Introduction
Attract them with paid search but keep them with email.
Bold, maybe, but a recent report by Shop.org and Forrester Research does confirm that the biggest increases in marketing spending for the holiday season this year will be in email marketing, HANDS DOWN!
It's no wonder. With billions in online consumer spending up for grabs, merchants are turning to email marketing applications in hoards, to convert their lead generating marketing efforts into strong holiday sales. And billions is an understatement. As 2006 saunters towards another holiday season, the outlook seems even brighter. Forrester predicts eCommerce annual revenue will continue to grow another whopping 20 per cent topping $200 billion dollars by the start of next year.
This is good news indeed for those online retailers using highly personalized one-to-one email marketing to build relationships the cornerstone of what the holiday season is all about.
What's an online retailer to do?
This compelling holiday White Paper outlines key email tactics that engage customers, boost sales and achieve the promise of a successful holiday email campaign, just in the yuletide nick of time. And with online consumers shopping earlier than ever before, your timing's crucial. Wave Four data from the eHoliday mood study collected right after last year's holidays, confirmed that one-third of consumers surveyed are shopping online earlier than last. All trends this year indicate much the same.
So to all e-Retailers out there in virtual limbo anxious to convert leads to holiday shoppers through email, words of wisdom from the experts prepare early or prepare to fail. And with the holiday season accounting for 20 per cent of a retailers' annual income, we do not recommend the latter.
Early & often
In order to convert leads to holiday shoppers this year, first and foremost, an eCommerce marketer needs qualified prospects to start building customer relationships...more specifically a healthy internal list to email from. Easier said than done, building an internal database takes time. Therefore, marketers must make it their top priority to maximize data collection efforts early & often during the year leading to the holidays. This will cultivate loyal customer relationships and lay the proper foundation to initiate on-going dialogue; and inevitably ensure the handsome holiday sales rewards that a successful email campaign will produce. Holiday data drawn from a sample of ad:tech's Year End Survey attendees shows how email sent to robust internal lists by far produces the best results.
A successful holiday email campaign
So what factors hook into visitor intent to ensure a successful HOLIDAY email marketing campaign? It all depends on three initial elements:
Relevance
Trust
Goal Setting
Relevance
Clearly consumers more than ever want relevant compelling messages that talk to them personally. Relevant dialogue produces consumer interest and consumer interest more often than not initiates a sale. Relevance is all about creating respect: honoring the consumers' opt-in preferences and always keeping the context of the moment in mind, understanding that what a consumer deems relevant today can and will change tomorrow. Context can depend on demographics, purchase history, behavior or even time of year. More than any other time of the year, the only messages consumers want to receive leading up to holiday crunch are emails that are highly relevant messages that talk to them one-to-one.
Relevance creating tactics
Here are 3 super easy email tactics that any marketer, regardless of their e-experience, can use to create relevance and convert leads to holiday shoppers.
Sort by Common Group
Hone the effectiveness of email communications leading up to the holiday season through customer segmentation and the marketing possibilities are infinite. Sorting eCommerce customers into common segments based on location, past buying or browsing behavior or other natural characteristics can be a great email tactic to create relevance and jump start a retailers' online sales. For example, marketers can create segments based on any combination of demographic attributes (age-gender-average purchase amount), or expressed customer preferences (designer denim-shoes-jewelry), or even actions taken on a previous email campaign (opened-clicked-forwarded).
Then the key to leveraging the maximum benefits of segmentation prepare to interact with each group differently by customizing your messages. This will allow marketers to drill down' and deliver particular products and offerings to particular groups of people known to be much more effective than generic one-size fits all' creative.
