How Online Retailers can get through New Years sales on top

What are the specific challenges and opportunities that online retailers face over the New Year sales period?

There are opportunities aplenty to shift stock but everyone else is trying the same thing, check out these top ten tips to get through the period on top.

1.

Get a plan together – ok maybe a little late for this post but planning out a sequence of campaigns around specific products and offers which all link together is a much better approach to firing out a campaign every day the sales numbers look a little low...

2.

Set up a separate opt out pool for New Year campaigns. You are likely to increase your email marketing volumes substantially over the New Year period so within your preference centre include an option to be removed from campaign until after New Years. This way if people do go to unsubscribe you can save them for future campaigns – if they are happy to!

3.

Consider getting in a back up email software provider, a lot of providers (not Pure360 naturally) will struggle to deal with the volume of emails that need to be sent as all their customers dramatically increase their activity, nothing wrong with running a couple of ESP’s so long as you transfer opt outs and bounces.

4.

Don’t worry about sending too many emails, as long as you have something new to say people will be happy to get extra emails that they feel are relevant.

Worry about sending too many emails, what you think is new and exciting may well be the same old marketing puff to your recipients.

5.

Treat people differently, don’t assume that all your subscribers want to get the same messages, look at who responds and who doesn’t. I know that this sounds complicated but simply changing the subject line to the people who haven’t opened your emails in the past can have a massive impact.

6.

Timing is absolutely key around the New Year period – Online retailers have the best chance of the year of forcing urgency into a sale – the last promotional days/whilst stocks last. Communicate these in every communication, and match this on your site – I’ve seen a few sites counting down live on the home page – brilliant. The great thing about having a from date is that you can set a sequence up in advance and allow your email marketing software take all the strain.

7.

Make sure your email marketing is supported by other marketing activity – an integrated campaign is a stronger one. Email is effective and quick to deploy but don’t forget to use it in conjunction with your other channels – brief your telemarketing team, be they inbound or outbound, on any marketing activity.

8.

If the cash isn’t rolling in and you are worried about the costs of doing a number of full broadcasts it can be a great motivation to take a more segmented approach. When you think about it you know an enormous amount about your subscribers, why not do a campaign to all the clickers from your last campaign and give them something extra special.

9.

Get social. With social share capabilities your message can go further and at no cost. Make sure you give people a reason to spread your message though – voucher codes are a good incentive to get people publishing to the social networks. Although voucher codes have the benefit of providing the initial incentive they are also a great way of proving the ROI of the social channel.

10.

Record everything, that’s everything. Of course you are all modern marketing managers and you fastidiously record all traffic sources but just incase…

Again because we get a New Year period every year you can really learn a huge amount about your prospects and customers, perhaps a specific number of days before the sales your base goes crazy for a particular line of clothes? If so record it and use it next year.

So in summary use what you can’t change about the period to really drive traffic to your site, the definite end of the period gives you a big advantage to drive immediacy into the sale don’t waste it!