What Can Retailers Do To Increase Holiday Sales?

3 Crucial Steps to Compete in eCommerce This Season

On average, the US Holiday season accounts for 40% of a brand’s annual sales. Which makes sense, this is when people shop for gifts, house décor, clothes, food, and so much more. It’s also a time when they’re more likely to experiment with products they’re not as familiar with. eCommerce has continued to increase year over year, and given the unique circumstances of 2020, eCommerce sales are expected to grow even beyond the previous trends. To truly take advantage of the season, you need the right marketing strategy to cut through the noise.

Creating personalized holiday content isn’t enough. You could have incredible content and still see zero results–people have a plethora of options to choose from during holiday seasons.

But there are three simple steps you can take to help increase your holiday sales: Optimize for Mobile, Ensure Your Messaging is Relevant, and Amplify Your Message. 

1. Optimize for Mobile  

According to Business Insider, m-commerce (mobile commerce) “comprised over a quarter of total eCommerce” last year, and it’s predicted that in the U.S., m-commerce will reach 45% of the total eCommerce market. 

The downside? If people have a negative experience on mobile, they’re 62% less likely to purchase from you in the future.  On top of that, Google found that “51% of smartphone users have purchased from a company/brand other than the one they intended to because the information provided was useful.”  

All that is to say that optimizing your site for mobile is critically important, and you need to ensure that everything you do works great on mobile. 

What You Need to Do to Optimize for Mobile:

• People searching on mobile want digestible, useful content. Ask yourself– what do people want to learn about your products, services, or vertical? 

• Ensure that your mobile-friendly site loads quickly. 40% of people will bounce from a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Keep your mobile site clean, without weighing it down with too many page elements. 
• Make your mobile purchases easy and intuitive. No one wants to hunt for the “Buy” button when they’re scrolling on their phones. 

2. Ensure Your Messaging is Relevant

Get the right content in front of the right people. Segmented customer lists will improve your customer experience and deliver better personalized engagements. 

You don’t want to send sales for first-time customers to those who’ve been loyal for years. Proper segmentation ensures that you can engage with your prospects as prospects while creating incremental value for your most loyal customers. You can segment based on demographics, geographical locations, psychographics, and behavior. 

Instapage found that when it came to email, “segmented, targeted, and personalized emails generate 58% of all revenue”. Personalized messaging increases email open rates by 25%, and marketers found a 760% increase in email revenue when they segmented campaigns. 

When you segment and personalize your messaging, people feel like your brand actually cares about who they are and what they need. It builds brand loyalty while providing them with true value.

3. Amplify Your Message

Now that you have the right message in front of the right people, you need to make sure you are actually getting through to those customers–with the help of media amplification. 

What is Media Amplification?

Media Amplification helps you find all of the digital identifiers (Mobile Ad IDs and hashed emails) linked to customers and prospects, increasing the platforms and channels where you can communicate with them. 

People spend their time on a range of platforms, including Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter, and email. You can’t count on a single avenue to maximize your message. Media amplification allows you to pass your message about your ongoing offers and holiday discounts without leaving anything to chance. 

If you only have one email or device ID for an individual, you can end up missing out on too many opportunities. You want the most points of contact for your customers and prospects to ensure you’re reaching them digitally and on mobile. By adding incremental touchpoints, you increase your omnichannel reach. 

Expand Your Reach and Improve Your Return on Investment:

1. Get in Touch with Your Best Customers Wherever They Are

Media amplification increases your touchpoints, allowing you to reach your target audience in as many channels as possible, whether on social media, open web, or in-app by enriching your CRM, even if you only have a single email per individual. For example, a person could be active on Twitter, but they barely check their email. By amplifying, you can guarantee successful reach even if you only have their email address. By adding incremental touchpoints, you can connect to their social handles and other linked platforms. 

Find the best way to communicate with your audience so your messaging doesn’t end up with spam or junk emails.

2. Increase Your Marketing Effectiveness

Marketing is among the most cost-intensive areas of running a business, and without the right plan, you may spend more than your returns. With the right partner, media amplification can help you drive more relevant traffic for the same budget. Easily integrate by linking Mobile Ad IDs and hashed emails to a person and reduce waste in your media programs. And by reusing the same identifiers repeatedly, you can drive down your media costs.

3. Increase Your Accuracy

It’s too easy to send your message into the void. Someone gets a new job and their email changes. They move and have a new postal address. Media amplification saves you from this by giving you access to recent Mobile Ad IDs. By using Mobile Ad IDs seen within the last 12 months, you only target the right channels, and you are assured that your audience will find your messaging.

We’re entering the last quarter of the year, which calls for holiday preparations. That means businesses need to brace themselves for the competitive season by coming up with unique and creative strategies to reach prospects. Media amplification can play a huge role in this, especially when advertising new products and informing your segmented audience about your holiday offers.

If you’re not optimizing for mobile, ensuring your message is relevant through personalization and segmentation, or amplifying your messaging, you’re in danger of leaving sales and transactions on the table. These strategies will empower you to expand your reach, save on marketing spend, and increase your holiday sales. 

It’s not too late to impact your holiday season! Discover how FullContact’s Media Amplification solution can increase your traffic, and contact us for expert guidance.