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Implement these four tips now to ensure you get the greatest value from your holiday campaigns:
1. Use real-time data to avoid lost sales
If stock is shifting quicker than usual due to the increased purchasing cadence at this time of year then your marketing needs to keep up. Use real-time optimization in emails to show live stock numbers that populate when the customer opens the message, not when it is sent. This increases urgency to buy and avoids disappointment as items can be switched out automatically once out of stock, even after the email has been sent.
2. Optimize for the opportunity
The customer is more open to influence at this time of year; they're looking for inspiration and this is a service that retailers can provide. Brands should complete an audit of their sales funnels online to ensure every touch point contains personalizations designed to help the shopper with recommendations whilst increasing average basket size.
3. Accommodate gifting within personalization
If you have personalization active in any channel, be sure to carefully watch your algorithms before and after the holiday period. Your solution should be adaptable to account for the larger amount of gifting in the period. For example if you use personalization on the web based on click behavior, don't assign a male persona to my record from first click when I might in fact be female browsing for gifts.
4. Tie together bricks and clicks
From a multichannel perspective we are seeing a trend away from 'online only' or other channel exclusive offers. The holidays are a good time to build your multichannel strategy and to stop forcing customer behavior into silos. Any offers should work across bricks and clicks; better still, online promotions can drive in-store behavior where merchandising can increase basket size beyond just the item the customer intended to purchase.
Do you have your Christmas 2015 strategy sorted? Speak with a SmartFocus consultant and discover how the Message Cloud can dramatically improve your campaigns!
