Read on this article which filled with important dates through the end of the year, best practices direct from Justuno Conversion Strategist team, and example strategies to implement. This holiday season will be different than any before, so make sure you’re set up for success!
Marketing Conversion Strategies for 2020 Q4 Holiday Season
Table of contents
Essential Dates
Questions to Ask
Strategies to Consider
Best Practices / Things to Avoid
Essential Dates
- Nov 18: Small Business Saturday
- Nov 26: Thanksgiving
- Nov 27: Black Friday
- Nov 30: Cyber Monday
- Dec 1: Giving Tuesday
- Dec 11: Hanukkah
- Dec 14: Green Monday
- Dec 18: Shipping Cut Off
- Dec 25: Christmas
- Dec 26: Kwanzaa / Boxing Day
- Dec 31: New Year’s Eve
Pro Tip: In 2019, Justuno clients ran the majority of their promotions from the day before Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday with an average run-time of seven days.
Questions to Ask
- Will you be running any sales in November and December? If so, what will the incentive be? (ex. Percentage discounts, dollar discounts, free gifts, free shipping, free gift wrapping, etc.)
- What off-site marketing campaigns will you be running to drive traffic to your site? Will you be running campaign-specific deals through those ads? If so, are you considering setting up segmented promotions to mirror off-site messaging when the visitor clicks through to your site?
- Do you have any goals other than driving purchases? If so, what other conversion objectives do you have in mind?
- Will you be using coupon codes or automatic discounts through your e-commerce platform?
- When are your shipping deadlines for a customer to be guaranteed to get their order before Christmas/Hanukkah? Keep in mind the delays you experienced due to Coronavirus in earlier months and if you are in a location where you could face the same restrictions or delays.
- Do you want to notify visitors when sales start or end?
- Will you be running a VIP or Early Bird Sale for your subscriber base? If so, how early do you want to start collecting emails for those sales? Do you need a custom lead capture for that? How will you identify those specific emails? (ie. Will you use a source field or list?)
Pro Tip: Answering these questions will help you get started on your Holiday planning. Once you have an idea of what you want to do, we suggest getting started early to give yourself plenty of time for error, edits, or updates to your plan… and don’t forget testing!
Strategies to Consider
When planning and creating promotions for your onsite campaigns this holiday season, there are many components to building a successful strategy. Below are tested strategies on how best to utilize Justuno during the holiday season.
Rotating Holiday Messaging
This strategy creates unique messaging for each holiday from Thanksgiving throughout December to stand out against your competitors. Elevate this strategy further by changing your incentive for each day of Cyber Five. This will create new experiences for each day and gives customers information about each sale.
Banners
While our Conversion Strategists strongly encourage centre promotions during Cyber Five, banners are strong additions to Cyber Five sales. Banners are low impact promotions while still providing critical information for visitors. Banners work best when paired with a centre promotion and triggered after their initial view. Take this strategy a step further by adding a code to follow the visitor around through their journey. Make banners extra effective with a countdown timer to increase urgency and drive engagement.
Extended Sales
In recent years, extended sales have become more and more commonplace in the e-commerce community. Instead of a series of sales over Cyber Five, the extended sale runs throughout November and sometimes into December offering one incentive. While this strategy puts less stress on the need to buy now, optimizing your conversion rate is still important. Use a centre promotion notifying visitors of your sale and its end date. Combine this with a banner reiterating this information for when they return. For the last 24-48 hours of your sale, add in a countdown timer to let visitors know time is running out.
Best Practices / Things to Avoid
Focus on Conversions: During the week of Cyber Five and throughout December, focus your efforts on driving visitors to purchase. The more you ask of visitors, the more likely they are to leave. So avoid running email or phone opt-ins along with gamification promotions since they can slow your visitor’s experience. Set up a lead capture at the end of October to let visitors sign up for information about your Cyber Week sales, but be sure it is off by November 25th. During the holiday season, Justuno users tend to have much higher conversion rates for ungated promotions, averaging 16.6% last season.
Time-Based Incentives: Add countdown timers to short-term sales so your visitors know when it ends to create urgency and clarity to those intending to buy. By leaning into the “this weekend only” mentality, Justuno customers converted 22.67% of countdown timer engagements to sales last season.
Short and Sweet: Keep your copy clean, clear, and short. Use copy like “This product sells out fast” or “Get if before it’s gone” to create a sense of scarcity, This allows visitors to see information quickly and get them to the checkout page.
Be Bold: Use animation, bright colours, and large font to catch your visitor’s attention so they don’t miss out on your incentives. Justuno’s built-in animation effects are a great way to add a little something extra to your designs and our users average 5% higher engagement rates when present.
Do Not A/B Test: The visitors on your site from Cyber Five through December are not your usual audience and behave differently than your year-round crowd. Any A/B tests will not give you clear results on what would work well for the rest of the year.
Pro Tip: You want to support your visitor’s buying journey by clearly providing holiday sale information and requiring the least amount of effort on their part in return. Keep it simple and get results!
Preparation is Key: While late Summer and early Fall may feel too early to talk about the holidays to your customers, it’s never too early to be planning ahead. Ramp up onsite lead generation efforts to build email and SMS lists now to amplify the effect your holiday marketing will have on conversion rates.
Relevant Product Recommendations: For Justuno Plus and Professional Services clients, our AI-powered product recommendations make it easy to show visitors relevant products based on browsing or buying behaviour. Not only is this a great way to boost your AOV but also show shoppers more of your products who may be less familiar with your site. During the holidays you’ll have many first-time visitors shopping for others who will welcome helpful suggestions.
Source: Justuno
