How companies reach their customers in the Christmas rush
The holidays are just around the corner. After a turbulent year, many marketers are asking themselves how they should approach their customers at the end of the year to achieve their sales goals. Selligent Marketing Cloud provides tips on how to reach customers during the holidays.
For businesses, the holiday season is one of the most important sales periods of the year. The corona virus has changed the world this year - some countries are still in lockdowns or have severe restrictions. Instead of strolling through Christmas markets and storming stores for Black Friday, many consumers will do their holiday shopping from home this year.
From the mall to the inbox
It's not just the where, but also the how that differs this year from previous years. In 2020, communication will shift even more from offline to online. This makes it even more important for brands to stay in touch with their customers. According to the Selligent Marketing Cloud Consumer Survey, most customers prefer to communicate via email - although there are of course differences between generations.
Email campaigns: content is king
When it comes to email campaigns, only exciting content can win over consumers - but what do we do if we're already failing to deliver our content to consumers? According to the Selligent Consumer Survey, 39 percent of customers unsubscribe from newsletters. The reason: they generally receive too many emails. Especially during the holidays, people are bombarded with a huge amount of marketing mailings. This is not only annoying, but also a technical hazard: inboxes are blocked, mail providers can trigger spam alerts. However, deliverability can be positively influenced with two factors:
Do not become a spammer
Sure: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, winter sales and Christmas specials tempt you to launch several email campaigns at the end of the year. But marketing mailings should not be sent too frequently - otherwise the click on the spam button is pre-programmed. The Selligent Marketing Cloud survey showed that most consumers tolerate a weekly mail or one to two mails per week. So it's better to optimize and further personalize the content of the mailings so that multiple promotions can be presented clearly and attractively. In addition, you should avoid critical changes right before the holidays. Conversions should be made at least two months in advance. Check your domains and email infrastructure before the campaign to make sure that no malfunctions have crept in.
Familiarize yourself with your customers
Mailings are aimed at people. They must be personal and contain relevant content or be in the current context. Links with attractive offers and clear calls to action provide added value for the customer and increase engagement. And what applies to infrastructure changes also applies to layout: these should never be made directly before important sales periods, as in the worst case the customer will not immediately recognize the brand and the mailings will not be opened.
Write to inactive contacts at the end of the year? Sounds good, but it's not recommended. Only target active customers (responding within the last six months) to keep their inbox rate high. Don't use third-party lists.
Selligent Marketing Cloud, a CM Group brand, is an intelligent omni-channel marketing cloud platform.
