The ecommerce retailer’s guide to driving online sales

The 2021 holiday shopping season is going to pose unique challenges for online merchants.

New data privacy changes that came into effect in the last year have proven the importance of reducing reliance on third-party platforms and instead focusing on collecting Customer-First Data™.

Not to mention, continuing supply chain and distribution disruptions have highlighted just how important it is adapt, manage customer expectations, and create fail-safe systems around your marketing and business operations.

While these obstacles may present challenges for you, they aren’t stopping consumers from shipping. There’s no doubt that ecommerce will continue to grow and take up bigger pieces of the shopping pie, so it’s smart to invest in your ecommerce business and develop relationships with your customers now, ahead of the holidays, if you haven’t already done so.

Why? Because Cyber Weekend (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) impacts nearly all ecommerce businesses. Even if the holidays aren’t your peak selling season, it’s still one you can’t afford to ignore.

And as the holidays approach, retailers need a plan that takes into account all of the ways their customers want to purchase.

Nearly half (47%) of holiday shoppers plan to take advantage of sales or price discounts during the holiday season, according to an NRF consumer survey. Additionally, 49% of holiday shoppers will start browsing and buying before November in order to avoid the stress of last-minute shopping and to not miss out on key holiday items. This number is up from 42% of people who began holiday shopping before November in 2020.

Yet, in a year that’s been plagued with supply chain and logistical challenges, brands will need to be particularly attuned to consumer shopping habits and adjust their marketing strategies and messages to entice shoppers to make purchases earlier in order to receive them in time for the holidays this year.

Now is the time to build relationships with customers, new and existing, and to be nurturing all of the new customers who discovered your brand earlier this year.

60% of Cyber Weekend sales were driven by consumers who engaged with an email from a brand prior to Q3 that same year, according to Klaviyo data. Additionally, consumers who engaged with a brand’s email by clicking on it had a 10% greater average order value and accounted for 53% of total sales.

“It’s going to be very important for brands to start prospecting and looking for customers earlier. The marketplace for holiday advertising is going to be very crowded with a lot of brands making their shift to online. Brands need to get out there early and often to find new customers. As the fourth quarter comes along and as people are spending more money, consumers will know who those brands are and will be more willing to shop with them,” said Joshua Behr, director of ecommerce and digital marketing at the Amerex Group.

Read on to learn how to set your goals, measure your performance, and prepare your online business for the upcoming holiday season.

Who are your customers? What are their preferences? How can you use this information to market to them effectively and ultimately drive sales?

Buyer personas are an incredibly helpful way to learn more about your customers. Mark Schaefer, a well-known marketing strategy consultant, says three to four buyer personas often account for more than 90%of a company’s sales.

With buyer personas in mind, you can tailor your product assortment, promotion, content, and messaging to your audience accordingly.

Here are some common holiday shopper personas with examples of how you might go about engaging them:

The deal hunter

Missy waits until the Thanksgiving turkey is put away, but then she hops online or jumps into her car to go looking for holiday deals. A suburbanite who loves to save money, Missy gets a thrill not by how much she spends, but by how much she saves. Her only brand loyalty is to the stores that gave her great holiday deals last year. Otherwise, she’ll shop wherever she can find the best savings.

“A deal hunter’s goal is to save money. Competing for the attention of the deal hunter means you need to put your deals front and center everywhere the customer is—email, SMS, social media. Deal hunters are much more likely to abandon their checkout, as well, especially if they’re hunting for a similar product with a better deal,” said Kelly Vaughn, founder and CEO, The Taproom Agency.

How to get the deal hunter’s attention

• Send her promotional emails with the promotion clearly called out in the subject line.
• Send a short and sweet SMS message with sale information, along with a visual to quickly catch her attention.
• Have a strong abandoned checkout flow to bring her attention back to your site.
• Build Facebook custom audiences and target her with your promotions on Facebook or Instagram—the social channels she frequently visits.

Example email subject

Confirmed: $5 Leggings + 30% OFF EVERYTHING ONLINE (you’re welcome!)

Example SMS

Deal of the Day: Take 50% OFF hundreds of styles
(*include an eye-catching visual of the 50% off sale)

The last-minute shopper

Rob usually misses the free shipping cutoff date for most online retailers, so he relies on expedited or rush shipping options to get his gifts in time. This young and single urbanite is likely making purchases on his phone from the subway or his office. His procrastinator persona is common. Last year, nearly 134 million people planned to shop the last Saturday before Christmas, according to the NRF.

“Last-minute shoppers are primarily concerned with ensuring their package will arrive on time. If they can’t find your shipping information, they’re not going to risk the purchase. Make sure you have your shipping times available on the product display page, at checkout, and in your email and SMS correspondence. If you offer curbside pickup or local delivery, be sure to highlight this as a benefit for last-minute shoppers,” said Kelly Vaughn.

How to get the last-minute shopper’s attention

• Email him with a sense of urgency called out in the subject line. Here’s an example: “Hurry, 20% off ends tomorrow!” or “Want free shipping? Order by 12/12.”
• Send him a text message letting him know time’s running out and include the shipping deadline.
• Update your website to include shipping cutoffs and make sure they can’t be missed. Your promotional bar, product display page, cart page, and checkout should all be clear about your shipping cutoffs.
• Offer expedited shipping options so he doesn’t make his purchases from a competitor.

The VIP

Sarah purchases high value items and she buys them frequently. She’s also left a few positive product reviews on your website. If every customer was like Sarah, you’d be out of inventory or rolling in riches. She’s what you’d call a brand loyalist. She’s a generous gifter to others, but she also purchases for herself.

“Your VIP customers are your best customers, so you need to make sure you’re taking care of them. The VIP treatment goes well beyond a label—what are you doing to make your VIP customers feel special? Whether it’s a free gift with their next purchase, a surprise discount code, or a handwritten thank-you note, go above and beyond to take care of these customers,” said Kelly Vaughn.

How to get the VIP’s attention

• On Sarah’s next order, include a hand-written card and thank her for being such a great customer. Showing your appreciation will go a long way.
• Offer a VIP program and make sure Sarah is at the top of the list. Send an SMS to your VIP customers about your new launch or sale before alerting the rest of your customers.
• Award Sarah for spreading the love. Offer a loyalty program or send her an email with a discount code containing products she’s most likely to purchase based on previous orders.

The window shopper

Barry’s a browser, not a buyer. He often browses your website and he may or may not add items to his cart, but he almost always leaves your site before making a purchase. This indecisive urban shopper needs a nudge.

“It’s important to remember that window shoppers are still prospective buyers; they’re on your website for a reason. They may be interested in buying but not immediately, or they’re gathering more information before making a purchasing decision. Spend more time nurturing these customers by giving them a better understanding of who you are, what you’re selling, and why they should trust buying from you,” said Kelly Vaughn.

How to get the window shopper’s attention

• Remind him about what he’s left behind by sending him browse abandonment or abandoned cart emails.
• Dynamically populate these emails with product images so he remembers the specific items that previously caught his attention.
• Build Facebook custom audiences and target him with your products on Facebook or Instagram—the social channels he frequently visits.
• Ensure you have plenty of user-generated content, such as product reviews or images of your products shared by your customers, to help generate trust.
• Share a link to a blog post or an educational page related to the products he was viewing via email or SMS to help educate him on your brand and products.

The Impulse Buyer

It doesn’t take any time at all for Kristen to make a decision. In fact, as soon as you release a new product and alert your customers, her name is the first one that shows up in your new orders. An impulse buyer, Kristen has expendable income and makes snap decisions when items go on sale. The last thing she wants is to miss out on the discount or new release.

“Impulse buyers are counting down to the next sale. They’re subscribed to your emails and texts if it means they’ll be the first to get access to a limited sale. Make it as easy as possible for these customers to check out, removing any potential friction that would cause the customer to give up on placing an order,” said Kelly Vaughn.

• Add accelerated checkout buttons, allowing customers to check out in as few clicks as possible, including Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• Use urgency language in your email and SMS copy to get Kristen to visit your site and place an order.
• Utilize post-purchase upsell flows via email and SMS to keep Kristen engaged. You already have her attention, so keep it.

Try to reach your personas with some of these tactics and make them more effective with segmentation and personalization strategies.

Read on to learn how to segment your audience and create a personalized experience.

With so many retailers competing for your customers’ share of wallet, what you offer to your customers is critically important. This is where product merchandising and promotions come in.

In your store or on your website, merchandising refers to the assortment of products available for sale and how they’re displayed to encourage customers to make a purchase.

The holiday shopping season is like the Super Bowl of retail since financial results can sink or swim your year-long efforts, and Q4 will be a crucial selling opportunity that you simply can’t afford to miss.

The role of the product merchant is robust and complex, and their responsibilities have evolved over time due to the changing needs of customers. Understanding both historical performance and current trends can help you fine-tune your own product assortment and make it attractive to your audience.

For the upcoming holiday season, with an even larger consumer shift to ecommerce expected than usual, consider how you can merchandise and promote your products online to attract new customers that traditionally do their seasonal shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

It doesn’t take a lot of convincing to make a purchase during the holidays, but competitive incentives help to sweeten the deal.

The three most appealing offers to shoppers are:

• Price discounts (74%)
• Free shipping (72%)
• Buy one get one free (39%)

Free shipping is table stakes now and shoppers expect most brands to offer it.

Baymard Institute’s research notes that shipping fees are the top cause of abandoned carts, so if you can’t provide free shipping to everyone, perhaps provide a special offer of free shipping to loyalty program members, those who make purchases over a certain size, or those who order very early.

Beyond free shipping, here are a few ideas you can use to drive sales during the holidays.

Bundling

Complementary products sell well together, so they present a good opportunity for a cross-sell (and a great way to increase average order value). Look at items that typically sell well together and offer them bundled together at a slight value. By offering a discount on a bundle, rather than knocking down the price on single items, the perception is one of a much better deal.

One way to execute this strategy is to let your customer dynamically build their bundle on your website.

Say you sell jewelry. If you want to sell a set including a necklace, earrings, and a bracelet, create a selection of items in each category that your customers can browse and choose from to make their own set. Make it an easy experience by including all the information on one page rather than sending them from product page to product page.

This approach helps you strategically create another sticky opportunity: if a customer doesn’t love one of the items, they may come back in the near future to see what other options you have available.

Australian streetwear and sneaker brand Culture Kings is an example of a company that offers a slick “build your own” bundling experience.

Discounts

With a lot of money being spent by shoppers during the holidays, saving some of it through a promotional discount can be an attractive and popular incentive to offer.

According to research by Deloitte, 74%of shoppers put price discounts at the top of their wishlist when it comes to holiday promotions. What’s more, 47% of consumers would try a new online retailer if offered a coupon or discount.

While discounts are a popular way to incentivize shoppers, brands must be mindful of their profit margins and craft a smart strategy that rewards both their customers and their bottom line.

Need some discounting tips? Here are four to consider.

Excess inventory

Offer discounts on products you may have too many of in your inventory.

Small and limited

If you discount a best-seller, try to keep the discount fairly small and the quantities limited so you don’t dilute your brand and condition shoppers to expect discounts.

Refer a friend

Offer a coupon for the buyer and one for her friend. Since 28% of shoppers are more likely to refer friends over Cyber Weekend (with 48% being equally as likely to refer), according to research by LoyaltyLion, this can help drive valuable traffic to your store during a crucial selling period.

As a Black Friday treat, women’s jewelry brand Monica Vinader offered shoppers and their friends a referral discount.

Tiered discounting

Encourage your shoppers to purchase multiple products within your portfolio at a value. For example, if you sell shirts and know the average order value on your site is $100, offer a tiered discount with an incentive. For example, “Spend $125 and get a $25 gift card toward your next purchase.” This is an excellent way to increase average order value and get a customer to come back and complete a repeat purchase.

Iowa-based fashion retailer The Pulse Boutique used a clever tiered strategy to increase average order value through spending thresholds on Cyber Weekend.

Stocking stuffers

Create a curated collection of small and lower-priced items that are either sold together or bundled together.

For beauty retailers, one example of a stocking stuffer could be travel-sized SKUs or samples of skincare products wrapped festively in holiday packaging.

With stocking stuffers, you can strategically introduce your customers to many of your products at once in small quantities that they’ll soon need to replenish. This facilitates the discoverability of new products and often encourages repeat purchases if your stocking stuffers hit the mark.

Magazines like to put together collages of stocking stuffers to help their readers find the perfect gifts at lower price points. Take that same practice and create one for your customers.

Daily deals

Offer daily deals and steals on your website to create a sense of urgency and drive purchase frequency. Give shoppers a compelling reason to return to your store by unveiling a new deal each day, building excitement across your site and marketing channels.

Try to offer something different every day. For fashion retailers, you could offer a limited quantity of popular leggings on one day, an accessories bundle (hat, scarf, gloves) the following day, and holiday pajamas the day after that.

Make sure you’re offering attractive products, though. This isn’t the time to try to get rid of the 10,000 extra chartreuse wool fedora hats you happen to have. If you don’t offer compelling products, your customers may not come back for another daily deal.

Send email reminders to your subscribers to let them know about the daily deals so they don’t miss out. With your email call-to-action (CTA), send them directly to your website where you’ll have special landing pages that feature each deal.

Promote your deals across your social channels, too, to further add to the anticipation.

Powerhouse beauty brand Kylie Cosmetics caused quite a stir with its 2019 “12 Days of Christmas” sale. For 12 days in December, the brand revealed a new promotion on their Instagram account each morning, creating a festive frenzy among its followers!

Next step? Provide the ideal destination for your consumers to shop from—and make it both easy and festive. Add a bit of decorative holiday tinsel and flair to excite your customers and differentiate the shopping experience from other times of the year.

Read on to learn how to optimize your website for the holidays.

Want to drive first-time purchases from new customers? Looking to build stronger relationships with existing customers? Email and SMS marketing are some of the best ways you can accomplish those objectives.

With new customers, one of the first impressions you make on them can be with email. Ask them to subscribe to your newsletter, for example. When they subscribe to your list, you have permission to send them information about your brand, your product selection, educational content, promotions, and customer testimonials, for example.

With existing customers, using email is a great way to continue building relationships with them throughout the year. About 80% of your store’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers, according to Gartner.

But with the average customer seeing a 23% increase in the amount of retail-related email they get during the holiday season, it can be hard to stand out in the inbox.

The holidays are such a busy and profitable time, so it’s essential to stand out in your customers’ inboxes. But what if you’re short on time or resources?

Once you’ve mapped out your goals, your strategy, your key segments, and how you’ll personalize the experience you’ll deliver to them, you can begin to think about great ways to capture your customers’ attention.

How to use email marketing effectively during the holidays

Here are some ways email marketing can help your brand cut through the noise.

Automate your emails

Email automations can drive a significant amount of sales and save you time simply by staging them to send when a customer takes a specific action, so they’re really a no-brainer.

Here are some examples of effective automated emails that should be part of your holiday marketing strategy:

Welcome series email

A welcome series can create one of the first impressions your customers have of your brand during the holiday season. Make sure your welcome emails are on-brand and provide value.

Are you using them to ask your customers what types of content they’d like to receive and how often they’d like to hear from you? Great.

You can also use them to provide your customers with educational content as well, such as your wish list feature and your holiday gift guide.

Gorjana, a jewelry brand, sends out visually appealing and engaging welcome series emails. These emails help to set the right expectations of what your brand is all about and can help you stand out during the holiday shopping frenzy.

Abandoned cart emails

When shoppers add items to their carts but then leave your site, use abandoned cart emails to immediately remind them about what they’ve left behind and capture their limited attention during the busy holiday time period.

Abandoned cart emails are easy to set up and they’re profitable. Brands that have average order values (AOVs) between $100-$500 recover about 4-5% of their abandoned carts on average with abandoned cart emails while brands with AOVs less than $50 recover about 3% on average, according to Klaviyo’s research.

Here are two tips to create impactful abandoned cart emails:

• Dynamically show the products your customers left behind in their carts.
• Send an abandoned cart email one to three hours after someone’s abandoned a cart. You can send a second email a day or two later to those who still haven’t returned to your site to make a purchase.

Royal Design Studio, a stencil and design company, sends abandoned cart emails that are timely specific with images of what shoppers leave behind.

Thank you email

Shoppers get a lot of emails during the holidays, but a thank you email is a simple courtesy that helps you thank your customer for making a purchase from you.

In your thank you emails, you can also ask your customers to leave a product review so you can add it to your website. Since most customers look through product reviews before they buy, these reviews can help you gain even more customers during the holidays.

Thank you emails are also a great opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell some of your other products during the holidays.

Shinola, a watch and accessories company, is an example of a company that does thank you emails very well.

Winback emails

Do you have customers who haven’t made a purchase from you in a while? Win them back by sending them engaging content. Since they’ve purchased from you before, you can use winback emails to try to get them to buy again.

With winbacks, you can set up an automated email flow to recommend items that are complementary to the ones they’ve previously purchased. You can also show them your holiday and offer gift recommendations.

Custom Ink, a global leader in customized apparel and accessories, does an excellent job of sending winback emails.

How to manage timing and budget

Aside from the different types of automated emails you can send during the holidays, strategic elements like timing and budget are crucial to getting a holiday shopper’s attention in a sea of retailers and their offers.

Here are three ways to get timing and budget right.

Send time optimization

Send time optimization is a great way to help you avoid having your messages get buried in your customers’ inbox during the holidays. By automatically sending an email at the time your customer is most likely to read it, it’s more likely they’ll open your message.

Predict when your customers will reorder

Use features like predicted date of next order to figure out when your customer is likely to make their next purchase and send timely, relevant communications to them.

That’s how Rareform drives revenue and sales margin. If they see that a customer is likely to buy on a certain date, they don’t send them a coupon around that time frame and instead wait to see if the customer makes a purchase without it.

Combine social media ads with email marketing

Paid advertising during the Cyber Weekend timeframe is expensive. Instead, save your dollars and acquire new customers by targeting existing subscribers who haven’t yet purchased with a combination of your paid Facebook ads and email marketing.

Dynamically sync your customer segments directly into Facebook Audiences and target them with a coordinated Facebook and email campaign.

For example, Pair of Thieves did this and saw its year-over-year revenue increase by 5x.

How to use SMS marketing effectively during the holidays

Are your customers spending more inclined to check their email or their texts? Are they more likely to be at home or with friends after work? The only surefire way to communicate with as much of your target audience as possible is to have as many different ways for reaching your customer as possible.

Which brings us to SMS. Are you utilizing SMS marketing? If not, now’s a great time to start.

“SMS marketing can be effective across a variety of industries, and with both younger and older customers who are making impulse purchases and buying other expensive items. Communicating with customers through SMS is an indispensable communication and engagement channel for brands,” said Chris Gordon, senior email marketing manager, Noticed.

You may be wondering whether there’s enough time to build a decent-sized SMS list to support your holiday marketing strategy. The answer is yes! Here are some key strategies you can use to grow your SMS list fast.

Add an optional SMS signup field to your pop-up

“This one’s a no-brainer. But I highly recommend making phone number an optional field and leaving email as the sole requirement. Some people will be hesitant to give their phone number to a brand they’re not familiar with and that’s OK. You can easily convert them to an SMS subscriber later in their journey using other signup tactics,” said Chris Gordon.

Jofit’s pop-up is short, sweet, and effective.

Create an SMS signup landing page

A page that’s dedicated to SMS signups on your site gives you an extra avenue to collect SMS subscribers.

The form on this example page from Layla Sleep was built using a simple Klaviyo embedded signup form. You can even have the Klaviyo form pre-fill the customer’s email address for extra ease.

Add an SMS callout to your email footer

A callout in your email footer is a constant reminder to your subscribers that they can save even more if they sign to receive SMS notifications from your brand.

“Make it enticing and play up your SMS welcome offer to spur someone to sign up. Link to your SMS signup landing page for a smooth customer experience. You can also use Klaviyo’s dynamic content features to only show this slice to customers who have not yet signed up for SMS,” advises Chris Gordon.

This example from Layla Sleep does a great job of teasing potential savings.

Send a dedicated campaign email about SMS

Get the word out directly to your current email subscribers upon launch of your SMS marketing program so both your loyal customers and new customers can sign up.

This campaign example from Jofit introduces all of the benefits of signing up for their SMS program in a succinct and convincing way.

Spice up your deals

To help retain SMS customers, follow through on the promise of providing them with SMS-specific deals. They can be anything from slightly higher savings on sitewide deals to SMS-only flash sales. Basically, make sure you follow through on treating your SMS subscribers as VIPs.

This example from Layla Sleep communicates an SMS-exclusive offer.

Don’t fear sending, but bring the goods

“I’m going to be blunt here, and some people may disagree, but in my experience, I’ve found that Black Friday and Cyber Monday is NOT the time to tiptoe around sending. Yes, customers are overwhelmed by the number of emails in their inbox, but they’re also glued to them looking for deals. The best chance you can give yourself to cut through the noise is to send consistently, but to be segmented and engaging with each and every send,” said Chris Gordon.

Say you’re planning to start Black Friday early with a preview sale. You can create emails for early morning, mid-day, and final hours sends. You can also consider extending your Black Friday deals into Cyber Weekend.

“I’ve worked on many Cyber Weekend campaign plans and not once have the learnings ever been ‘let’s send fewer messages next year.’ That said, if you’re going to increase how many emails you send, you have to bring the goods with each one. The same sale details and creative sent in every message probably will end up driving your customers up the wall and spur unsubscribes. The best way to be engaging throughout all of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is to vary your main deal in each email and provide supporting deals below it,” said Chris Gordon.

Let’s say your site’s only Black Friday deal is a sitewide coupon. You can still vary your content by featuring a certain item that you expect to be a top seller or focusing on a different product category in each email. If you have multiple deals running on your site, then you can cycle through them throughout the weekend with each email send.

No matter what your sending strategy is, monitor your results, engagement rates, and the unsubscribe rate throughout the weekend, and be ready to make any necessary adjustments necessary to your strategy.