Christmas Retail

The Christmas season is a major source of revenue for many retail brands. Kickstart your holiday season sales preparation with these strategies and breeze into the final quarter of the year.

Boost ROI with email marketing

Social media marketing may seem like the big thing now, but in actual fact, email marketing still proves to be the most effective and affordable way to reach out to your audience, delivering higher ROIs than the former.

Here are three ways in which you can seize this festive opportunity to improve your email marketing ROI:

1.       Segment your list

It has been proven that email list segmentation significantly improves email campaign performance. Categorising your email list into customer segments allows you to send more targeted and relevant messages, resulting in a considerable increase in your ROI. These customer segments could be divided by behavioural data, demographics, purchase history, and stages of the sales funnel. For example, if you have a customer segment whom of which are parents with children, you can send out an email to this group of individuals focusing on gifts for children or home decor. If you already have a CRM system that facilitates the segmentation of your customers, now is the best time to utilise it.

2.       Optimise for mobile

Approximately 51 percent of all emails are now opened either on a tablet or smartphone. With Christmas being one of the biggest holiday seasons, people are more likely to be out travelling and shopping on the go. Ensure that your emails are mobile responsive with small file or image sizes so that email messages will load promptly and appropriately on your customers’ mobile devices.

3.       Create a perfect email design

A picture speaks a thousand words. Research shows that 65% of customers prefer messages that are mostly filled with images rather than text. Infographics and images are crucial factors worth incorporating in emails. Visuals can inspire your customers to read your message till the end and take action.

Email is an ideal method to reach out to your customers and announce your exclusive Christmas promotions. However, be sure to add a personal touch. By addressing your customers with their first name in the subject line, you can significantly increase the click-through rate.^v

Send targeted messages to shoppers within proximity

Have you ever wanted to reach out to your new and existing in-store customers, but don’t know how? By offering your customers with free guest Wi-Fi, you can now send targeted messages to them, drawing them in and driving sales conversions while they are in store.

When customers attempt to connect to the store’s Guest Wi-Fi, it will bring them to a sign-up page where they would have to key in their details. A promotional offering page with rewards would then pop up, enticing customers to visit the store immediately to make some (impulse) purchases.

For instance, if your target audience is primarily female, create promotions and graphics that are skewed towards ladies. E.g. Get 50% off your festive friendship jewellery - today only.

Make Christmas shopping easy with a gift guide

Help your customers navigate through the shopping madness with well-thought gift recommendations and packages. Shoppers are now researching Christmas gifts way in advance, many of which would unavoidably look to gift guides for inspiration.

A survey by NFR found that customers would typically spend $450 on Christmas gifts for their family.^viii Christmas is a huge sales opportunity that should boost your business if you play your cards right. An effective gift guide should be more than a list of nice products. It should consider strategic marketing tactics that would attract customers, generate leads, and increase sales. Below are some ways to improve the marketing for your gift guide:

• Bundle your items as a nicely-packaged gift set and instantly give them a festive spin.
• Divide the guide into manageable sections - Sort your gifts by price, age, gender, or even lifestyle. A perfect execution of this is by the Rifle Paper Company who arranged their gift ideas by personality, pattern, and price. This simplifies the shopping experience and increases the likelihood of users staying on the site.
• Do not forget SEO marketing. Incorporate keywords, phrases, and strategic links into your gift guides to get an extra boost.
• Use your social media platforms and email marketing campaigns to promote your published gift guides regularly.

Share the joy

Make the season of giving even more meaningful. You can support a cause by donating a percentage of sales, or selling charity gift cards that will bless a child in need. Not only will you help make Christmas better for the less fortunate, you will also create a positive image and improve brand recall during the holiday season.

With so many brands fighting for a share of the festive gifting revenue, crafting your business’s promotions & channels of marketing the right way might just be your winning factor to stand out.

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ⁱ https://support.getresponse.com/uploads/2016/01/The-State-of-Email-Marketing-by-Industry-January-2016.pdf

ⁱⁱ https://www.webpagefx.com/blog/marketing/9-tips-improving-email-marketing-roi/

ⁱⁱⁱ http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/4-2016-email-tips-to-boost-roi/

^iv https://medium.com/@SendPulse/tips-to-increase-email-marketing-roi-148338d4d944

^v https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

^vi https://www.swirl.com/swirl-releases-results-retail-store-beacon-marketing-campaigns/

^vii https://nrf.com/insights/holiday-and-seasonal-trends/winter-holidays

^viii https://nrf.com/media/press-releases/gift-givers-plan-splurge-friends-family-this-holiday-season