Tag Archive for: Holiday Digital Marketing

Digital Shopping Trends to Watch Out for this Holiday Season

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The Holiday Season is right around the corner, and that means it’s time to develop marketing strategies to prepare for the increased traffic. According to Google, “U.S. retail eCommerce sales are expected to increase 15.8% during the 2017 holiday season.” Moreover, this demonstrates the impact that Holiday shopping has on businesses and the importance of digital preparation. Listed below are some digital shopping trends to watch out for this Holiday Season.

Mobile continues to dominate
It’s not much of a surprise that mobile shopping is still dominating online purchases, as this pattern appears to continue in the near future. Adobe announced last year that “mobile accounted for 50% of website visits during the Holiday Season and 30% of all online sales during that period from Nov 1 – Dec 11.” It’s evident that shoppers during the Holiday Season and in general are reliant on their mobile devices in terms of product comparisons, making quick purchase decisions, convenience, etc. Therefore, as a marketer mobile optimization is critical and needs to be a major focus during the season of Holiday shopping.

Voice search on the rise
The use of voice searches has been an increasing digital trend and continues to be a focus for marketers moving forward. According to Google, “about 50% of U.S. teens and 41% of adults use voice search daily through AI such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant.” Artificial intelligence (AI) is continually evolving and changing the scope of digital marketing tactics.  From an SEO perspective, it should be noted that search queries for voice differ from typical text searches. Optimizing for “conversational language” and longer keyword phrases are two aspects that marketers should be focusing on. Ultimately, the use of voice search for shopping implications will be huge this Holiday Season and it’s essential for marketers to focus on this trend.

Focus on shareable social media content
With increased activity on social media channels during the Holiday Season, having engaging content is key. Creating content that is “shareable” is an effective way for businesses to reach potential consumers. A few tactics of shareable content include referral codes, influencer involvement, in-store incentives, giveaways, contests, etc. Generating valuable and optimized blog content to share on social platforms is another beneficial strategy. Essentially, keying in on social media engagement is beneficial in general, but especially important during the Holiday Season.

Online spending projected to outperform in-store purchases
It’s being predicted that for the first time in history e-commerce sales will outperform in-store sales during the 2017 Holiday Season. Deloitte predicts that “51% of all dollars spent this Holiday Season will be online and 42% will be spent in store. The other 7% will be contributed from catalogs and direct mail drivers. They also project an “18 to 21 percent increase in revenue for online retailers from last year.” In the end, although these are just predictions, there’s no denying how popular online shopping has become during the Holidays and this trend isn’t going away anytime soon.

Contact Us: For more information regarding digital marketing expertise and news, visit the Onimod Global Website. We look forward to hearing from you!

Tips For A Successful Email Marketing Holiday Season

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With the holiday season upon us with Black Friday right around the corner, it’s time to super-charge your email marketing strategy.

The holiday season represents a huge opportunity for marketers to connect with their audiences and drive sales. Holiday sales in 2015 are expected to represent approximately 19 percent of the retail industry’s annual sales of $3.2 trillion. Additionally, the National Retail Federation is forecasting online sales to increase between 6 and 8 percent to as much as $105 billion.

To help you make the most of it, here are 10 tips that will make your email marketing results merrier:

1. Mark Your Calendar

Email marketing is a highly effective method to reach people this holiday season. With 57% of email subscribers spending 10-60 minutes browsing marketing emails during the week, you’re likely to reach people no matter where they are. Here are this season’s most notable holidays to plan your email campaigns around:

Veterans Day – Wednesday, November 11

Thanksgiving – Thursday, November 26

Black Friday – Friday, November 27

Small Business Saturday – Saturday, November 28

Cyber Monday – Monday, November 30

Hanukkah – Begins Sunday, December 6

Green Monday – Monday, December 14

Free Shipping Day – Friday, December 18

Winter Solstice – Tuesday, December 22

Christmas Eve – Thursday, December 24

Christmas Day- Friday, December 25

Boxing Day – Saturday, December 26

Kwanzaa – Begins Saturday, December 26

New Year’s Eve – Thursday, December 31

New Year’s Day – Friday, January 1

2. Use Progressive Profiling To Send Segmented Offers

Predictive intelligence and individualized recommendations are great, but during the holiday season, your subscribers’ historical data (even very recent data) may not be very helpful because they’re shopping for others more than themselves. Rather than using data to make guesses, it can be more effective to just ask your subscribers what kinds of products they’re interested in.

For instance, on Nov. 13, 2013, Zulily sent a progressive profiling email that resulted in a brand alert email being triggered on Thanksgiving Day. And on Nov. 5, 2014, Sony sent a progressive profiling email where respondents received a targeted triggered email on Black Friday.

In both cases, that’s great timing for an email that the recipient is already primed to act on.

3. Add Seasonal Content To Your Triggered Emails

Triggered emails are not “set it and forget it,” they are “review and renew.” That’s especially true going into the holiday season.

Make your triggered emails more relevant to holiday shoppers by adding seasonal imagery to the headers and gift services footers to the bottom of those emails, and adjust the logic and timing of your cart and browse abandonment emails. For instance, time to purchase is compressed during big shopping days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Green Monday, so you’ll likely want to fire off your abandonment emails more quickly than usual.

4. Use Preview Text To Support Your Subject Lines

This is a quick win for the holiday season. Preview or snippet text is displayed under or to the right of the subject line in the inbox view of many major email clients, including the native iPhone email app, Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

Last November, only 47 percent of B2C marketers were optimizing their preview text so that it supported their subject lines. Anecdotally, it’s only slightly higher today.

Think of preview text as a second subject line — and you wouldn’t dream of having long URLs, administrative text and other nonsense filling up your subject line. Whether you use visible or hidden preheader text to create your preview text, don’t leave it to chance.

5. Use Social Media For Aspirational Discovery, And Site Search And Purchase Data For More Practical Discovery

Social media sites like Pinterest can tell you what people aspire to buy from you, and that information can be super-useful in getting your subscribers excited about the holiday season and thinking about the possibilities. That’s especially true early in the holiday season.

But what’s actually happening on your site and in your stores, regarding the products that your customers are buying or actively considering, can be much more telling and worthy of focus.

Consider using this information in your email campaigns more as we get further into the season, when the wisdom of the crowd can be a powerful tool to direct shoppers to your most popular products.

6. Resist The Urge To Email Chronically Inactive Subscribers

It can be oh-so-tempting to want to get a little holiday boost by emailing a bunch of your subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails in a long time, but resist the urge. The vast, vast majority of subscribers who haven’t engaged in more than two years are likely long gone, with a good chunk of those having abandoned or changed their email address.

Email a bunch of those folks during the holiday season, and you risk getting junked or blocked — which means that you risked your ability to reach your loyal, engaged subscribers for a shot at re-engaging a tiny percentage of inactive subscribers. Not a good bet.

For a smarter, less risky bet, try to identify the seasonal shoppers among your subscribers, those who were engaged and purchased during the holiday season but then quickly became silent afterward and haven’t engaged since. Those subscribers are much better candidates for re-engagement efforts going into Thanksgiving week.

7. Merry Mobile-Friendly Emails

Lastly, and perhaps most important, is ensuring your emails are mobile-friendly. It’s no surprise that prior to (and during) holiday shopping trips, consumers are looking to their mobile devices for the top email offers in their inboxes. Data points in this direction, with internal analytics showing that 50-70% of merchants’ marketing emails are being read on a mobile or tablet device. Coupled with Goldman Sachs’ forecast that mobile commerce will jump to $626 billion in 2018, proves the importance of meshing mobile and email.

Note that 65 percent of all email in the US is now opened first on a mobile device. Take advantage of this device segmenting by sending email offers with key words such as “[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][INSERT HOLIDAY] SALE!” or “[INSERT HOLIDAY] – 30% Off Online Only!” Phrases such as “Early-Bird Special” or “24 Hour Sale” work well too.

Keeping mobile top of mind will improve your lead generation and customer acquisition numbers.

8. Have A Plan For Last Sleigh Day

Because Christmas falls on a Friday this time around, express shipping is likely to play a bigger role in the final days of the holiday season. Last Sleigh Day, which is Dec. 22 this year, marks the last chance for guaranteed Christmas delivery with express shipping for most retailers.

After you wrap up your Cyber Week promotions, be sure to include your order-by deadlines for standard shipping and express shipping in a module at the bottom of your emails. And if your brand is going to offer discounted or free express shipping going into Last Sleigh Day, be sure to communicate that to your subscribers.

For more expert advice on how to captivate your customers this holiday season, contact an Onimod Global Digital Marketing expert today.

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