For DTC and ecommerce businesses, the Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend are one of the most, if not the most important event of the entire year.
With so much riding on the performance of the holiday season, it is essential that brands adequately prepare their marketing plan and campaigns. However, so many businesses find themselves ‘running out of time’ and have to scramble in the last few weeks before the holidays.
With the 2022 holiday season just around the corner, it's imperative to get your game plan ready to have an epic holiday sales season this year.
Here are my top 10 BFCM Prep tips and strategies to make this Cyber Weekend your best one yet!
#1: Audit last year’s campaign performance
Start by looking back to see what performed well and what didn’t last year. This ensures that you’ll leverage the winners again and replace the losing campaigns for this year. Don’t just look at what campaigns generated the most revenue; instead, broaden your perspective to look for overall performance indicators such as:
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Open rate
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Click-through rate
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Conversion rate
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AOV
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Revenue per email.
Once you’ve identified the top-performers across these different metrics, look at the creative to get inspiration on what you can incorporate into your campaigns this year.
#2: Get organized on offers, campaign cadence, and segmentation
Make sure you have a very clear progression of offers so that your customers are not confused as you send campaigns throughout the season. I’d recommend building out your campaign calendar to help visualize your cadence. Additionally, look at your cadence from a segment perspective to clearly define what segments will get what messages and offers throughout the holiday season. It's likely you’ll have more than one segment you’ll be sending to this year, so you’ll want to make sure each segment is getting the right message when they need it and there's no duplicate sending.
#3: Prepare your ‘Oops’ campaign template
With so much going on leading up to the holiday season, your internal Quality Assurance process could fall victim to the urgency of trying to get everything done. Mistakes can and do happen! So whether you had a slip-up last year or not, use it to your advantage. Whiteboard different scenarios that can happen this holiday season, and create an ‘Oops’ message for each of those scenarios. This will limit further stress during the season. Being prepared to handle the situation quickly goes a long way with your customers and internal teams.
#4: Create hype around your promotions
Once you have your campaign calendar created and know what items you want to promote, start nurturing your customers to think about your products as soon as possible. You can accomplish this through multiple approaches such as:
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An online gift guide
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Promoting items for hosting holiday parties
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Recommending customers to treat themselves this holiday season
Add these messages now to your broadcast campaigns, even if it's towards the bottom of the email or included in your preheader text. This way, your customers will have the seed planted and keep your products in mind for their holiday shopping list.
#5: Run a pre-holiday re-engagement campaign
Prior to the holidays, it's time to try and revive any customers or subscribers who have disengaged in the past months. This will help increase your potential reach during the holiday season as well as reduce the number of unsubscribes generated by your increased campaign cadence.
#6: Give the gift of exclusivity
As part of your campaign calendar, think about how you can give your existing subscribers and loyal customers the opportunity to access your holiday offers before anyone else. Not only can this approach drive revenue earlier in the holiday season, but it can also build customer lifetime value with your best customers. You might also want to consider offering your VIPs their own additional special offers throughout the holiday season.
Additionally, teasing exclusive offers and early access via your social media channels is a great way to grow your list before Cyber Weekend. These gifts of exclusivity might prompt users on the edge of committing to finally subscribe to get in on the deal.
#7: Don’t overlook seasonal-only shoppers
In addition to offering early access to your most loyal customers and/or engaged subscribers, I would encourage you not to overlook customers who purchase seasonally. Create segments of those customers who typically only buy during promotional periods and create a unique set of messages tailored to them. Adding personalization to your marketing will help your business stand out from a flooded inbox and likely drive a higher rate of conversion.
#8: Update creatives across your channels
Changing your website, email creatives, pop ups, and flow messages to embody the holidays helps drive engagement and conversion. If people see holiday-themed content when they come to your website or interact with your messages, it will likely put them in the holiday shopping mode and get them thinking about gift buying early. It also gives customers the sense that you are seasonally timely and brings a fun holiday experience to your store.
#9: Use your flows to remind customers of holiday sales
As you’re in the spirit of updating your campaigns and creatives, don’t forget to use your flow messages, especially transactional ones, as additional means to communicate and remind users of your current holiday offers. Using Klaviyo’s new Universal Content blocks makes it easy to add seasonal content–either as a banner graphic or text–that you can easily update across all of your messages as offers and messaging change throughout the holiday season.
#10: If sales are #1, acquisition is a close #2
With the increase in site traffic, not everyone will buy from you right away. So take the time to audit all of your acquisition touchpoints to make sure they are working correctly and ensure that all your copy is engaging. Fun and engaging messaging will motivate your new visitors to sign up for your email and SMS programs. This is especially important if you sell higher AOV products or seasonal products such as swimwear, grills, etc. that might require more nurturing after the holidays.
Final Thoughts
There are so many different ways to prepare for the holiday season. Incorporating even a couple of these suggestions will help you move the needle this year and have a happy holiday season for your brand!
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