e-inbusiness Essential Guide to the 12 Days to Christmas
Our eMarketing team has been busy looking at the whole business of Christmas for our online retail clients. We have put together an indispensable checklist to make it easier for you
Here are our top 12 tips....
1. Analyse Year on Year Figures:
Look at your data for last year and analyse where your peaks lie (days, time). Look in to the top 5 metrics that you would like to consider for the overall campaigns – so not just revenue or orders but average order value, cost/acquisition through various channels, customer engagement e.g. time spent on site etc....
2. Start Your Sale Early
As 24th, 25th and 26th December are amongst the busiest transaction days of the year, we would recommend starting the sale early on the 24th, when people/teams are still in office. This way you get to maximise the available traffic over the post-Christmas peak - rather than starting your sale on 28th with everybody else!
3. Develop a Christmas/Campaign Specific Landing Page
Create a specific festive landing page to highlight your top Christmas products and recommendations. Optimise the content, add links to you delivery charges and your returns policy, specify the customer support details over Christmas, talk about your January sale and any upcoming promotions!
4. Include Recommendations on Your Homepage e.g. Top Products/Gifts
People love lists, and it's just the time of the year for it. Update your homepage with a list of your top product recommendations. This is an ideal opportunity to highlight the relevant products and make them more accessible to your customers.
5. Promote Your Last Order Date
- Highlight via email, PPC and onsite
- Detail any express delivery/ free delivery options
Simple 'must haves' for any Christmas campaign but it's amazing how many people don't do it. Ensure that all key dates regarding last order date/ last delivery date/delivery options etc are on the homepage.
6. Social Media
Social Networks now account for 1 in 10 of all internet visits. It is not surprising that 47% of retailers and food chains are set to increase their social media campaigns over the holiday period. Social media is emerging as one of the most important channels to engage with your customers directly. If you are not currently engaging in Social Media we would urge you to take this opportunity to set up a profile and put in place a strategy for 2010. Start by reserving your brand name on http://knowem.com today.
7. Send Xmas e-card/email
Spreading some cheer with a Christmas e-card is a great way to get your festive message across to your customers, and a way of saying thank you for all their online activity with you during the year. This also reinforces the values of your brand, which in the online world can mean the difference between retaining or losing a customer.
'Food for thought' - Remember, It doesn't always have to be about the hard sell at Christmas..!
8. Ensure a Link to Your Gifts Section from Your Homepage
Highlight your gifts range in addition to the recommendations on the homepage. Don't make the visitor waste valuable time looking for links to your gift category. It is also extremely useful to split the categories in to logical sub-categories based on popular search terms such as Gift for Him / Her, Gift under £100 etc.
9. Spread Further Festive Cheer Via:
- Discounts
- Promotions
- Possible free gifts
Spread cheer and be merry. Ensure all your offers and discounts are clearly visible and clear! Utilise any possible free gifts, samples etc that you can offer to your customers. Go the extra mile!
10. Dress Your Homepage
- Update homepage with key messages:
- Cross sell & up sell opportunities
- Last order date
- Delivery charges
- Expected delivery times
- Extended returns period
- Customer service arrangements during holiday time
- Gift wrapping/messaging options
11. Blog 2009
- About you
- About your company
- About your employees
If you don't currently have a blog on your site then this is a good a time as any to start one. If you have one then have a Christmas update reflecting on the year just gone for your customers/you/your company/your employees. Highlight the achievements, personal triumphs, lessons learnt from 2009 and looking forward to the new year.
And, of course, include lots of optimised content, links to product pages and use social media to encourage plenty of direct contact and engagement with your customers.
12. Christmas Campaign Tracking
- Analytics
- Tracking
Tracking is absolutely key for any online campaign. Ensure that your tracking is set up correctly for the busiest weeks on the site and that you are ready to analyse and optimise (use goals, segments and scheduled reports etc ). Make sure all Christmas campaigns have specific tracking with as much granularity as possible.
13. Email For Monday Peeks (ok so we have more than 12! But they are so good we didn't want to leave any out!)
Data taken from 2007/8 in the graph below shows peeks in Monday searches which suggests that conversion rates would increase on these days. Therefore, planning an email campaign for delivery on Mondays, with the previous year's data taken into consideration, would be a good idea to consider in order to maximise your ROI over the Christmas period.
(Source: Google data)
And finally.....
Don't forget to use all the good stuff that happens this year in your planning for next!
- Think about how your website performs technically with the additional visitor and transaction loads
- Maybe you want to utilise some or more of the new functionality available with Web 2.0 and 3.0
- Or maybe you want to upgrade your online merchandising and branding capabilities?
So why not add e-inbusiness to your own Christmas list 2009?
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