Holiday Season eCommerce Tips from Kris Clason

In this exclusive interview with Kris Clason, Director of Client Marketing at Trellis and Growth Spark, we delve deep into effective strategies for holiday season eCommerce tips. Kris shares invaluable insights from his extensive experience in digital marketing, offering actionable advice for businesses looking to thrive during the holiday season.

Meet Kris, our Digital Marketing Expert

Q: Can you describe your role at Trellis and the clients you focus on during the holiday season?

A: At Trellis, I work with our creative and marketing teams to develop and execute growth strategies for our eCommerce clients. We manage paid search, social, email, SMS, and SEO tactics to increase client revenue effectively and efficiently. This holiday season, we’re closely working with clients like VIETRI, FOCO, DHS Equipment, and Millican Pecan to boost their marketing results and provide them with actionable holiday season eCommerce tips.

Anticipating Holiday Marketing Trends

Q: What are the TOP THREE holiday marketing trends you’re anticipating this year?

A: I would say there are a few trends we see. Holiday deals start earlier each year. Brands offer exclusive promotions to different customer segments. We also noticed a shift towards simpler, and more effective offers.

• Early Bird Catches the Worm: Holiday deals and shopping are starting earlier each year.
• Segmentation is Key: We’re seeing brands speaking to customer segments differently. They usually provide their most valued customers access to exclusive promotions and offers. 
• Simplicity Wins: I see a movement to less complex offers and brands sticking with simple, effective offers. Once brands identify a promotion that works, they continue using it each year. 

Holiday Season eCommerce Tips for Strategic Campaign Planning

Q: How far in advance should businesses plan their holiday marketing campaigns, and what does this process involve?

A: Businesses should start planning early in the year and intensify their efforts 3-4 months before November. The process involves setting KPIs, segmenting customers, and aligning execution tactics with clients.

We begin planning budgets and tactics early in the year. Then, we adjust them based on the trends and media performance that we see throughout the year. In July-August, brands should be getting customers in their purchase funnel by driving affordable and engaged traffic to their website. Later, they can retarget them during the holiday shopping season.

You need to think about segmentation and owned media channels like email and SMS about 3 months prior to the holiday shopping season. We set top-of-funnel KPIs that allow us to drive affordable, profitable traffic. We will adjust budgets and the scale of platforms and campaigns based on performance in the months leading up to the holiday season. This allows us to gradually set our channel ratio instead of creating huge swings during the holiday season.

Q: What should you start with?

A: Start your planning with evaluating your annual plan and determining if you’re ahead, or behind, your projections and targets. From there, determine how aggressive you want to be with offers. Once the offer(s) is defined, begin planning the execution tactics. Think through how to segment your audience, which channels to scale up ahead of time, and how to deploy the messaging. You should have your creative and messaging set in place 1-2 weeks before Black Friday. Finally, make sure you’re on the same page with clients.

Q: Do you have any specific benchmarks that help you tweak the strategy as needed?

A: We have benchmarks for revenue and spend. Plus, we track efficiency outlined at monthly, weekly, BFCM period (Friday-Monday), and daily intervals. This all helps us ensure we have the information required to pivot if needed during the holiday season.

Holiday Season eCommerce Tips for Customer Engagement

Q: What strategies are most effective for engaging customers during the busy holiday season?

A: As I mentioned before, brands must understand their customer segments and speak to them as best as they can. I suggest pouring over previous years’ holiday data within their eCommerce platform and CRM to create a segmentation strategy.

During the holiday period, on the tactical side, we’re making sure we’re communicating our offers early and often. Whenever customers engage with our brands on-and-off of their website, they see the offerings. In an effort to cut through the increasing amount of noise during this time period, we’ follow up with them more frequently. Especially, when they they don’t take action.

Holiday Season eCommerce Tips for Email Marketing

Q: Could you share some successful email marketing tactics for promoting holiday deals?

A: When promoting short-term deals, especially around the holidays, the most important thing to remember is that you’re fighting against a lot of noise, as most other companies are running promotions at the exact same time. So my recommendation during this time period is to overcommunicate – meaning, don’t just send out an announcement when your deals begin, but also as they change and also as they are about to end. People aren’t always going to act on your announcement, as they can think “I’ll get to it later” – but adding in something as simple as a “last-chance” reminder email to customers who haven’t already taken action on the announcement email can really bring in a lot more traffic and orders.

Going back to the idea that holiday deals and bundles are generally limited in terms of how long the offers exist, as well as often limited by inventory, you will want to adjust your messaging accordingly. In particular, look at your triggered emails such as abandoned cart, as the last thing you want to do is email someone with a prompt to complete their order, but when they come back the promotion is expired, or even worse, the product is now out-of-stock.

Above all, however, one of the core aspects of email marketing should be followed here in the holiday season, just like any other time of the year – and that’s remembering to try to make your emails timely and relevant. When you’re competing against everyone else in the inbox, you want your customers to find value in what you’re sending them – and ideally making it as simple as possible to scan and take action on as possible.

Holiday Season eCommerce Tips for SMS Marketing

Q: Could you share some successful SMS marketing tactics for promoting holiday deals and bundles?

A: Many of the same recommendations for email marketing above can also be applied to SMS marketing, but when it comes to SMS I recommend being a bit more conservative in your approach and try to communicate as much as you need to, but not any more than that. SMS is a bit more of a “sacred” space for customers, and they tend to have a lower tolerance for over-messaging in text than they do in email. So by all means, communicate your offers – but don’t overstay your welcome. Impact now is important, but not at the expense of your SMS list or customer relationships.

As SMS tends to be even more immediately viewed than emails, SMS can be a great option for communicating extremely time-sensitive messages such as low stock, back in stock, etc. Think of SMS as a communication “service” channel versus a straight marketing channel, with an even more surgical approach as to how relevant the message is to the recipient and how time-sensitive it is, and you will likely see strong results from the channel that not only avoid the worry of over-messaging, but become valuable in the eyes of the customer.

If you are able to segment out your customers via their preferred communication channels, all the better. This way you’re respecting customer preferences, not risking becoming viewed as a nuisance, and strengthening your long-term relationship with them.

Holiday Season eCommerce Tips for Impulse Buying

Q: Are there any approaches that clients should take to capitalize on impulse buying behaviors, especially during the holidays?

A: Make it easy – reduce friction by limiting popups, questions, and information gathering tactics so customers can access what they want easily. Leverage search and social shopping (ie. Google Shopping, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok Shops).

Ensure data feeds are optimized with engaging product data and promotions. This will allow marketplaces, shoppable search and social to highlight the promotions that are currently running. 

Holiday Season eCommerce Tips for Personalization

Q: How important is personalization during the holiday season?

A: Extremely important. It’s about having relevant conversations with customers. Brands should tailor their strategies based on various customer segments for effective personalization.

Q: Any specific tips on how brands should personalize their messaging?

A: This really comes down to how you segment your customers. Take a look at your various segments and build out your strategy accordingly. As a simple example, look at shipment times to various geographic locations. If they can vary greatly, consider setting different “order by date to receive by Christmas” messages.

Personalization, at its core, is really about having a relevant conversation with the customer. And during the holiday season its important to remember again that you aren’t the only place customers are doing business. If they can’t find what they want quickly, or if the offers and/or products they see aren’t relevant, they can and will leave your site for a competitor. Holiday shopping can be frantic, meaning more impulse purchases. However, it can also mean that consumers have little time to maneuver through your site and offers. Make it easy for them!

Holiday Season eCommerce Tips for Technology and Automation

Q: What role does technology play in your holiday marketing initiatives, and how do you utilize automation?

A: Technology is integral in our holiday marketing initiatives, specifically for many of the performance channels. We put a lot of effort up front to get all the automation pieces in place. From bid adjustments, to budget changes, to add-to-cart reminders. We consistently check to make sure the machine is operating as expected. Generally, this allows us to be more strategic during the holiday season. The key is making sure the client and everyone on the team is aligned with revenue goals, budget allocations, and performance expectations.

Q: How does Trellis leverage technology and automation for the clients?

A: Some of the ways we’re using technology and automation are:

• Using AI tools for ad creative
• Ad copy
• Ad scheduling
• Adjusting email and SMS timing to improve customer engagement
• Setting automated bid adjustments to scale ad accounts as we meet and exceed KPIs
• Reduce budgets or pause ads if they’re underperforming, allowing improved budget allocation

Holiday Season eCommerce Tips for Performance Measurement

Q: What metrics do you prioritize to measure the success of your holiday campaigns?

A:

• Revenue 
• Platform efficiency – We use in-platform ROAS and tools like TripleWhale attribution data directionally 
• Marketing Efficiency Ratio, “MER” – to measure program efficiency and ensure profitability
• Profit on ad spend. We work with clients to understand their COGS to make sure our team is driving profitable sales 
• Conversion rate
• Average order value 
• New customers, new customer acquisition cost

Challenges and Adaptations

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges that clients face during the holiday season?

A:

• Planning and execution – There’s a lot going on during the holiday shopping season. There are multiple different promotions, creatives, emails and SMS campaigns to coordinate.
• Preparation and strategy – Brands can’t just throw ads and budget at the wall, increase traffic and believe their holiday marketing strategy will be effective.
• Landing Pages – There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to prepare your landing pages for the holiday season from enticing offerings to an engaging customer journey.

Q: How does Trellis help them tackle these challenges?

A: For planning and execution, we have a Project Manager to ensure all the pieces are set in place. The strategy includes which products to promote, how to promote them, where to drive the users on the website, and how to best allocate the budget to deliver profitable revenue. Then, we help the client develop a cohesive client experience to increase conversion rate, revenue, and customer acquisition.

As for the landing pages, our team often has brands develop enticing offers first, and then we create engaging and effective content to deploy. but To help clients not to miss the on-site communication that connects the marketing content to the on-site experience resulting in lost sales, we guide them through the conversion path through the customers’ perspective and ensure the traffic we deliver will be captured at a high rate.

Customer Retention Post-Holidays

Q: After the holiday rush, how should you approach customer retention?

A: I suggest segmenting new customers during this time and nurture them into loyalists. Some ideas how to do this:

• Teach them how to get the most value out of their products through post-purchase automated emails. This could be ‘how to’, maintenance, tips & tricks to guide them to be power users of your product.
• Ask them for reviews and feedback through automated email and SMS campaigns.
• Present them with complimentary products that will increase the value they get from your product.

Q: Any specific tactics that proved to be successful?

A: I wrote a lot about email marketing tips for growth after holidays in our blog a while ago. They include:

• Create Advocates
• Remarket Add-On Products
• Find Your Most Effective Offers

Create a CRM segment of “Holiday Only” purchasers that have only purchased during this time period. Continue adding contacts each year that have not re-purchased ahead of the following years’ holiday season. Re-engage these users during the holiday shopping season. Segment users and retarget them for upsells on search and social during Q1.

Q: Why is this important to focus on retention of newly acquired customers during the holidays?

A: Brands spend more money acquiring new customers over the holidays than any other time of year, and those costs increase each holiday season due to increased competition, rising ad costs, and more. For brands to actually make money off of their newly acquired holiday shoppers, they must ensure that they keep customers coming back well after the holiday rush is over.

Given that 84% of customers won’t return to a brand after one bad shipping experience, the first place brands should start when it comes to retention is taking back control of their order-tracking experience with a tool like Malomo. Not only will this help them provide a personalized, branded tracking experience that negates churn, but it helps brands capture more LTV throughout the entire post-purchase experience.

Advice for SMBs

Q: What advice would you give to smaller businesses looking to maximize their holiday marketing efforts?

A: Start driving traffic early to create a large retargeting pool ahead of the peak shopping period. Review past campaign performance (prior year and year-to-date) and creative results to identify what’s worked to replicate and scale during the peak season.

Don’t try to do too much though! Excessive pop-ups, ‘spin to win’, email capture promotions, etc. will frustrate consumers and cause them to exit your site. Overly complicated promotions make it difficult for customers to understand what you’re actually offering them. This will frustrate them to a point where they will exit the site.

Be bold and stand out – There’s a lot of noise during the holiday shopping season. Trying to be too creative and less straightforward will result in lost sales. If it’s not working now, or hasn’t worked in the past, don’t try to force something during this time. Scheduling and automation will make your life much, much easier.

Predictions for Future Holidays

Q: How do you see holiday marketing evolving in the next few years and what eCommerce businesses should do to prepare for them?

A: I expect holiday marketing to continue starting earlier each year, potentially even as early as September, until there’s a correction. I predict those that are too early to market holiday promotions through performance channels will see eroding performance and we’ll see the BFCM promotions begin getting later in the year after we hit peak ‘early BFCM’ promotions. 

Personalization will increase – Product recommendation accuracy via email, SMS, and on-site experiences will improve and continue driving incremental sales. 

The best deals will be reserved for the most loyal and valued customers. I expect promotion personalization will increase in the future in an effort to drive the most revenue through owned audiences. 

Key Takeaways

As we wrap up, let’s sum up the key points in driving more sales during and after the holiday season.

• Start driving traffic early to fill your retargeting pool.
• Speak to your loyal and valued customers in a unique and rewarding way
• Holiday shoppers are different from your customers throughout the year. Begin building a ‘holiday only purchases’ segment to leverage for years to come.
• Test creative early in the year to inform creative during the pivotal holiday season.
• Know what customers want and buy during the holiday shopping season and make it easy to get it. 
• Look at personalization tech and how to leverage it across all marketing channels.

If you struggle with your marketing strategy and seek to improve communication with customers, get in touch with Trellis for a free consultation on how to revamp your brand interactions.

About Trellis: Trellis provides full-service web design, custom development, and eCommerce solutions. We are your go to partner for your digital transformation projects such as complex integrations or building an intuitive user focused brand experience. Our Boston-based team includes industry revered in-house business analysts along with technical, design and marketing resources that allow us to tackle any client need big or small. Let’s work together!