo, voice assistants will be the hottest sellers of the season. While I predict Amazon devices to be the number-one sellers in this group, Google and Apple will see significant sales in this arena. The age of voice is upon us. “Hey Santa, bring me a new train set.”

Email Marketing. Email will continue to dominate as an online marketing tool during the holidays. Last year, Bronto sent 50% more messages than they did during Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2015, sending more messages in November than ever before in company history. I know my inbox will be busy.

Amazon’s Take. Amazon captured 38% of the online holiday sales last year, and it will once again own a substantial portion of the holiday ecommerce space. With the rise in Prime memberships and adoption of the Echo, I would not be surprised to see this figure inch up to the 45% mark.

Three Even Bolder Predictions:

• Starbucks will take flack over its holiday cup design. ‘Tis the season!

• I will once again purchase my tree on Black Friday.

• Fruitcake, while good in theory, will continue to be a poor party dessert.

What could go wrong? Apart from the hostility of rogue nation states, what else could throw holiday shopping into a tailspin? How about fallout from the Equifax data breach? Potential widespread credit card fraud resulting from this breach could put a major wrench in holiday spending and shopping habits. Credit cards could be frozen due to fraud, consumers could lose trust in online security when purchasing, and it could over-inflate online sales data if fraudulent sales are racked up. There have already been reports of a 15% increase in fraud as early as August of this year. This lack of trust in security might wind up benefiting major, name-brand retailers, as many consumers tend to put more trust in them.

What do you think you’ll see this holiday season? I plan to watch my inbox, shop my exclusionary sales online, and sip my coffee from a ridiculed Starbuck’s cup, all from the comfort of my living room. Just don’t be a Scrooge and charge me for shipping!

Alexa, Order Me Browserless Commerce

My five-year-old son recently uttered the phrase, “Why don’t you just ask Siri?” This was in response to my wife asking me a question. Even though my answer, “because I am smarter than Siri,” wasn’t fully accepted, something occurred to me. This is his normal.

Voice assistants appear to be poised to be the next big thing. After all, outside of emojis, speech is the most natural way to communicate. While assistants like Siri have been adopted for things like answering questions, texting, or setting reminders, the commerce capabilities are emerging. Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Alibaba are all in, or getting into, the voice assistant market. While home voice-controlled devices are still new, consumers are showing their willingness to adopt this evolving technology.

What does this mean for online retailers and brands that are accustomed to consumers navigating browsers rather than barking voice commands?

Browserless commerce, or conversational commerce, is still in its infancy. No one really knows what it will look like for sure. I have no doubt that ordering items in bulk, such as diapers and wipes together, will become a reality sooner rather than later. Once that’s tackled, what’s next?

How do Brands and Retailers Fit Into Browserless Commerce?

The first company people think of when it comes to voice ordering is Amazon – and with good reason. But if voice control becomes a major part of people’s daily experience, how will traditional online retailers adapt? Will retailers and brands be forced to sell on Amazon or Jet to have product exposure to customers? Will they be able to create their own browserless commerce “site,” and if so, how will consumers navigate it? Or will more marketplace competitors spring up to compete with Amazon, Jet, and eBay?

There are hurdles. Comparison shoppers and those who use reviews aren’t necessarily going to trust the voice assistant to deliver the right product at the right price. This may be less of an issue for those growing up with these tools. But for today’s shoppers, there needs to be a high level of trust in the device and company.

And how will we browse the internet via voice? Can the voice assistant search reviews and read them to us when we are shopping for a refrigerator? What does this do to advertisements and retargeting strategies?

And more importantly, who controls all of this data, and what will they do with it? If browserless shopping and voice search become an everyday reality, could this lead to the resurgence of offline marketing, like direct mail? Think about it. The data needed by retailers to narrowly target customers will be owned by whatever company is collecting it through their device. Retailers could easily purchase/rent targeted data from these companies (hello revenue stream) for direct-mail or other types of advertising techniques. Theoretically, they would even be able to fine-tune the types of customers they are targeting, from location, lifestyle, and real-time browsing history, just to name a few.

What Does This Mean for Brand Value?

Hey voice assistant, order me glass cleaner. Does it send me Windex or generic glass cleaner? Interestingly, voice-assisted shopping could erode name brands. Voice-ordering glass cleaner from Amazon means you may be automatically shipped a private label brand versus a name brand. Or what if a user uses laundry detergent for sensitive skin, but tires of the price of the brand-name “free and clear” detergent? If they order another detergent for sensitive skin, who makes the decision of which one to send?

As this way of shopping becomes more common, this issue has the potential to expand even further than just these examples. How will retailers react? Will the consumer care, and if so, should they? Remember, older generations might have stronger brand loyalties, but consumers growing up when this is the norm may not. Ordering name brands may be a break from the norm, especially if they are more expensive.

What about searching for other goods, like clothing? How can the browserless experience incorporate visuals? A spoken command could open a synced TV (through a device like a fire stick) or the Echo Show. This would allow consumers to visually browse products initiated by speech. Your voice could control the navigation, allowing you to choose the brand-name product you want. This would allow a site, such as Amazon, to avoid alienating its marketplace sellers, continue to collect ad revenue for higher displayed products, and provide the consumer with a transparent purchase process.

Could Households Be Branded?

Voice assistants are designed to make life “easier.” But connectivity to other electronics in the house is what will truly make life easier.  We may be looking at a future where homes are dominated by one brand, like Amazon, Google, or Apple. In this situation, you may have a Google Home device synced with your Nest and Chromecast devices. Intermixing Amazon or Apple products could potentially cause a disruption to your user experience, although a little competitive partnership will almost certainly be required. We may see a day when there are branded homes, with all household devices being synced and owned by one main company.

If there is consolidation around one company’s devices, will these companies go on a spending spree to purchase complementary systems to integrate, like alarm, appliance, or heating and air to provide an all-in-one home solution? I don’t think this will be the case, as fostering integrations seems the likeliest path to consumer adoption, but I wouldn’t be surprised to one day see companies experiment with a one-stop home connectivity approach.

While I may be living through the start of the spoken assistance era, my children will grow up with browserless commerce as the norm. Shopping via voice may seem unnatural for most of us, but it won’t be for them. I look back on pay phones as an example of something that was common when I grew up. Now, if I see one, I am startled at the sight. Ten years from now, my children may look back at smartphones in the same light.

The Next Generation of Batch-and-Blast Email Marketing

Miami-dwelling Joe likes the colorful Bermuda shorts and green boat shoes he found on your website. But when he gets the email promotion featuring the black winter jacket? Not so much.

Today’s consumers expect relevant communication from retailers, and in this example, Joe’s expectations were not met. It’s also the kind of example that’s been used to knock batch-and-blast emails as an ineffective strategy. But what if you could still batch-and-blast – and personalize?

With segmentation tools, recommendation engines, and easy-to-use lifecycle messaging automation, you can actually make batch-and-blast emails relevant to the individual consumer. Let’s explore how you can use these tools to revive your batch-and-blast messaging.

Segmentation Tools

Tools for segmentation are now built into most marketing automation platforms and make audience segmentation easier than ever. They also put the data, such as web browsing, email, and purchase activity, along with information provided by the consumer, in the hands of the actual marketer, not the IT department. This immediate access to data can be used to seriously enhance the overall user experience in a variety of ways. For instance, location data can be used to insert local store information into emails or target customers in the area when a new store is opening.

Product Recommendations

Once you’ve gathered segmentation data, you can use it to determine which products to display to the individual user. Using product recommendations based on subscriber data as secondary content in batch-and-blast emails increases the relevance of your message, and it can all be done without developing multiple variations of the message. You can use them to recommend similar products, upsell products, suggest accessories, or increase average order value, among other things.

Lifecycle Messages

Lifecycle messaging automation is an extremely effective strategy for retailers and can be a great way to augment batch-and-blast messages. Lifecycle messages, such as a welcome series, post-purchase series, and shopping cart abandonment, are high-revenue drivers, and retailers now have the ability to automate these messages with ease. They’re already very relevant to your audience, but you can enhance the experience for your customers even further with meaningful product recommendations.

Since crafting unique versions of day-to-day emails is no longer required, consider spending that saved time on creating more specific messaging for these series based on other factors, such as the source of acquisition or the category of products purchased. For instance, a post-purchase series for my new television should be different than the one for my new headphones. Combining this unique messaging with recommendations can be a significant win-win.

Having these tools readily available gives you the ability to take a one-size-fits-all email message and make it increasingly relevant. Since that winter jacket email to Joe now also highlights the latest tropical warm-weather items he’s sure to love, he doesn’t have to worry about being left out in the cold by an irrelevant email.

Batch and blast isn’t dead. It’s just growing up.

3 Ways to Cultivate Post-Holiday Customer Loyalty

How do retailers turn seasonal gift buyers into year-round customers? The fact is, it’s a struggle. Some customers may not want to hear from you for another 365 days, while others may need more personalized suggestions before they’ll make another purchase. Either way, at the very least, you want them to come back next year. But too often, retailers don’t devise a plan and simply lump these customers back into the regular stream of batch-and-blast messaging.

True story. My colleague used to buy a gift basket every year from the same company. She came to rely on their perfectly timed email with details of the previous year’s purchase and the option to reorder. It was so simple that she never bothered to shop around for a better deal. But last year, she didn’t receive that email. Instead, the company blasted her inbox with generic promotional emails. Figuring one of the promotions would help her get to the price point she’d enjoyed in the past, she started shopping. But she soon gave up. The promotions were all designed to promote a higher spend, so she ended up buying her gift basket from a competitor.

Instead of using the same old batch-and-blast strategy and expecting different results, you should be looking at every possible angle to exploit gift-giving opportunities well beyond the holiday season. Setting up a gift reminder email program is one of these opportunities. While common among online floral companies, it’s surprisingly underutilized by other retailers. Let’s change that.

Setting up such a service doesn’t have to be major undertaking. It’s actually quite easy to collect the necessary data and integrate it into your automated email process. Here are a few ways to begin turning those seasonal gifters into year-long buyers with a basic gift reminder program.

Optimize Your Forms

No need to start from scratch. Try tweaking your existing managed preference form. Update it to include fields such as occasion date, first name of possible recipient, relationship (e.g. child, parent) and occasion.

You can always create a new form and embed it on your purchase confirmation page. Just be sure to use warm, friendly language and let people know why you’re asking for this information. Those who find value in your products as gifts will typically see the value of your reminder service.

Optimize Your Transactional Messages

Take the time to incorporate promotional material into your order and shipping confirmations. Beyond the immediate upsell, create a section that calls attention to your gift reminder service. Not only are these messages opened at a high rate, but they are also sent to non-subscribers. This could double as a great way to grow your subscriber base.

Create Dedicated Messaging

Advertise your gift reminder service through stand-alone messaging. From an automated standpoint, include these messages in your engagement series, such as your post-purchase and welcome series. For a new subscriber, this is a value-add your site offers that your competitor might not. For those who just purchased, it might plant the seed that they should keep you top of mind the next time they’re looking for a gift. In addition to these automated messages, consider sending these messages to your entire audience once or twice a year.

No matter how you collect this important data, it will allow you to better target your messages and include product recommendations that cater to the specific recipient or the event. A subscriber searching for an upcoming anniversary gift will most certainly want to consider a different assortment of products than the parent shopping for a five-year-old’s birthday. Just imagine the personalization possibilities. Talk about relevant messaging!

A great user experience requires relevant content. A gift reminder service provides this relevance and helps build a connection between the consumer and the brand. Collecting more specific details from your customer creates so many opportunities to sell to these gift-buyers throughout the year, promote your brand as a go-to gift destination, and provide an overall better user experience.

Is Google Trying to Kill the Mobile Popup?

As you may have heard by now, come January 2017, Google’s search rankings will begin penalizing mobile websites that have pop-ups and interstitials. The reason?  Google says it is focused on providing users with a smooth mobile experience and allowing them to access the information they are looking for without interruption. The search provider believes that even if “optimized” for mobile devices, these features contribute to a poorer experience because of the devices’ smaller size.

Here are a few examples from a recent Google post of interstitials that will be penalized:

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These examples include some common tools for email subscription used by many online retailers.

Not all interstitials will be treated equal, however. Google will not penalize mobile sites that use them for legal obligations, login dialogs, or banners that use a “reasonable amount” of space and are easily dismissible as seen below. It should be noted that the sizing specs for “reasonable” have not yet been specified.

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Will It Really Matter?

So how much will this actually affect retailers? We don’t know yet. It’s only one of hundreds of criteria that determine Google’s ranking. In their blog post, Google states that “a page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.” Relevance seems to be the key word here. For larger retailers, such as WalMart, any negative impact may be minimal for them.

Smaller online retailers, who consistently rank lower and rely more heavily on ads to drive traffic, may feel the negative effect of keeping their pop-up is worth it. Growing their email list allows them to continually market their products to potential customers, and this may be their highest priority. Retailers will need to determine which side of the coin they fall on and whether the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

Are There Workarounds?

In looking at the allowable interstitial that uses a “reasonable amount of screen space,” there may be an opportunity to embed or link a subscription form into that appropriately-sized interstitial. It may be only a matter of time before maximizing that area will become the next targeting strategy.

Going “Old School”

This change does reinforce the importance for retailers to once again focus on the “old school” best practices for email collection. Strategies often abandoned in favor of a pop-up or lightbox, such as a prominent sign-up that lives above the fold on almost all pages of the site will be critical for maximizing sign-ups for mobile users.

Pop-ups and interstitials will still be allowed on the desktop version without penalty, which is good news for retailers looking to grow their subscriber file while still using these methods. But if you didn’t think providing customers with a smooth, mobile-first experience was absolutely critical before, it certainly is now. If you would like to see how mobile-friendly your website currently is, Google has a quick and easy tool for that.

While there’s still plenty of time to prepare prior to January, I wouldn’t wait. The conversation about email acquisition and other interstitial strategies should take place now so any changes can be implemented well in advance.

5 Ways to Prepare for the Holiday Season

You’ve likely got a list of to-dos longer than a kid’s wish list for Santa. And with the hustle of the season, it’s easy for some tasks to fall by the wayside, which could result in a poor customer experience or first impression, lost sales, or even an under-performing holiday season.  Don’t let this happen to you. Here are five essential tasks that should be on every commerce marketer’s holiday preparation list.

#1: Audit Your Forms

During the holidays, you’re likely to get a lot of new visitors, so be sure that the forms that help turn these visitors into subscribers are ready to go. And once they subscribe, they need to be able to access the manage preference form, especially if your welcome series directs them there.

A couple of questions for your team:

• Where do the forms live?

• Who can edit them?

• How does a customer reach them?

• Are they optimized for mobile?

• Are subscribers being assigned to the correct lists?

• Are the forms generally working as intended?

I recommend documenting each form and sharing with your team. If something breaks during the height of the holiday season, you must be able to fix it as quickly as possible without having to ask a lot of questions. This documentation will also allow you to easily add more forms over time without confusing how that form may affect other processes already in place.

#2:  Evaluate Your Content

At this time of year, consumers will be inundated with emails, so be sure your current email content is optimized for the busy season. Some items to review include:

• Scanability: Can people quickly digest the email and find the call to action (CTA)?

• Responsive Design: Are your emails mobile-friendly? If not, make them so!

• Send From Name Consistency: Is your company’s brand uniformly expressed across all messages (triggered and scheduled)?

• Preheader Text: Are you using it effectively and supporting the subject line (not repeating it)?

• Calls to Action: For emails that features several pieces of content, are the CTAs easily identifiable?

• Social CTAs: How prominent are they, and do they detract from the conversion CTAs? Are you clear about what you’re asking customers to do?

While these suggestions also apply to transactional messages, consider a few other things as well. For instance, are you using the promotional space wisely too, for instance, suggest stocking stuffers or other seasonal items? And don’t forget to highlight extended return policies and other holiday specific value-adds.

#3: Analyze Last Year’s Plan

Hopefully, you’ve already looked at last year’s plan. If you haven’t, here are some items to pay special attention to:

• Your High Priority Campaigns: Why were they must-haves? Did these campaigns perform as expected? If they didn’t, can you tell why?

• The Poor Performing Campaigns: Why did some campaigns fail? Was it due to timing of the send, or has that particular promo jumped the shark (or reindeer in this case) with your audience? Should you repeat it this year with a new spin?

• The Sending Cadence: Did you send more emails than anticipated? If so, why? Was it because a campaign was not delivering expected results and you needed additional sends to make up for it? Did you notice your competitors sending much more than you expected, causing you to match them for fear of losing out on revenue? How were unsubscribe rates with the increase in sends? What type of emails were added (i.e. types of discounts/free gifts, length of promo)?

#4: Plan for All Scenarios

Stuff happens. The Internet says so, so it must be true! In your planning, especially after looking at the items above, you should be prepared for all “oh no” scenarios. Get ready with:

• Back-up promotions: Remember last year when your plan went off the rails thanks to an underperforming campaign? Be prepared! Create extra promotions with different offers (tiered discount, dollar vs. percentage, free shipping) or additional free gifts to include. A great place to start is with your key campaigns for this season. Prepare the content in advance, build the email and have it ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

• Don’t forget: Set your promo codes up in advance as well! If you never need them, great. But it will be one less step to perform if you’re in reactionary mode.

• An answer to your “Oops” moment: Anticipate that Steve Urkel moment. Create “oops” messages covering the most common issues well in advance. You can even leave an editable space that allows you to either provide more clarity or customize a promo code. Some of the most common reasons for sending an oops email? A non-functioning promo code, a website that’s slow or completely down, promotion of the wrong incentive, and broken links.

But be sure the error warrants sending a message. If there’s a typo in the subject line, you probably don’t need to address it. If the subject line advertises a 50% off sale when it should have been $50 off, you’ll probably want to do something about it.

#5: Evaluate Your Season

Yes, you read this right! Once the season is complete, you should immediately evaluate the season. You can analyze better when the work is fresh in your mind. Nine months from now, you may not remember that the reason a key campaign under-performed was because of an error or a send time glitch. It also protects you if a key team member involved with the planning leaves during the year. Analyzing the season immediately gives you the best view of the current season and the information you need to accurately determine must-haves for next year. When planning time rolls around, compare these seasonal results with trends you have seen develop over the past year and determine whether a pivot needs to be made.

Final Thoughts

While this is not an all-inclusive list for holiday planning, it should at least get you thinking. By executing these ideas, you’ll be better prepared to deliver a smooth customer experience, react at a moment’s notice, and plan for the following year. If nothing else, knowing you’re prepared may help you sleep better at night, like a warm glass of milk. Just be sure it’s not the “big guy’s” milk.

How Consumers Across the Globe Shop and Buy Online

Consumer technology is constantly evolving, reshaping the way retailers and consumers interact on a daily basis. These changes force retailers to provide functionality that allows consumers to easily make purchases on their device, or devices, of choice. It’s become critical to understand how devices are used in different ways from one region to another.

Looking at results from a recent Bronto-commissioned survey of adult populations in the UK, US and Australia with access to a laptop, desktop, tablet, smartphone or wearable, the device of choice and shopping patterns change, not surprisingly, based on demographics and locale. So what does this tell us about how retailers need to prepare for shifts in consumer purchasing behavior?

Location, Location, Location

Smartphone adoption, to no one’s surprise, is at 75% or greater in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, with Australia leading the way at 88% adoption. However, the UK appears to be leading the way in terms of ditching their reliance on desktops and laptops in favor of mobile devices. Desktop ownership is significantly lower than both the US and Australia, and the country has the highest tablet ownership of the three.

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Does Buying Behavior Match?

In the US and the UK, 60% of respondents have used multiple devices to complete a purchase, while only 35% of Australians have done so. While this may signify a smoother purchase process regardless of device in Australia, we see a lower overall adoption of purchasing via mobile device in Australia. This leads me to believe that consumers are less comfortable making mobile purchases in AU, while UK and US consumers are still struggling to find a seamless, one-device experience. In those regions, it may be that the purchase process on mobile devices is still not fluid enough for consumers to complete the purchase on their device, causing them to abandon and later complete the purchase on a second device, likely a laptop or desktop.

In the US and AU, desktops and laptops remain the most common devices for purchasing, while in the UK, laptops and smartphones are the most common methods. When looking specifically at mobile devices, smartphone purchasing is fairly even between the US and UK, but tablet purchasing is significantly higher in the UK than in the US or AU.

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What’s the DNA of Who’s Buying?

It is not surprising that the younger the demographic, the more comfortable they are shopping via smartphones. Younger consumers in the US appear to be most comfortable making purchases via smartphone, with the UK and AU following respectively. However, the US begins to see the noticeable drop with the 45-54 group (from 58% to 31%), while the AU and UK see the decline with those ages 35-44. While US consumers under the age of 54 are more comfortable using smartphones for purchases, they are still not ready to ditch the more traditional methods.

When it comes to gender differences, we see men owning slightly more devices than women in all three countries. However, when it comes to smartphone purchases, the AU and UK are dead even with 37% of men and women making purchases via smartphones. Surprisingly, we see a significant disparity in the US, with 43% of men making smartphone purchases versus only 35% of women.

Take Two Tablets and Call Me in the Morning

In the UK and AU, the 25-34 year-old demographic leads the way with regards to tablet purchases, while in the US, it’s those 35-44. Overall, this is not entirely a surprise, considering the low desktop ownership in the UK. But it may indicate that, in the UK, tablets have successfully replaced desktops in the home and thus generated a greater share of those purchases.

Final Thoughts

Purchasing with a mobile device is fast becoming the norm, and streamlining the online purchase process will be essential to provide your customers the experience they expect. Here are a few ways to ensure a smoother consumer experience:

Focus on mobile first. Mobile devices are constantly becoming more powerful and are fully embedded into everyday life. Assume this, or another mobile device, will be the primary form of engagement now and in the future. Be sure your emails are mobile-friendly and your website provides a great mobile experience.

Make it easy to purchase. Having a mobile-friendly site does not mean you have optimized your purchase process. You must streamline the checkout process and reduce obstacles to conversion. Consider promoting account creation in your email messaging when acquiring new email subscribers to support a smooth checkout process.

We know that consumers expect a consistent omnichannel experience, but delivering it in a manner your audience expects will be critical in order to maximize revenue and create long-lasting customer loyalty.

Anniversaries Aren’t Just for Couples: Build Lifetime Value with Automated Offers

Retailers are constantly looking for simple, automated lifecycle messages that not only contribute to their bottom line, but also re-engage subscribers. The usual suspects – birthday and re-engagement messages – are common.

The anniversary message, though, is often underused, especially since the kinds of anniversaries celebrated are as varied as the products and customers you have.

Here are three very simple date-based automated messages that can drive revenue and successfully re-engage your email subscribers.

Purchase Anniversary

Send a message one year from a customer’s first order date explaining the significance of the anniversary, thanking them, and inviting them to come back and shop (with or without an incentive). These customers remain active email subscribers, so this can also be a great opportunity to ask them to update their preferences with you. After all, a lot can change in one year.

To keep the goodwill going, consider sending this message in subsequent years with increasing benefits as a means of rewarding them for their subscription loyalty.

The email from men’s clothing provider Paul Fredrick specifically highlights the first year anniversary.

Wedding Anniversary

For a more traditional occasion, a wedding anniversary email is a great, yet seldom used, message for many retailers. If your company sells traditional anniversary gifts (e.g. leather, paper), or relationship-related gifts, such as lingerie, gift baskets, flowers or jewelry, you have a perfect opportunity to collect and use this data. If a customer does provide this information, they are showing you they trust your brand. Provide value to them in return.

Of course, don’t wait until the last minute as many of us do in real life. Be sure to send this message before the actual date, so the customer has time to shop, compare items and have the gift delivered. And be sure to tout your value-adds. Do you offer white glove service, gift wrapping or other valet-type upgrades? If so, advertise these as add-ons or include them as part of the incentive in the message.

But this message doesn’t have to be about driving conversions. Send a goodwill anniversary message on the actual day without a call to action to shop. Link directly to your site or to an unrelated social callout, or simply omit any call to action altogether. This day-of message should be about fostering a relationship between your brand and the subscriber.

Sign-Up Anniversary

While these first two are more personal in nature, you may not have the data available to execute them. Don’t worry. You can still send an anniversary message based on the date they joined your email program. Show them how much you appreciate that they are still subscribers.

If the subscriber has made a purchase in the past, take their purchase behavior into consideration when determining the incentive. Based on the number of purchases, lifetime spend or average order value (AOV), you can include an appropriate incentive to reward customer loyalty, attempt to increase their AOV by setting a minimum spend, or drive a first purchase by reinforcing your brand’s value.

One cautionary note: Default to the purchase anniversary message if the sign-up occurred near the purchase date. People are likely to remember their purchase rather than the date they signed up to receive your emails.

There you have it. Three incredibly simple automated messages that can help drive revenue and/or re-engage subscribers with your email program. Have fun, be creative and give your valued email subscribers a nice virtual hug.