When you think about marketing to prospects and customers around the holidays, you probably don’t first think of data. You likely think of beautiful creative, festive words, big deals, and attracting the most people you can. The thing is, you can’t have a successful holiday season without good, usable data. Breaking through the clutter is possible when you analyze and smartly use your data. Because at the end of the day, data’s just data until you use it, right?

Go A Step Further

We can all likely look at our data and see, “Okay, most of my customers are females” or “the majority of my sales come through ecommerce.” But what if you took it a step further? In fact, a couple steps further, and really started to see when, where, who, and why your customers have purchased from you? A successful company puts great emphasis on and always looks at a full picture of their data. Seeing online sales are great, but you probably want to see your data from various source systems, support systems, and target systems. There should be no blind spots, and being able to capture both online and offline transactions can be used for conversion, retention, and engagement marketing!

Analyzing The Data

So, once you can see all your data in one place, what happens next? Once you combine all your data into one platform (a Customer Data Platform), you can easily segment your prospects and customers, allowing you to see valuable information. For example, perhaps you’re a retailer and want to know who hasn’t purchased in 18 months. You see that Johnny purchase a skateboard, snowboard, and some clothes, totaling $2200 in June 2016 and hasn’t purchased since. Or maybe you’re a retailer that wants to see women who have purchased in the past year and live within 40 miles of your store.

Why would you want to analyze your data this in-depth, you might ask?

Using The Data

Letting your data be your guide will allow you to see purchasing patterns you may have not seen before. Using your data and not blindly marketing to everyone in one foul swoop will always prove to be successful.

Let’s go back to the above scenarios.  For the group of people who haven’t purchased in 18 months, perhaps you want to start them on a re-engagement campaign and send them “We miss you” emails along with a coupon code off their next purchase. If you want to really personalize, you see that Johnny sticks out because he purchased so much in just one month. Maybe you decide to actually reach out to him via a handwritten card, and tell him he’s a valued customer and you just got a shipment of new skateboard wheels and snowboard pants. And then you may want to hold an event for the women (and their friends) who live 40 miles from your store, offering wine, giveaways, prizes, and special holiday deals.

Schedule Campaigns

This may seem like a no-brainer, but when you have multiple campaigns, overlapping days and targeting and suppressing different audiences, it’s crucial that they are scheduled. You’ll save time and resources. With real-time customer data updates, you can leave your campaigns running and let them do their job. But don’t forget to look at your results weekly to see which campaigns are working best and which you may need to tweak. Within the scheduler, implementing A/B testing is also a no-brainer. Get the most from your holiday campaigns and test different formats, create, language, or channels.

Start With The Best

Something we feel strongly about at Ascent360, is making sure you take the time to segment out your best customers and talk to them first! By using your high RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) scored individuals, you’ll be able to create personalized marketing campaigns to target your best customers. Those who recently bought something, shop often, and spend a lot will likely respond best to your campaigns. While you could run many campaigns, and offers to these people, placing them into a loyalty type of campaigns is a great idea. Reward those with the highest RFM scores with an offer to make them feel special, whether that is free shipping or a percentage off their order, even a small offer will go a long way.

Top Campaigns To Run Using Your Data

There are multiple campaigns you can run using your data, but a couple ideas are utilizing your high-value customers, offering free shipping, and capturing last minute shoppers.

Engage your high-value customers around the holidays to get high-value results. Segment your best customers and send them a thank you purchase-driven email campaign or a special offer just for them. Make it relevant and timely. Those who are your most loyal customers will be the ones who will likely purchase from you again. 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. And most likely, those 20% are these high-value customers. You work hard to get new prospects and customers, why not work just as hard at keeping your best customers?

Shoppers will generally spend more on products if there is free shipping. You may offer free shipping site or store-wide, or you may decide there needs to be a minimum offer. Another option is to offer “free shipping to store”. It is best to advertise these deals on the widely popular “Free Shipping Day” on December 15. Around this time of the year, a free shipping offer is more likely to get customers to convert than a simple percentage or dollar amount off offer. According to Bronto, more than a third of holiday shoppers (38%) won’t shop on a site that doesn’t offer free shipping. Free shipping is an expected perk of the holidays and people will generally be annoyed if they have to pay anything over $5, so why not eat those costs and make more sales? Creating urgency in the form of limited time free shipping is a great way to boost revenue.

Have you ever forgot a gift for your aunt until the morning of Christmas, or that friend who bought you a gift and you realized you didn’t buy her one? These are the people who you want to make sure to cater to. Last minute shoppers can sometimes be the best customers. Giftfly reports that 88% of gift card purchases were made in the 6 days before Christmas. Offering your prospects and customers an e-gift card option is the difference between last minute sales and very little sales right before the holidays. Digital gift cards are taking the world by storm. Gone are the days when you have to keep a plastic gift card in your wallet and if you lose it, tough luck! A new study by First Data reveals 72% of consumers prefer an e-gift card rather than a physical gift and 57% of card buyers prefer to send e-gift cards as they can be delivered immediately. Everything is going mobile these days from loyalty programs to retail stores to discount sites and most of them have easy-to-use mobile apps. Why not make your gift cards digital as well? Something else to consider, usually customers will go over the actual amount on the gift card, giving you more revenue than the card originally purchased!

Download our complete Holiday Playbook Guide for more campaign ideas! 

 

Want to start your 2018 off strong and utilize your data as a powerful marketing tool? Get the gift of usable data- Contact us here to learn more about how you can!

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