Creating an effective marketing campaign can be challenging at any time of the year. It’s important that the marketing materials you create and the techniques you use are able to properly target your core audience. This becomes even more important when you’re developing a marketing campaign for the holiday season.
First of all, holidays like Black Friday, Halloween, and Christmas invariably drive a lot of traffic to eCommerce websites. Competition is also stronger during the holidays. To capitalize on the higher traffic and increase conversions, the following guide offers eight marketing tips that should help you ramp up for the holidays.
Each of the following tips and techniques should help you improve your marketing efforts for the holidays. Most of these tips incorporate software solutions into them to make the marketing process more efficient.
1. Use Marketing Automation Software to Keep Customers Engaged During the Holidays
Holiday marketing campaigns tend to be more expansive than other marketing campaigns during the year. The only way to capitalize on more shoppers being online is by producing and distributing marketing materials wherever possible. You can simplify the marketing process with marketing automation software. This type of software performs the more repetitive marketing tasks that take up too much of your time.
Marketing automation software handles lead nurturing, A/B testing, and web engagement tasks. During the holiday season, many customers aim to spend an ample sum of money due to seasonal discounts and sales. You can use marketing automation to bring back former customers during the holidays by providing them with personalized email offers. Marketing automation software handles this task.
2. Develop a Holiday Email Calendar
With an email marketing software program, it’s possible to create a holiday email calendar. Use this calendar to plan your email campaign and better visualize your campaign goals. By visualizing the entirety of your email campaign, it’s easier to identify areas that require improvement.
With the right software, you can schedule social posts, add marketing activities, and view completed marketing materials. Because of how hectic marketing is during the holidays, using a calendar should make you more organized. Better organizational skills is key towards limiting mistakes in any marketing campaign.
3. Take Advantage of Data and Analytics
Nothing is more important to the success of current and future marketing campaigns than analytics. Various software solutions offer expansive analytics features to help businesses understand how their website and marketing efforts are performing. Using analytics allows you to capture data about the results of your marketing campaign. During the holidays, this information is invaluable if you want your marketing budget to be well-spent.
For instance, you can determine the success of a holiday email marketing campaign by measuring the clicks, conversions, and opens for the emails you sent out. The majority of email marketing software solutions include analytics functionality. This functionality allows you to identify strengths and weaknesses within your email campaign. It’s then possible to use this information to make subtle yet effective alterations to the campaign.
4. Promote Holiday Product Categories
While ad creation is essential for any marketing campaign, your website should change as well to accommodate the holiday season. To that end, use seasonal product categories to highlight the most relevant products/services you offer for the holidays. You could accomplish this goal by placing all seasonally relevant products on the same page.
Funneling website visitors to a single area of your website makes it more likely they will find what they’re looking for. It’s not enough to create appealing advertisements that bring users to your website. You must also make sure that the user engages with your website long enough for them to make a purchase.
5. Use Advanced Scheduling to Provide Daily Offers
When you buy marketing software, one feature that’s important to have is advanced scheduling. This software feature allows you to schedule holiday popups ahead of time, which makes it easy for you to focus on other aspects of your marketing campaign.
During the holiday season, consider inviting people to visit your website on a daily basis. You can accomplish this goal by sending daily or weekly offers to site visitors. While the holiday season is ongoing, you want each customer to visit your website multiple times. When a user visits your website numerous times in a holiday season, it’s more likely that they will make multiple purchases.
6. Manage Customer Relations with a CRM
During the holiday season, using a CRM to manage customer relations is more important than ever. A CRM provides you with every tool you need to provide customers with a fantastic shopping experience.
By providing site visitors with a flawless experience at every stage of the purchasing process, you should notice an increase in conversion rates. While the holiday season is progressing, other websites will also do their best to reach your past customers. It’s possible to mitigate this issue with a powerful CRM by your side.
7. Use a Countdown Timer on Your Website for Holiday Deals
Many customers search for sales during the holidays when they can purchase items at a discount. For instance, Black Friday is a shopping holiday designed to provide customers with access to steep discounts on their favorite items. If your website or business is holding a sale for the holidays, it’s important to build anticipation for this event.
A great way to build anticipation is by promoting seasonal sales ahead of the sale date. Even though there are several methods that allow you to promote seasonal sales, an effective technique involves using a countdown timer. Many software solutions offer countdown timers, which can be added to any page on your website. These timers immediately draw the user’s attention to the fact that you’re about to have a large sale.
8. Develop Engaging Content with Holiday Email Templates
When you’re setting up email marketing automation, it’s important that the marketing materials you automate are effective at reaching your main audience. Your email content is key towards a successful marketing campaign. If you don’t properly convey the unique value your brand provides, you likely won’t convert many customers.
During the holiday season, you can enhance email content with unique designs based on holiday themes. For instance, your branding elements could be green and red. You could also place snow in the background of your seasonal emails. If you don’t have ample experience with graphic design, consider using a holiday email template. These templates are customizable, which allows you to add your distinct value proposition to the design.
With these marketing tips in mind, you should notice higher conversion rates and better site traffic. Before you start to ramp up your marketing efforts for the holidays, make sure that you purchase the right software for the job. Here at Zenatta, we can help you automate the more repetitive marketing tasks and determine how to get the most out of your next marketing campaign.
