It’s the frenzied, fantastic final month of the year. Businesses across industries are promoting special offers, free shipping and holiday extras. Retailers who do their best business this time of year are hoping to close out the quarter strong. Marketers are finalizing 2018 budgets and dreaming up new and innovative ways to reach, engage and retain customers.
You likely have a good idea of what would appeal to your customer base this holiday season. Easy ways to search for gifts, good suggestions based on what they’ve currently browsed or bought, seamless order processing. But what could you do that would really make your customers’ shopping dreams come true now and in 2018? Here’s a holiday wish list of how we think customers would like to be marketed to give them relevance, seamlessness and convenience.
1. Tell them a story
Customers want what they want but there’s also a whole bunch of stuff they don’t yet know they want that you can get them thinking about. If you’re prospecting, telling the story of your brand, how it’s meaningful, convenient, creative, custom, across channels and touchpoints in a cohesive way can plant a seed in shoppers’ minds. Thinking about your channels as a patchwork—or, omnichannel, as the buzzword goes—and not individually helps break through siloed, redundant messaging. You have creative available in mobile and video that can help you tell parts of your story visually. You have native advertising that works smoothly with content your target consumers are already consuming. You have the ability to find your most high-value audiences with the most premium supply inventory. Don’t be boring.
2. Don’t treat them like a stagnant segment
Segments still serve a purpose in your marketing efforts, but keeping customers in segments that no longer suit them does not. If a customer has consistently had order values over $100 and you still have them in a $0 to $50 segment, you are likely wasting spend and missing opportunities to remarket to them. In fact, you might even be promoting the same handbag she already bought instead of the jacket that could complement that bag. Technology is now available to give marketers access to all customer behaviors and interactions so you can better identify their path to conversion without needing to wait for tests on things like campaign spend. This technology enables you to quickly move a user in and out of segments as their purchase behavior changes so you can serve them meaningful offers.
3. Show them the goods
When your shoppers abandon their carts—something common at this time of year when shoppers are looking for the best gift or deal—you must figure out how to quickly get them to return and click “Purchase.” Dynamic creative featuring the specific product abandoned or website carousels of compelling offers help you meet the immediate needs and wants of customers looking for that perfect item. Using email data to understand which links customers clicked on in an offer email and then serving them a display ad of the product that interested them can compel conversion. Showing free shipping and discount creative—anything that spurs a sense of urgency—can close the deal.
Photo from Creative Commons