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Stay tuned for this segment every Friday!
Officially, we are in the money-making season of the year – the Holiday season (yaay!) So today, why not discuss planning all about it.
Be it the global markets where festivities like Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc. are round the corner or be it the Indian Market, where soon every random sale would now have a prefix - GRAND DIWALI, marketers are looking at a huge opportunity for the next three months; this is especially true for the e-commerce businesses and now you know why.
So, to help you or teach you about how to capitalize on this opportunity, we have a few tips and tricks in today’s session -
1. PLAN PLAN PLAN: No matter how obvious it sounds; it is the most important part of your Q4 strategy. Plan a calendar with your team where you should decide what to so on a day to day, SKU to SKU and a channel by channel level. Of course, SKU’s can be altered later as per inventory analysis but you must have an idea about which categories have to be promoted when, which deals have to be dropped when, which of the sales will be site discount driven and which will be code driven etc.
This helps your creative team to be prepared before time and you can avoid last minute confusions. Every email/promotion missed in Q4 is a money-making opportunity lost. Q4 is the most demanding time for the creative team and pre-planning helps you avoid such missed opportunities
2. PROVIDE SOMETHING EXTRA: FREE shipping and GUARANTEED SHIPPING before the event are the two major incentives that festive shoppers look for before buying, according to some studies. Make sure you are able to provide either or both of them. With Amazon Prime Membership, the former becomes even more important for D2C brands who serve through the websites. Additionally, what you can offer 24 hours prior to the event are GIFT CARDS! Clearly, no D2C brand can get anything delivered guaranteed within 24 hours and stepping out to shop is a BIG NO today for consumers and hence you should offer your audience some customised E- gift cards.
Another tactic is FREE gifts. To boost your average order value, tell your customers to spend more than, let’s say INR 1599 and get a FREE gift. Why would this work? The word ‘FREE’ has its own charm and during the festive season, the purse strings are not so tight. So, the strategy REALLY works!
3. SEGMENT AND GET PERSONAL! By Diwali, your email box will be flooded with promotional mails and of course even your brand mails will be among those unread chunks of offers. The best way to go about it and improve engagement and conversion is segmentation. Three popular segments recommended for holiday season are:
a. People who have bought from you last festive season
b. Brand Loyalists (2-3 orders per month)
c. Engaged Audience (Prospects and Buyers)
You must identify these three segments, tailor your email content and frequency for each one of them and try to recommend them the products as per their search history or purchase history (it is a feature provided by Klaviyo)
4. CREATIVES, LANDING PAGES AND PERFORMANCE ADS: Undisputedly, holiday season is the time when you need to put your A-game on. Create versions of each creative to test which is working the best for which audience (Full guide here) and launch the ads with the best performing ones. Make different dedicated landing pages for Diwali, thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. On those landing pages, mention discounts at several places and give it a festive look to improve engagement.
5. CORPORATE GIFTING: With so much focus being given to employees nowadays, corporate gifting is also a vertical one may explore. Buy HR databases and send them a message about why your gifts are the best bet for their employees and the discounts that are being offered to them. The conversion will be low definitely but the order value in such cases are very high and you even get access to a large audience who might become your buyers in future.
6. BUNDLES: A lot of D2C brands use a bundle-first strategy in the US where on EVERY landing page you will find a bundle first followed by a limited number of SKUs. The concept of big savings on big purchases and family packs is very prevalent in holiday seasons in every geography and every brand should push it. It not only lets the consumers try a variety of your products but it also boosts your AOV. This is the time consumers want to spend, so give them the reason to spend. Simple.
These are the best top six strategies that D2C brands are employing to get some eyeballs from your inbox and some money from your pockets. Do you think these tactics tempt you as a consumer? Tell us in the comments and let us know what do you look at when you are festive shopping.
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