Whether on the road or under the umbrella, there is always time to check your inbox or share a post on your social profiles, even on vacation: the growing addiction to smartphones and the need to feel connected all the time are revolutionizing habits and behaviors, so much so that marketers and strategists are re-evaluating the summer period as one of the most profitable for brand awareness and customer loyalty strategies. But how do you capture the attention of your audience and create successful summer marketing strategies? Here are some helpful tips!
#1 – Marketing strategies in summer: think mobile
If marketing does not go on vacation, in summer,a good strategy must necessarily adapt its activities to the mobile universe. According to research published by Facebook, in summer, more than 92.5 percent of conversations take place from mobile. Greater propensity for sharing and interactions, but above all interest in lighter and more engaging content: the advice is, therefore, to focus on creativity and topics that manage to intercept the trending topics of the moment, to strengthen the relationship between brand and consumer.
Contests and sweepstakes thus prove particularly effective in engaging the user for successful summer marketing strategies, focusing on inclusiveness and entertainment.
#2 – Email marketing: a winning strategy even under the beach umbrella
Decreasing the number of emails in the inbox, more chances to capture the attention of your audience are on the horizon: in summer, the email marketing, along with social networks, is confirmed as the preferred channel for intercepting its users and communicating to them content of interest or special promotions.
But beware: profiling and personalization remain the watchwords for an effective summer marketing strategy!
If, in fact, interest in opening and reading emails is confirmed, it is important that they arouse curiosity from the outset.
Dynamic fields, emoji are therefore recommended already in the subject line, but it is especially in the body of the newsletter that space should be left for colorful and eye-catching design, rather than content that is easy to use especially from mobile.
Blog articles and insights may prove to be sufficiently attractive content, as long as they are in line with users’ interests, while special promotions and discounts may provide an opportunity to plan recall and follow-up workflows for those who have already made purchases in the shop.
#3 – Inbound marketing in summer: how to increase and retain your audience
Attracting new potential customers, providing them with content and insights of interest, interacting and building a relationship: if, in the summer, many of the initiatives and activities of a commercial nature are suspended, an inbound marketing strategy can, on the contrary, show all its potential and effectiveness, helping not only to generate new leads, but also to strengthen the relationship with the contacts already acquired. It can, in fact, be considered as preparatory to the commercial strategies and activities to be put in place with the arrival of the new season.
Investing on content marketing activities, feeding the blog with content that can intercept the interests of potential customers, activating workflows that accompany the newly acquired lead in a qualification path, thus become fundamental activities to put in place, without, however, forgetting the context in which you are operating.
Although, in fact, it tends to be more time that users are able to devote to reading content and insights, it is important that these be easily accessible and sufficiently capable of intercepting interests that are more “seasonal” in nature.
Therefore, for lead generation activities, the advice is to start, in addition to defining one’s buyer persona, with a careful analysis of trends and keywords to identify topics that can intercept the interests of potential contacts, just as in lead nurturing it is recommended to engage users through email workflows and recall activities on social media.
#4 – Marketing strategies and summer sales: how to boost sales and more
Summer, you know, is a time of sales and special promotions, and, even at the beach, consumers are always ready not to miss out on the cheapest promotion. That’s when it becomes important, especially in case you run an eCommerce site, to be fully prepared and take advantage of the full potential of an effective marketing automation strategy.
- Profile and segment your audience: analyze data and information about your customer base, identify the most interesting clusters to work on, and offer them discounts and promotions on products and categories of interest, perhaps providing greater incentives for the most loyal customers.
- Personalize the browsing and shopping experience within the shop: behavioral messaging, content personalization and product recommendation can be key features to communicate promotions, invite users to purchase, and deploy effective dynamic up-selling and cross-selling strategies.
- Engage users with personalized communications: design personalized email marketing, SMS marketing campaigns by engaging your users at every stage of their customer journey and don’t forget to communicate your promotions also via push notifications, a trump card to intercept even anonymous users.
- Leverage the effectiveness of Google and Social ADS campaigns: synchronize created audiences and segments to improve the effectiveness of your ADS campaigns for remarketing purposes, for ringing up users who have not yet completed their purchase, or for generating new traffic.
If promotions and summer sales can be an opportunity to build the loyalty of already acquired customers-think, for example, of the possibility of creating private sales initiatives, with the very anticipation of promotions, for a limited cluster of users-these can also represent an opportunity to acquire new customers. At this juncture, in fact, a series of lead generation activities can be initiated in order to increase one’s user base. Once contacts have been acquired even during summer sales, it is advisable to proceed with the design of strategies of lead nurturing aimed at strengthening the relationship itself with newly purchased customers, so that their interest in the brand is kept alive and subsequent purchases are no longer only stimulated by the presence of promotions.
Marketing strategies in the summer period: you can, thanks to marketing automation
Marketing no longer goes on vacation: thanks to careful planning and with the help of marketing automation platforms like Blendee, carrying out your marketing strategy in the summer is no longer a problem.
Once activities are identified and planned, you can manage email flows and personalization actions on-site and off-site, fully automatically. Data analysis and continuous monitoring will allow you to evaluate performance, intervening with improvement actions, with one goal in mind, to better prepare yourself and your audience for fall!
