5 holiday marketing mistakes to avoid
Most online retailers get ready for the holidays early in the fall. They ramp up inventory, consider more staff, and plan special deals and marketing for the biggest selling season of the year.
Likewise, successful retailers focus on tried-and-true ways to attract buyers to their online stores. Experiments and e-mail messaging tests ought to be completed well before the season begins so that you can reap the benefits of your efforts.
By November and through December, when sales turn critical, you should have a good idea what promotions will work—and with which customers.
To help, here are five missteps that marketers often make during the holiday season. Jump these hurdles and you’re more likely to celebrate the coming year.
Mistake 1: Banking on deep discounts to boost sales
Don’t assume that low prices are the route to buyers’ hearts and wallets. Cheap products are not nearly as attractive to consumers as getting value for the dollar.
In addition, if you cut prices too deeply, especially early in the season, you’re teaching year-round customers to wait for bargains. Discounting isn’t an effective holiday strategy.
Instead, put appropriate prices on your wares. And make sure you’re not merely increasing volume but actually turning a profit on each sale.
Mistake 2: Being too casual about e-mail marketing
E-mail marketing for the holiday should:
- Provide real solutions for customers' gift-buying dilemmas
- Land at the time your customer is thinking about buying
- Offer tangible recommendations and promotions tailored to your customers' interests and buying histories
For example, if a customer has bought three red sweaters in the past, you might want to let her know about the red cashmere shawl you’re offering.
With those goals in mind, you probably need a series of timed e-mails (or, at least more than one).
Don’t begin your e-mail campaign with a discount offer (see Mistake 1, above). But do billboard the fact that you will be sending special prices and discounted promotions in a week or two. That gives you a better chance of getting recipients to open later e-mails.
Make the subject lines and messaging more urgent as the season heats up.
Each message should have some call to action to attract the buyer to click onto your site. You might offer special content, gift-buying advice, a loyalty club to join with a late-December payoff, a contest, or a special greeting card.
Also, bear in mind that slightly different messages can yield different results. That’s why it’s worth testing e-mail messaging well before the selling season. (Need an e-mail marketing solution? See this feature in Office Live Small Business.)
Tip All too often, business owners send out e-mail marketing with misspelled words, typos, or just plain boring content. Make sure your e-mail is professional and compelling in tone and looks. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time and money. (For more tips on e-mail marketing, see this article.)
Mistake 3: Assuming your site and shopping cart can manage the holiday load
Imagine that your marketing is effective and visitors begin flocking to your online store. Then imagine the horror if your shopping cart doesn’t work properly or if your site crashes. Or the search function fails. And so on.
To prepare your site for holiday shoppers (besides seasonal home-page design), first make sure all your fees, restrictions, and schedules are transparent and above board. Don’t hide additional costs, such as shipping or taxes, on the last page of the cart program.
Surveys have also shown that offering several payment options tends to boost sales.
Overall, you want online customers to enjoy a fast, streamlined shopping experience. So thoroughly check every page, every link, and every automated tool before you encounter a problem, not afterward. Don’t make your customers mad.
(To learn more about the Microsoft Office Live Small Business service, see this page.)
Mistake 4: Overlooking customer follow-up
By monitoring customer e-mail and queries, you can quickly take the temperature of your holiday sales. You can, for example, identify which of your products or promotions are hot, and then instantly adjust inventory or marketing accordingly.
Plus, by analyzing daily online traffic, you can discover, in real time, whether visitors are clicking all the way through to transaction, or abandoning the process midway. That immediate feedback lets you correct errors and refine your offerings or site navigation.
Set up a system to track results, one that takes advantage of Web analytics and usage reports. (Check out the Reports feature in Office Live Small Business.)
Mistake 5: Ignoring the last-minute shopper
Every year, it seems, more and more online gift-buyers wait until it’s practically too late to purchase their presents. This feet-dragging crowd is probably a mixed bag of bargain hunters, procrastinators, distracted relatives, and overworked execs. In other words, just about everybody out there.
Technology, of course, has helped fuel this trend. Just-in-time shopping and delivery is now possible almost everywhere. As a result, shoppers are buying gifts later and later in the season.
To make the most of down-to-the-wire buyers, consider these strategies:
- Send out a late-breaking e-mail that lets tardy buyers off the hook. Send it as late in the season as you can while still being able to fulfill orders. Make your subject line forgiving, saying something like: "It’s Not Too Late to Find Great Gifts." Offer targeted gift suggestions that will make it seem as if they put a great deal of time and thought into their choices. You’ll get credit (and repeat buyers) for making them look good.
- Accelerate your promotions and discounts for really dramatic last-minute specials. Don’t advertise these too early or you’ll end up cannibalizing earlier sales.
- Offer to ship gifts free for last-minute buyers. Just remember that charges for two-day shipping are much more cost-effective than overnight shipping fees.
- Keep going after December 25. Increasingly, gifts are being exchanged for Kwanzaa and for New Year's, as well.
When the season shutters to a close, stay alert. You should now be primed for the post-holiday sale tradition. Because after the decorations are packed away, smart sale prices and products just might put you over the top. Until next year.
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About the author
Joanna L. Krotz is the founder of Muse2Muse Productions, a custom content company for business and consumer magazines, newsletters, and digital imprints. Krotz has launched marketing Web sites and e-news portals, as well as created magazines and online marketing for a variety of companies. She is co-author of The Microsoft Small Business Kit, a 500-page guide to launching and running a small business. |
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