The holiday shopping season is fast approaching there is a lot of uncertainty about what will unfold. Questions surrounding the health of the economy and what a resurgence of COVID-19 might have on the supply chain make planning for this holiday season unique. Here are 47 ways you can prepare your marketing program and e-commerce store for the holiday shopping season.
Which days are best for sending marketing emails and which days are most popular for retailers? Should you send on the same high-volume days as other retailers, or send on lower-volume days so you can more easily stand out in the inbox?
Now, you may finally have an answer.
I am signed up for hundreds of retailer email programs and monitor my inbox for daily send volume. While each retailer will have their own unique requirements, here are some tools you can use to help you determine which days might be best to send your marketing emails.
2019 marketing email send volume broken down by day and month. Check out which days were the most and least popular days to send marketing emails.
2018 marketing email send volume broken down by day and month. Check out which days were the most and least popular days to send marketing emails.
The holiday season exploded, much like a shot fired from a Red Rider carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time. Back in October, I laid out my predictions for the 2017 holiday season. Now it’s time to take aim at my predictions and see whether I had Black Bart in the crosshairs or ended up shooting my eye out.
The holiday shopping season is the ecommerce version of the Boston Marathon’s Heartbreak Hill. It’s a season that will challenge retailers, stress them, push them to their limits and, many times, either make or break them. Effectively planning for the final stretch requires not only looking at last year’s results, but considering what went well for your peers. Let’s look at three trends from last year that will keep you from hitting the wall this year.
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.
Over the past 4+ years of advising retailers on how to drive more revenue from email programs, I began noticing a general shift Q4 promotional strategy. It started earlier each year and featured more aggressive discounts. This shift forced other retailers who fight for the same customers to keep up with the Joneses and offer their own discounts earlier in the season.
One week at a time, year after year, this transformation turned planning for Black Friday and Cyber Monday into a Gray November – a month-long extension of the traditional holiday shopping 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.
Consumers are not only starting their holiday shopping earlier, they are treating themselves to gifts when shopping for family and friends. During the 2015 holiday season, 50% of shoppers bought something for themselves when shopping for others, a seven percentage point increase from 2014, according to Deloitte.
Consumers’ willingness to stuff their own stockings during the holidays means retailers need to be thinking about ways to entice consumers to splurge on them- selves, in addition to developing promotions that appeal to early-bird holiday shoppers.
