E-mailing shoppers during the fourth quarter holiday season may not be the sexiest way to boost sales, but according to a presentation by Jim Davidson of Bronto Software at last week’s Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE), it can be very productive.
The season starts early, with 28 percent of retailers e-mailing by October 1, and some activity beginning in September, according to Bronto. And there are lots of moving parts, with 80 percent of consumers using multiple devices simultaneously and 85 percent shopping on one device and finishing on another. Retailers need to make use of multiple devices easier, as consumers are using "workarounds" such as saving bookmarks or shopping carts (45 percent) or sending themselves reminder e-mails (45 percent).
Mr. Davidson says there are major differences among the specific holidays. For example, while Black Friday really lasts the whole month of November, the peak for e-mail sends and online shopping traffic is now around 10 a.m. on Black Friday. Bronto cautions retailers about sending multiple messages on a single day for fear of them being labeled as spam and sees some types of promotions increasing: door busters, online only offers and gift guides.
Cyber Monday is a more condensed event, lasting one to four days at most, and is a stronger one-day concept. Ten percent of retailers send three messages or more on this day. Eight-eight percent of CM activity comes after 9 a.m., presumably because shopping is done from work. CM promotions that are on the rise include mystery coupons/discounts, gift guides, and cyber week specials. Door busters are declining.
David Workman of Delta Apparel, owners of Salt Life, a beach and fishing oriented line of apparel and decals, offered three takeaways for holiday e-mailing:
- Plan ahead: Holiday campaigns should be prepared at least a quarter in advance.
- Be relevant: It’s not all about the promotion, but the relevancy.
- Keep it simple: Shoppers are bombarded, so keep your design simple and to the point.
Specifically, Salt Life simplified its Black Friday promotions, decreased the discount but extended the length, and made sure their promo codes were in real text so they can be copied and pasted by shoppers. For Cyber Monday, they moved their e-mails later (to 3 p.m vs. 9 a.m.), reduced the promotion from two days to one day, and increased the sense of urgency by shortening the promotion. They also increased the number of gift guides they e-mailed in 2012 to six from three in 2011, and added new categories such as Last Chance, Junior, and Dog (yes, a gift guide for dogs). The e-mails offered no discount at all. These actions helped Salt Life increase their sales over the promotional dates by double to even triple digits.
BrainTrust
Discussion Questions
For fourth quarter events such as Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, what advice would you give retailers seeking to increase sales via their e-mail promotions? Is e-mail the most important digital means of reaching consumers?
Poll
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Email has become seen as the best way to digitally reach customers, but my bet is all that spam at the holidays doesn’t really make potential shoppers all that happy.
Relevance and creativity are the keys, but the more popular this approach becomes, the more difficult it will be to break through the clutter. I think in the end there just has to be a better way to communicate.
The idea of starting the “Holiday Season” in September is a particularly odious one. I know the rationale, but I think we are getting close to seeing blowback from the idea of Christmas in July.
Email is a great way to connect with consumers in a timely manner with relevant information about a sale. However, the message needs to be specific, relevant, and useful. It is less effective when generic, not relevant to the consumer, intrusive, and repetitive.
Fourth quarter sales are always a critical time. I think anything you can do to remind customers of your presence and products is good. I agree with Al, multiple emails from a retailer are too much. Unless it’s a new promotion, it isn’t necessary to email more than twice about a given sale. Email is definitely effective, due to people shopping at work, but retailers should also start to merge marketing with mobile where at all possible. To increase sales, also review what promotions were successful in the past, along with a loss leader to get people shopping, like free shipping.
Emails neeed to be specific and easy to read. They have to make the reader want to continue reading rather than delete.
Yes, email continues to be the most effective means of communicating with customers. Despite the low response rates from discount-driven emails, the results are highly profitable due to the low cost of email communication.
To increase sales during the holidays, retailers should use the same strategies that they would use to drive sales via email in any season. Personalization and customization continue to drive incremental response and profit. Personalization is the use a customer’s name and info, as well as the store manager’s information. Customization is the selection of the appropriate offer for that customer based on their past purchases. History continues to be the best means of predicting the future, and that is never more true than in email.
Consumers, especially those with smartphones, use email as their first online activity of the day. There is far greater daily email usage than social media, search, or any other digital channel.
There are numerous sources of advice for better email marketing, and the tips tend to converge around the following areas:
(1) testing and learning (lists, CTA, creative)
(2) relevance (personalization, opt-in list building throughout the year)
(3) interactivity (videos, live chat)
(4) new occasions (gift guides, special offers)
But email is only half of the digital conversation. Email is the most important means of reaching consumers, but e-commerce is the most important digital means of converting them. No digital marketing effort is complete without a robust online transaction capability, especially in the fourth quarter. Last year, the traditional in-store occasions of Thanksgiving and Black Friday both saw online shopping grow 30%, while Cyber Monday also grew 17%.
While consumers are already familiar, even inundated, with email, they are becoming ever more confident with the online shopping process.