In the fall everything starts all over again, including the planning for the end-of-year marketing strategy: marketers and strategists are inevitably struggling with defining the activities to be implemented. Calendar and timeline in hand, the three most important appointments are, no doubt, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Christmas holidays. But are we really that early in putting in place the first marketing activities in anticipation of these events? Perhaps not as early as we might think… Let’s let the data speak!
eCommerce trends 2022: the longest shopping season kicks off
52% of Italians already seem to have very clear ideas in mind regarding pre-Christmas and Christmas shopping: this year, many will be looking to avoid the last-minute gift rush as much as possible, planning their purchases well in advance. This, according to a recent research published by Google Italy (Google, Italy, Consumer Survey, n=500 complete answers) published in May.
Great deals, the possibility of avoiding crowds in stores and certain delivery times are, without a shadow of a doubt, the most relevant reasons behind this choice. In the run-up to Christmas we are thus preparing for the longest shopping season. Christmas shopping, but not only: 77% of Italians surveyed also said that they will anticipate purchases by taking advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers and then continue with the winter sales.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas: play early
November begins (Black Friday this year will be November 25) the hot period for both online and offline sales: we move in search of the best deal, but we also prepare, as we have seen, for Christmas shopping. An unmissable opportunity to boost your eCommerce sales, which, precisely because of its scope, requires careful planning and a rigorous and effective marketing strategy.
So here are 4 useful tips for the first activities to implement.
#1 Improve indexing of your products
Now it’s time to invest time on the activities that require longer lead times: the first is undoubtedly those related to optimizing your product pages. Make sure that they appear in the first search results: the trick is to select a narrow basket of products on which you want to activate special promotions just in view of the appointments we mentioned. Search for the best performing keywords, develop original content and insert the right meta tags: drive qualified traffic to your site.
#2 Design small graphic interventions to refresh your shop layout
Whether it is Black Friday first, Cyber Monday or Christmas later, it is important to customise the design of your site. Start early by preparing sets of banners referring to the different dates so that they can be inserted quickly and don’t forget to personalise the user shopping experience by adding personalised product recommendations already on the home page, even for personalised gift ideas.
#3 Create Facebook and Google ADS campaigns with a view to lead generation.
The months leading up to particular promotional periods are crucial for effective lead generation activities aimed at expanding your user base. Targeted campaigns such as Facebook Lead Ads, newsletter subscription pop-ups, customised warnings, and dynamic smart forms are just some of the tools we recommend. Always remember to customise the message for each user cluster: play around with the possibility of creating customised gift lists or previewing promotions on selected items.
#4 Profile your audience.
VIP customers, first order users, users who have registered but have never purchased: careful profiling and segmentation is the basis of any effective marketing activity, especially during particular promotions. In these circumstances, more than in other cases, it is indeed of interest to stimulate purchases by offering rewards, gadgets, which will obviously vary depending on the cluster: to VIP users it is possible to offer free shipping in addition, to those who perhaps buy only with promotions it might be interesting to offer a small incentive for a second purchase.
And in view of the appointments?
Plan your Campaigns ahead of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas
While there are marketing activities for which it is essential to activate well in advance, for others it is necessary to proceed in the very days immediately preceding the promotional period. Here are a few:
Email marketing campaigns and email marketing automation
Make the most of the wealth of contacts in your database: identify user clusters and send them personalized newsletters. You could introduce a gift guide with product recommendations in line with their specific interests and purchases. Our advice is therefore to prepare a detailed calendar to plan the mailings, carefully choosing the subject and topic of the various newsletters, also taking advantage of the count-down effect in view of the dates of the events.
SMS marketing and push notification
Newsletters but not only: among the activities we recommend especially with a view to reminding you of promotions and special offers is the sending of SMS and the implementation of push notifications, the latter also indispensable for ringing up users who choose not to subscribe to the newsletter.
Retargeting and Remarketing Campaigns
Have users and customers visited your shop without making any purchases? Re-engage them in the days immediately before the key year-end appointments with targeted campaigns. Have your users abandon their cart? Offer them a discount to get them to complete their purchase. Have your users visited the promotions section without buying? Remember the product that they viewed. There’s only one goal: conversion.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas Marketing Strategy: harness the potential of Marketing Automation
Planning and creating personalized customer experiences, but not only that: in view of particular promotional activities, the contribution of a marketing automation strategy and the use of a high-performance platform such as Blendee, represent two very significant added values as they allow you to plan and automate your marketing activities well in advance and very effectively!
