Happy Holidays!
Oh, not there yet? Don’t wait too long, the holiday season is coming up and during December, consumers behavior patterns change – quite drastically. Instead of shopping for fun, we tend to be driven by stress when the holiday season approaches.
Many of those who do their christmas shopping on the internet are doing it simply because they want to save time and avoid the cheerful but oh-so-busy December streets.
How can you maximize your customers experience during this holiday season? We share our best tips with you below!
However, keep in mind that some of these proceedings do only apply to the holiday season.
✓ Keep it simple
Guide your customers. Bring out clear recommendations targeting different types of recievers (in other words: “Gifts for mom, dad or boyfriend/girlfriend” etc), instead of loading your newsletters with campaigns that aims all over the place.
Make it easy for you recipients to see how you can aid in solving a problem. How about complete sets of clothes, tools, beauty products or whatever awesome stuff you are supplying? Think more like “Pick size”, “Pick color” regarding your CTA’s, instead of “Buy now”.
✓ Are personal data irrelevant?
This is probably the first and the last time we advice you to put your knowledge about your unique customers aside. It doesn’t matter if she or he likes midnight blue, is wearing size M and has a soft spot for Star Wars related items, when it’s christmas gifts for an aunt who only wears canary yellow and collects puppy figurines. The data you have are useless! … or is it?
Make use of your accumulated data. How do your particular customers change their behaviour during the christmas season? Do they get things that they themselves like, to give to family and friends? Or something totally different that don’t match their regular shopping pattern at all? Perhaps there are a group of consumers that revisits your website yearly, to buy christmas presents for your loyal customers?
Apply personal recommendations based on “alternative data” (not alternative facts!).
– Do you have a preference center where your customers also can tell about their christmas needs? Make personal offers here!
– Are you able to access purchase history from past years and that way create offers based on what you know about your receivers christmas shopping.
– Are you using any kind of recommendation engine based on previous behavior? Is it possible to change the settings so that recommendations are based upon the behavior pattern since Black Friday? A good tip is to replace the heading “Recommended for you” so that it’s more clear that it’s christmas presents advice you are displaying.
Also keep in mind that christmas is a perfect opportunity to give your customers that little extra something – make them a well planned and databased offer that they… well, at least will find it very hard to refuse. A christmas gift for themselves!
✓ Delivery – the weak link?
Online shopping keeps growing and that puts pressure on the delivery services.
If you are going for a big campaign, take Black Friday for example, notify the customers that the low prices can mean a bit longer wait for their product to arrive.
Use the order confirmation to be extra clear. Send a mail to ask if the order has arrived. Notify your costumers if there are delayed deliveries and also give them the opportunity to inform you of missing goods.
In the perfect world every delivery are the next day kind, but as it is today the one thing you can truly control is the communication with your customer.
Clarity is key!
✓ Don’t go overboard with testing
We usually encourage our clients to be open to tests on CTA’s, subject lines, segments and other fun stuff on landing pages and email’s – and to repeat the tests during the year to come to long-term conclusions. However, during december is not the right time to go all testing bonanza on your consumers.
– A/B testing of subject lines in december will give you results with zero to none applicability to the rest of the year. The inbox behavior is also different and every vendor are trying to outdo the competition for the consumers attention.
– If you DO go ahead A/B testing your campaigns, make it properly. That means using a tool that randomly picks a test group who gets the different versions and then carries on sending the winning version to your recipients. This is not the right time to do 50/50 testing, where you split the list in two and look at what had the best results.
– You still want to try out new things in your Christmas campaigns? Use the passive and inactive recipients on your list to investigate the effect of new concepts. That way you don’t risk annoying your loyal customers and furthermore you may push some of the ones that usually aren’t interested in your message to make a decision: Read or unsubscribe.
– Think relatively when it comes to timing your A/B tests. You can’t count on all your dispatches to be opened at the same time. Even though most recipients acts within an hour from opening their mail, you’d still want a longer time span for your test. Our recommendation is 24 hours. However, we are aware that doesn’t work for everyone.
Just keep in mind that the subject line that works best within the first hour may not do so the second or third hour. In other words: Test diligently, or not at all.
– Testing subject lines aren’t what it used to be only a few years back. Nowadays a lot of users have automatic image viewing per default. When the images load, the mail pass as opened, even though the computer is in “passive mode” on the desktop. Therefore the open rate is not as substantial as click rate, conversion or recipients choosing to unsubscribe.
✓ Mobile first
You already know that your customers are reading your emails, as well as a growing number convert, through that channel. Despite that, it’s not unusual (to have fun with anyone) that the order value is lower on mobile. How can you get your recipients to read the email on their phone and act upon it on their desktop?
One trick is to make it simple to send your shopping cart to yourself as an email, as a shopping list. This is based on the same function as the message about the abandoned cart, but with reversed logic, i e action instead of defaulted conversion.
Do you use a dual content template? In that case you can use the mobile version to tell your recipients about “the shopping list” and the desktop version to lead to conversion.
As always, it’s crucial that your emails are responsive, contains big buttons and are easy to read and digest. However, if you lack the opportunity to create responsive emails, make the whole template mobile friendly. It won’t look stunning on desktop, but if your recipients follow the general evolution curve, it’s better doing so than nothing at all. Keep this in mind and make a reminder to seize the issue when the holiday season is over. The behavior aren’t going to change – you need to adapt your content for different devices.
✓ An offer they can´t refuse?
Are you running a campaign that is outstanding and deserves that EXTRA! EXTRA! attention?
Think outside the box. The inbox, that is. Send a SMS to complement your email! Either to your complete target group, or only to those who – for some mysterious reason – haven’t opened or clicked in your email yet.