The Holiday Playbook. Sleigh your Holiday Goals with these 10 Data-Driven Campaigns

Transcription

1 The Holiday Playbook Sleigh your Holiday Goals with these 10 Data-Driven Campaigns

2 ABOUT THE HOLIDAY PLAYBOOK SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK The holiday season is one of the most chaotic times for marketers as they prepare for the busiest shopping months of the year. With a limited amount of time and resources, it is often hard for companies to know which campaigns are the most critical to be launched first and how to use their data to set them up. Without a customer data platform, these data-driven campaigns and execution of these plays would likely not be possible. Combining your data into a single customer database allows you to gain valuable insight into your customer data and execute highly targeted marketing strategies to customers and prospects leading to increased revenue. All companies have data, but it is what you do with it that makes the difference and can set you apart from your competition. In this playbook, we will talk through ten data-driven campaigns you should be running along with how to create them. While you are running fast, make sure you take a minute to pause and ensure you have the top campaigns ready to go this holiday season! PLAY 1: Flash Sales PLAY 2: High-Value Customers PLAY 3: Friends & Family PLAY 4: Black Friday/Cyber Monday PLAY 5: Free Shipping PLAY 6: Gift with Purchase PLAY 7: Promotional or Pop-Ups PLAY 8: Omnichannel Marketing PLAY 9: Retargeting PLAY 10: Capturing Last Minute Customers BONUS: Post-Holiday All companies have data. It s what you do with it that makes the difference and sets you apart from your competition..

3 PLAY 1 FLASH SALES Overview: A flash sale is one that lasts for only a short amount of time. It can be announced in advance or spur of the moment. Offering a small window of time for a deep discount and limited quantities is a great way to boost sales (i.e. Black Friday door busters that people line up around the store for). Flash sales are a great way to communicate to a narrow target market that it s an opportunity they won t want to miss. How it Works: Suppose you are a shoe retailer offering 50% off your store for a couple hours. Before you have the actual sale, you should create a lot of buzz around it so people are lining up and waiting for your sale to start! Using your CDP, first segment your audience by whom the flash sale is pertinent to. Perhaps it is to women, ages From there, you can create a marketing strategy that may include , SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK digital ads, and social posts. For the creative, make sure you are clear about your conditions, rules, and limitations up front so people don t get confused. If it s only a limited quantity, make sure you call that out as well. Why it s Important: In short, flash sales are effective, especially during the holiday season. A short promotion period generates excitement for your brand or retail store. The reason why Cyber Monday and Black Friday work so well is because people love a good deal and feel they only have a short amount of time to take advantage of it.

4 SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK PLAY 2 HIGH-VALUE CUSTOMERS Overview: Engage your high-value customers around the holidays to get high-value results. Segment your best customers and send them a thank you purchase-driven campaign or a special offer just for them. Make it relevant and timely. Those who are your most loyal customers will be the ones who will likely purchase from you again. Why it s Important: 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. And most likely, those 20% are these high-value customers. You work hard to get new prospects and customers, why not work just as hard at keeping your best customers? How it Works: First, you need to identify your high-value loyalists. To do this, using an RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) scoring model is usually the best way to segment. You ll want to target your high-value customers, those around the spectrum. Once you have your list, you can begin building your campaign. Your message and creative should speak to this segment as if they are different, more important, and what you are giving them is a reward for being one of your best customers.

5 PLAY 3 FRIENDS & FAMILY Overview: This campaign includes exclusive offers for friends and family of your best customers, maybe even an in-person event for your top customers to shop and feel appreciated. Friends and Family campaigns are a form of referral-based marketing. If you get a friend to sign-up, you get a discount and so does your friend! How it Works: Firstly, you ll want to segment your best customers. We recommend using the RFM score mentioned in the last play of From there you can market to that audience so they can, in turn, send the deal to their friends and family as well. Make sure to include Friends and Family in the subject line and body as much as possible to make the offer sound extra special and limited to your audience. Personalize your content and make it friendly and relatable. Why it s Important: Everyone wants to feel exclusive. Friends and Family offers are a great way to do that. Referralbased marketing is important because word-of-mouth has such a great impact on businesses and is arguably the more powerful form of advertising. Not only is it a great way to make sales, it can also grow your database significantly, giving you more people to market to in the future. A referral from a current customer is the best form of flattery (and free marketing!) for your brand.

6 PLAY 4 BLACK FRIDAY/CYBER MONDAY Overview: Two of the most important holiday shopping days of the year are Black Friday and Cyber Monday. People are looking for a great deal and often perusing both your site and your competitors to weigh the best deal. At this time of the year, loyalty tends to go out the window. People want to take advantage of a good deal no matter what the company. Black Friday focuses on in-store deals, while Cyber Monday focuses on e-commerce. The hysteria and madness around the two holidays leading up to Christmas is a great way to generate more revenue and obtain new customers looking for the deal of a lifetime. How it Works: As you know, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving with Cyber Monday kicking off the Monday after that. Even though Black Friday officially starts Friday, many companies are moving to starting their deals on Thanksgiving Day, opening up their stores later that night, and continuing the Black Friday sale for the entire weekend. Cyber Monday has been on that same trend as well with Cyber Monday sometimes lasting that entire week. Reaching the most people possible on these days will only help to increase your revenue. Look to all marketing channels such as , social, and direct mail to make sure you are reaching all possible touch points. Creating look-a-like audiences can help you also reach potential prospects as well as talking to your current database. Promote your Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals that link to dedicated landing pages. Having landing pages per ad will allow you to keep track of how your ad is doing and which offers are converting best. Additionally, try adding a countdown to create a sense of urgency. Lastly, however you choose to market this year, make sure it s timely and you get your message out early and often. Inboxes will be getting hit hard, so make sure you communicate to your customers multiple times during your promotions. Why it s Important: Thanksgiving weekend is one of the most profitable weekends of the year. Take advantage of attracting new, hopefully lifelong customers and promoting your products. If you re taking part in these holiday shopping days, make sure to do your research. As mentioned, many companies start their sales earlier than Black Friday and have them last far after Cyber Monday is finished.

7 PLAY 5 FREE SHIPPING Overview: Shoppers will generally spend more on products if there is free shipping. You may offer free shipping site or store-wide, or you may decide there needs to be a minimum offer. Another option is to offer free shipping to store. It is best to advertise these deals on the widely popular Free Shipping Day on December 15. Around this time of the year, a free shipping offer is more likely to get customers to convert than a simple percentage or dollar amount off offer. SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK Why it s Important: According to Bronto, more than a third of holiday shoppers (38%) won t shop on a site that doesn t offer free shipping. Free shipping is an expected perk of the holidays and people will generally be annoyed if they have to pay anything over $5, so why not eat those costs and make more sales? Creating urgency in the form of limited time free shipping is a great way to boost revenue. How it Works: You ll need to decide what kind of free shipping campaign you want to implement. If possible to push the free shipping offer to your entire database, it could be what they need to convert or make their next purchase. But if your offer cannot be widely promoted, it would be great to use on someone who is on the verge of purchasing. Maybe you ve seen they have added something to their cart but have yet to purchase it. Or maybe they have just been browsing on your site. A customer who recently browsed or abandoned their cart would be the best to send the offer to in hopes of a conversion. Keeping the audience small can prevent you from having to offer to a wide audience while still enabling increased conversion. If executed correctly, it has the ability to drive more revenue and convert prospects into customers!

8 PLAY 6 GIFT WITH PURCHASE SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK Overview: Make your gift relevant and something people would want for themselves or could gift to others. Maybe it is a free tote with purchase, or a free gift complementing what is on sale. Set clear gift expectations so people are not disappointed with the gift or gift quality. Make sure to measure the ongoing success or failure of this promotion to know the lift of revenue this offer is bringing. Why it s Important: According to Bronto, 66% of women will respond to a free gift with purchase and 51% of men. This is important to know when deciding what to give away. A free gift alone can be what persuades a customer to make a purchase along with promoting it across all channels to ensure more participation. How it Works: You ll want to tell both customers and prospects about the free gift. To get the word out, sending an to your entire database is a great place to start. In addition to that, you may want to create a look-a-like audience of your best customers to target other prospects that may be the most interested in your product. Your content should be engaging and visibly call out your free gift along with how you redeem it. If you are running multiple promotions at once, ensure you communicate whether multiple offers can be used in tandem or if they are exclusive of one another.

9 PLAY 7 PROMOTIONAL/ POP-UPS Overview: Contrary to what you might think, pop-ups actually have a great conversion rate and will grow your database significantly with many opting-in to get the offer(s), especially around the holiday season. If you are able to attach an offer or a promotion to your pop-up, your conversion rate will likely increase greatly. Make sure to promote clear copy and provide an easily identified CTA. How it Works: Timing is very important when it comes to pop-ups. Don t let too much time go by or the site visitor may leave. You also don t want to show the pop-up too often. Perhaps you only show it to prospects once a week, once a month or whatever cadence makes the most sense given your product. You can also do a triggered pop-up based on the user s activity. Perhaps they clicked on a particular product and you re offering 15% off if they enter their . They ll probably be more apt to buying on the spot if they have an easy to acquire discount. Why it s Important: We have seen that with a sweepstakes attached to an capture pop-up, the conversion rate of capturing that address has gone up over 20x what a footer or top of site capture form has done. Make sure to give the prospect a reason for them to give you their address. If you cannot associate a promotion with it, even just the simple messaging of be the first to know about upcoming sales/promotions can be enough to do the trick!

10 PLAY 8 OMNICHANNEL MARKETING SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK Overview: The line between online, offline, and mobile shopping continues to blur. More often, people compare prices online, reserve online and pickup in-store, buy from applications and utilize other non-traditional forms of shopping. No matter how the customer shops, you should be ready to market across different channels. Run ad campaigns in synergy and personalize your messaging as much as you can. Also, don t forget to make your marketing mobile-friendly! The last piece of the puzzle was to test which marketing channel would produce the best results for each segment. In the previous year, the client had used similar segmentation to personalize the message, but primarily used as the marketing channel. This year, they wanted to compare results with Facebook and Google as well to evaluate which channels would perform the best. With the ability to now try multiple channels, they decided to try a couple of novel campaigns. Use Case: It s important to try to reach people where they are listening. A client of ours wanted to communicate to their customers across all channels but didn t know where they were listening. They chose to first segment their data by age and purchasing behavior. To do this, they turned to their Customer Data Platform software to create 12 different customer segments based on life stage and purchasing behavior. The first step was to separate their data into three different life stage ranges; young adult, family age, and mature. They used purchasing behavior to create additional segmentation within the life stages. Just as important, was personalizing each message to each of the different segments and highlighting specific events. They sent all customers first as that is the most cost effective. From there, they looked to see who was engaging and who was not, removing those that were not performing in and instead targeted them via FB/Google. They also sent unsubscribed s into FB and Google to see if they could reconnect with those customers. With these marketing efforts, they were able to see a 1400% ROI on their marketing efforts. Why it s Important: People are on different channels, so why not speak to them where they are listening? Many companies are currently doing direct marketing via traditional channels such as direct mail and marketing, but what if you are missing a portion of your customer base that is not engaging on those channels?

11 PLAY 9 RETARGETING Overview: Target those who have either visited your page or already added something in their cart but have yet to purchase. Maybe they got busy, maybe they didn t want to pay for shipping, or maybe they found a better price on another site. Send them a personalized reminder or free shipping promo code to make them convert! How it Works: Retargeting ads are everywhere during the holiday season so you ll need to ramp up your campaign budget and create offers and content that stand out. Be prepared to increase your budget during the holiday season in order to generate more impressions. Make your creative holiday themed, your landing pages vibrant and interesting, and your ads easy to read. Driving traffic to your site might be your top initiative, so make sure you are taking the time to continue to talk to them after they leave. They already know who you are, now give them a reason to become a customer. Why it s Important: Retargeting is one of the best ways to drive conversions. The ad strikes at the right time, when the prospect is thinking about your company. It gives them a gentle nudge to purchase what they were already thinking about getting and you re not wasting time or money marketing to those who likely won t buy. Timing, offer and creative are keys to conversion!

12 PLAY 10 SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK CAPTURING LAST MINUTE SHOPPERS Overview: Have you ever forgot a gift for your aunt until the morning of Christmas, or that friend who bought you a gift and you realized you didn t buy her one? These are the people who you want to make sure to cater to. Last minute shoppers can sometimes be the best customers. Giftfly reports that 88% of gift card purchases were made in the 6 days before Christmas. Offering your prospects and customers an e-gift card option is the difference between last minute sales and very little sales right before the holidays. How it Works: Firstly, you should market gift cards as a last minute gift offering to your database. Whether you offer e-gift cards, or simply remind others that you have that option, both are great to promote during this last minute holiday shopping crunch. It may be a great promotion, but no one will know about it if it s not promoted! A great way to do this is with an campaign set up to send a couple days before Christmas. Create automatic sends to your customers and prospects leading up to the holiday. An Christmas Eve or even Christmas morning tend to be very high performing and revenue generating s. Why it s Important: Digital gift cards are taking the world by storm. Gone are the days when you have to keep a plastic gift card in your wallet and if you lose it, tough luck! A new study by First Data reveals 72% of consumers prefer an e-gift card rather than a physical gift and 57% of card buyers prefer to send e-gift cards as they can be delivered immediately. Everything is going mobile these days from loyalty programs to retail stores to discount sites and most of them have easyto-use mobile apps. Why not make your gift cards digital as well? Something else to consider, usually customers will go over the actual amount on the gift card, giving you more revenue than the card originally purchased!

13 BONUS POST-HOLIDAY Overview: Don t make the mistake of not following up after the holidays and losing potential customers! It s important to speak to the market that may want to take advantage of post-holiday sales, use their gift card or those who return their gifts in hopes to replace it with something else. SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK Why it s Important: Post-holiday sales can lead to great revenue. It is important to speak to everyone to promote your post-holiday offers, whether they purchased with you over the holidays or not. Promoting a message such as get what you really wanted this year or now, time to buy for yourself, you can speak to your customers in a way to get them to continue their holiday spending. Many people will receive money or gift cards as presents, give them a reason to use them! Just because the holidays are over, that doesn t mean the spending stops, and neither should your promotions!

14 SKI RESORT PLAYBOOK Thanks for Reading! Ascent360 is a cloud based marketing software that combines your customer data, enabling you to create highly targeted, omnichannel marketing strategies direct to customers and prospects. Want to get in touch? us at Info@Ascent360.com