Maximising the marketing opportunity of Christmas

Lucy Wilsdon

This is me

Lucy Wilsdon

Senior Email Marketing Consultant

Special interests: shopping for lovely things, cooking and

eating good food, drinking quality red wine

Things I am not quite so interested in: growing vegetables,

four square and star signs

What we’re going to cover

• Christmas facts and stats

• Where are the opportunities?

• Easy wins

• Christmas happens every year

• Creative examples

• The importance of dialogue

• Top Christmas tips

What does Christmas mean to you?

Christmas is like 12 months crammed into 6 weeks going at 100 miles an

hour….

What it does mean is opportunity

Christmas facts

•Christmas costs a family with two children at least £182

•Most UK families will spend between £530 - £682 on gifts

•Brands like Cocosa had a record Christmas 2011, with online sales up by 125%

•UK shoppers will spend £7bn online and 50% of that will be in the first two weeks of December

Where are the opportunities?

Where are the opportunities?

• Trade – as marketers you are always trying to understand your customers buying habits. Christmas is a spending window.

• Christmas is an optimum time to build your brand, don’t get caught up with trading and forget this

• If you offer good customer service, Christmas is the time that it will be called on and it is a chance for you to get your customers talking about how good it is

Where are the opportunities?

• Invite feedback within your social space, talk about Christmas with your customers and invite them to talk with you – this will serve you well through the rest of the year

• Data – capture as much data as you can, capture what customers buy, what they buy for gifts, how their buying habits change

Christmas email marketing – easy wins

1. Welcome campaigns – your welcome campaign is the most engaged campaign you customer will receive. Ensure that it reflects the season

2. Social share – an entire email rarely gets shared, so only share specific content pages

3. Change your content – templates are the scourge of email marketing – if you change your homepage at Christmas change your email design

4. Have a calendar of sends, understand where your festive emails cross over your standard marketing

5. Schedule a Christmas day campaign, your audience is generally in a good mood, a little bit drunk and primed to spend

Christmas happens every year…

Christmas happens every year…

• Try and implement wish lists – think of the opportunities later in the year

• Profile your audience: understand what is a gift? Free wrapping or simply ask...

• By doing this you will know what you can market at other times of the year

• You will have a head start for next Christmas

Christmas happens every year...

• Drive data capture – use every opportunity to capture emails addresses

• Use geo-targeting to create easy dynamic content e.g. simply show a festive image of local landmark or maybe a skyline

• Think mobile – we know these days that last minute shopping is happening so optimise those emails for mobile

• Try and sell in value beyond price and discounts

Best practice email examples

Best practice email examples

Dialogue

• Good Email Marketing should be seen as a conversation, especially at Christmas

• Don’t just sell to your audience via email, notify them of website changes, Christmas delivery times, customer service numbers and refunds over the Christmas period

• Present limited offers; limited availability gets great response – use that in subject lines

Dialogue

• Have a strategy for how you sell your products - if there is a long delivery period for larger objects, use that in the marketing

• Reward your loyal Christmas spenders with special benefits post Christmas – note this does not have to be a discount

• Work out what you can give away and do that

Top Christmas tips

1. Review and change your creative including your welcome mails

2. Implement a wish list

3. Present your offer with limited availability

4. Don’t be so focused on trade that you forget other opportunities

5. Optimise your email (last shopping days especially) for mobile

6. Do a Christmas Day campaign

Thanks for listening!

Thanks for listening!

Follow us @pure360

Email me lucy.wilsdon@pure360.com

Or even call me 01273 647871

Any questions??