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Growth hacks

An Ultimate Guide for Seasonal Marketing for eCommerce

Kunjal Panchal 6 Stories

Tuesday December 18, 2018 , 5 min Read

Did you know that November and December bring in 30% more revenue for retailers than non-holiday months? Or that according to the National Retail Federation, retail eCommerce holiday sales increased 4% in 2015. Or that Cyber Monday 2016 was the biggest day for online sales in the history of U.S. eCommerce?

Is being prepared for the holiday season important? You bet.

With the use of a strategy, you have a greater chance to efficiently manage internal content resources, drive better sales and more engagement. Being an eCommerce company, you must always keep a fact in mind that the online sales during the holidays and events increase by around 15% and this is what you should properly harness at.

In this article, you’ll discover 6 tips to boost holiday sales.

1. Define Your Performance Metric to Track Your Progress

Do you know how your customers are finding you? Or what offers are pushing customers to buy from your online store? If you’re currently selling without tracking, it’s like throwing a dart at the target with your eyes closed–it doesn’t make much sense and you’re probably going to miss the mark.

Not sure what performance metrics to track? Here’s a list of key metrics you could monitor:

● Traffic source: direct, organic, paid, social, referral etc.

● Conversion rate

● Number of repeat customers

● Cart abandonment rate

● New subscribers

● Number of mobile users

● On-site search terms

Set a goal, build marketing initiatives around it and then track the progress. This way you will be able to determine what you want to accomplish with your holiday marketing and work towards building out a strategic holiday marketing plan.

2. Re-optimize your SEO Strategy

If you want to improve your conversion rate and your search ranking, take a look at your eCommerce SEO strategy. Dig into your current SEO performance: top performing keywords, top performing pages, and pages which need to be optimized.

If you want to hone in on one thing, why not try building a holiday specific keyword list; it will help you to attract new customers to your eCommerce store. An eCommerce SEO Agency understands the effectiveness of these keywords and apply to their campaigns.

Google Trends will help you discover what search terms people frequently use. Check out last year’s trends in Google Trends. Online shoppers start searching for the term ‘holiday gifts’ from December First week (peak).

Now that you have keywords in place, you need to start writing seasonal content around these specific keywords and publish it 30 days before the holiday season.

3. Holiday Gift Guides to Inspire Shoppers

The holiday season is stressful. It would be a whole easier if there actually was a big guy in a suit delivering gifts, but unfortunately that just isn’t the case. The second best thing? A holiday gift guide; they make holiday shopping a breeze for online consumers.

How can you create an effective one? Follow these tips:

● You should have multiple gift guides zeroing on a specific theme i.e “cooking theme”

● Look at your best selling products from the previous year for ideas.

● Do some research on your competitors for ideas

● Make sure your guides are optimized for different devices and channels.

● Include reviews of the products or point to social influencers that are using them.

Fab sell a wide range of products and categorize their gift guides perfectly:

Food52 does a good job of providing gift guides for wide variety of personalities.

4. Send Gifts in your email this holiday season

Send a free gift, special discount, or other incentives to your subscribers just before the holidays. It will help you to increase your conversion rate - and make them feel special.

Create a sense of urgency like “Today Only”, “Last Chance” etc.

Check out this email from Crocs:

Customers abandoned the shopping cart before they purchase?

Send a dedicated follow-up email which contains an irresistible offer and encourages them to complete the order.

Carl Sednaoui, Director of Marketing @ MailCharts stated here:

“Send cart abandonment emails. 68% of carts are abandoned. Sending prospective customers cart abandonment emails can help you recover between 5% and 11% of otherwise lost sales.”

See this elegant email from jessops to inspire you:

5. Don’t forget mobile shoppers

Have you ever shopped on a mobile device?

According to current data, 1.6 billion people use their mobile phones to shop online worldwide.

But the real question is - do you have an optimized mobile shopping experience?

eMarketer predicts mobile commerce in the US will increase more than 50% in 2017!

You can’t afford to ignore mobile shoppers in holiday seasons. Build a mobile site, build a mobile app, build a fast checkout process, and integrate social media.

So do you optimize your mobile site?

6. Run a Social Media Contest

Social media is not just about uploading photos, sharing updates, and chat - it’s more than this.

Run a special contest on Facebook can bring potential shoppers. Around 63% of Facebook users say they are likely to share a link to a holiday contest or giveaway.

Facebook contests are the proven method of generating sales. In need of Facebook contest inspirations?

Here are some ideas for a Facebook contest which you can implement in no time:

● Photo contest

● Writing contest

● Creative status update

● Facebook comment

● Sweepstakes

● Poll contest

● Coupon codes

● Refer a friend incentives

● Video contest

● Daily lucky winner

See this quick example:

What tactics do you use for holiday seasons? How will you market your eCommerce store this season? Are you going to implement these marketing ways this holiday season? Please share your valuable thoughts!

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