Planting seeds for seasonal marketing

How does your marketing grow? The core should always be made up of a plan for the long-term view with evergreen and perennial content. Annuals should only be added as needed to meet current trends.

That sales and marketing should be aligned is indisputable. But that the sales department should dictate marketing is definitely disputable. 

My experience an SaaS startup for eCommerce businesses crystalized that recognition for me.  Initially, I worked on content planned with the CEO and produced some solid, evergreen pieces. However, when  a VP of marketing whose background was in sales and not in marketing came in, she pushed everything into a short term perspective.

This was manifested in constantly pushing content around coupons and discount codes to drive customers to purchase. Pushing promotions is the ultimate short-term marketing effort designed for immediate sales alone.

While discounts are definitely a big part of retail sales, they should not be the sole strategy used by sellers who want to cultivate long term relationships with customers. The goal of marketing is not just to convert customers based on sales for the week or occasion but to win loyal customers with a high customer lifetime value (CLV) who have your brand top-of-mind when they're ready to purchase even without a coupon as part of the deal. 

Perennial vs. annual planting 

Building a relationship with customers on the basis of marketing is like planting a garden. You can go for the quick wins of instant color and results for the season by planting annuals. That's the marketing done from the perspective of people who come from sales who always favor immediate results. 

But for real value, you plan perennials, which will deliver blooms of color year after year. That's what a true marketing perspective takes into account.

 
A perennial perspective doesn't mean ignoring seasonal opportunities. On the contrary, it sees the value of planning for repeated returns in all seasons with marketing messages and content that are relevant for that time of year and that occasion that will recur. 

Yearly holiday vs. pandemic holiday

Notice that I referred to an occasion that will recur as forming the core of your marketing. That doesn't mean that you ignore current trends altogether but that you recognize that they are transient. That means they they won't deliver the same bang for your marketing bucks as the perennial marketing you plan.

 Nothing illustrates that better than the mistake many businesses made in going all-in on pandemic messaging while ignoring their need for evergreen content. 

This is particularly striking in the content of the content marketing that the startup I worked for decided to feature for Halloween. There was no pre-existing content for that holiday's importance to the world of eCommerce on the site, so I created an evergreen holiday piece on different  possible approaches to fall and Halloween marking. 

Thinking only of the short-term, though, the VP demanded a different piece that explicitly centered around the pandemic's impact on Halloween. That's what was put on the site, and that bit of annual color is of  no interest to anyone today. 

For a business that already had created core content, including standard seasonal and holiday content, it would have been a strategic move to some pieces that centered around the impact of the pandemic on the industry and its customers in 2020-2021. In fact, it would have been smart to use some of that to link to their more traditional content to point out the need to adapt to the times with new strategies and approaches.

However, for businesses that were just building out their content, devoting all resources to pandemic-centered content with only masked people shown on their site was a mistake. If they failed to move that content off the main pages of their sites in the past year or two they were showing their own failure to adapt to the changing needs of the time. 
 

First and best are not the same for holiday marketing

Snapchat already announced the launch of its  holiday resource hub for marketers in early June. to get marketers to start thinking December holidays before summer has even arrived, it offered an eight-page long US Festive Shopping Season 2021 Handout guide.

Within the handout, it offers some very flattering statistics for Snapchat. For example, “89% of Snapchatters are interested in try-on AR experiences.” While that number could well be arrived at through a selection of people loyal to the platorm, that doesn't mean that Snapchat would be the best vehicle for most marketers.

In fact, as Retail TouchPoints reports, Snapchat has the smallest market share for social shopping:

“Facebook and Instagram are the clear leaders in the social shopping space: 34% of those surveyed purchased on Facebook, and 23% purchased through Facebook-owned Instagram. All other platforms, including Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok and Snapchat, were in the single digits.”

Snapchat garners just 2% of purchases through a platform where TikTok and Pinterest garner 3%. Snapchat only goes up to 3% for the category of “clicked ad and later purchased” where TikTok and Pinterest garner 6%.

Read more ins Snapchat plans for December Holidays in June

Today's targeted marketing is powered by data and automation

 Marketing is always more effective when it is more targeted. As a result of integrating data and algorithms, marketers are able to now deliver a personalized customer experience at scale. 

There are various ways to target specific customers, and approaches range from lumping customers into very broadly defined categories to getting a lot more fine-tuned about the segments and responsive to individual customer behavior .In collaboration with Google, Deloitte put out a Digital transformation through data: a guide for retailers to drive value with data that took a closer look at these gradations. 

It ranked them as follows:

• Limited segmentation: All users are analyzed in broad segments. 

• Basic segmentation: Uses standard characteristics (e.g., gender, geography) for segmentation.

• Detailed segmentation: Segments are based on personal and behavior

• Dynamic segmentation: The UX / UI can respond to a customer’s in-session behavior as he or she exhibits different segment characteristics.

Achieving the detailed level depends on much more data than the static kind that is used for basic segmentation, and advancing to the dynamic level requires a level of automation that will enable recommendations and responses to go out in real-time. 

 The coming AI revolution in retail and consumer products invoked the women’s clothing store,  Avenue Stores LLC as an example of dynamic segmentation. It explained that  it brings together “data across multiple touchpoints, including in-store activities and market trend analysis, to learn and reason about what customers want and when they want it.” On that basis it can reach out to customers with communication tailored to their situation in real-time, which makes it possible to capture their attention while in “‘shopping mode.” 

Marketing for loyalty

Being in touch with your customers to let them know you’re there for them without pressuring them to buy can pay off in winning their loyalty and business later. In this case, your automated messaging doesn’t have to respond to segment your audience, as you would be working off a general form of communication.

When you don’t have history

But what if you do need to sell your products now? Marketing recommendations can work even on the more basic level, not just for new customers for whom you have no history to flesh out a profile but for the type of marketing communication that depends on general trends. For example, a very broad segment of all people in the United States can work for promotions tied to events shared by all due to the calendar, whether it’s Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, etc. 

You don’t need to know much about your customer other than that they’ll know what these days are because they are on their calendars due to living in the United States for the trending algorithm to work well. That makes using this approach ideal for customers for whom you don’t have first-party data.

It doesn’t matter so much what they are normally interested in or what they’ve bought before when you’re sending out a marketing message about buying their mother something before May 10. However, if you do have information about the customer, say you know they’ve ordered flowers for their mother last year, then you can combine the trending recommendation with what you know about their behavior.

Read more in

Advanced Segmentation and Automation Are Changing the Marketing Game

How this year's Black Friday is different

We made it November, and now holiday marketing is in full swing already. In fact, many marketers didn’t even wait until after Halloween to get the season started. 

The attempt to push holiday marketing early happens every year, and so Black Friday has evolved and stretched to pretty much all of November over the past several years. Yet there were always some holdouts who would for the super deals on doorbuster specials available in stores only on the day itself. 

Recollecting Past Black Fridays

That phenomenon is what prompted my father-in-law to get up before dawn to  bring home two play kitchens for his grandchildren. I don’t recall what price he paid, only that he believed the savings to be worth the trouble. 

It goes beyond saving $20. He enjoyed the thrill of the frenzied excitement surrounding Black Friday sale events.

As the National Retail Foundation (NRF) reported last year, “Thanksgiving weekend draws nearly 190 million shoppers, spending up 16 percent.”  That year online shopping outstripped in store shopping: 142.2 million vs. 124 million. 

There were always some traditionalists who like to see what they buy in real life and who expect better deals in stores. That’s particularly true of those of older generations who are loath to order online ever. 

New for 2020

This year, though, likely the figures will shift to more online shopping and more shoppers making completing their purchases before the big weekend still referred to as Black Friday.  The challenge for retailers will be not to lose out on the sales that shoppers would come into stores for at a time when people are still skittish about crowds.

However, adapting to the reality of life under a pandemic when many stores were closed for months forced even a lot of the old-school shoppers to embrace the ease, convenience, and safety of online shopping.

That shift is going to reshape Black Friday 2020. Even if stores wanted to revert to the old model, the concerns about rising cases this season and the general advice not to pack a lot of people together means there is no concentrated shopping frenzy at most retailers.

Read more in This is Not Your Father’s Black Friday

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Why you need a little Christmas in your marketing earlier this year

From key search terms to AR-powered ads, this holiday season is a boon to brands that capitalize on digital opportunity and get in the game early.

Among the many shifts in shopper behavior thriggered by the global pandemic is that of thinking about the December holidays as early as April. Marketing insights from Pinterest and Facebook were already published in June, so businesses can start to gear up earlier than usual.
Dreaming of the holidays under lockdown

In June, Pinterest put out its guide to marketing with the apt title, Earlier Than Ever Holiday 2020. While pinners always show earlier holiday activity than the public at large, this year, they were thinking of Christmas as early as April.

Pinterest reports that its search volume on terms like “Christmas gift ideas,” “holiday recipes,” “Christmas,” “holidays,” and “Christmas decor” were 70% higher in April 2020 than for April 2019. Clearly this past April was different from those of other years.

By then a fair amount of us were told to stay home to stay safe under lockdown conditions with no clear end in sight. Feeling both bleak and bored at home, it’s no wonder that people felt they could use a little Christmas right this very minute.

Cue up the song from Mame:

at were t

“As the coronavirus pandemic grips us with anxiety and fear, we should all follow Mame's lead and light up the night with holiday lights and lighthearted music.” That’s the comment from April 2020 on the video.

From dreaming to planning and shopping

One major difference to note between the two guides, though is this: While Facebook does draw on some data from 2020 to account for the pandemic’s impact, it primarily draws its holiday trends from 2019, in contrast to Pinterest’s focus on 2020 for holiday searches.

Read more in
Holiday Season Arrives Early for Data-Driven Marketing

Mom's the word for May Marketing

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A mother’s love is indeed priceless, but Mother’s Day spending can be measured. Marketers who take note of trends can achieve a significant lift in May sales.

The National Retail Foundation (NRF) anticipates that Mother’s Day 2019 will be the biggest to date. According to the figures based on the survey, Americans will be spending a record $25 billion on Mother’s Day gifts and outings. 

The total amount isn’t divided over the entire population of the United States but by about 86 percent who identify themselves as celebrating the day, according the NRF. That breaks down to an average of $196 per person, though those in the age bracket of 35 to 44 spend even more, averaging $248. 

What is most significant for those in marketing is that the overwhelming majority — 81 percent — seek guidance for gifts from the seller end. What that means is that Mother’s Day offers a great opportunity to direct millions of people who want to be directed toward that perfect gift for mom. 

Read more in 

Mother's Day Gift for Marketers

Biggest Cyber Monday Ever

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This year’s Cyber Monday was the biggest ever. Impressive as they are, the numbers for sales only tell one part of the story. The other is which brands invested in ads in kicking off the holiday shopping season and how customers responded and reached out to them.

Crunching through the numbers, Adobe Analytics reported that this year’s Cyber Monday Sales broke US sales records, thitting  $7.9  billion, an amount that represent 19.3 percent YOY growth and which exceeded the predicted spend of  $7.79 billionthat would have translated into 17.6 percent YOY growth  for the day.

Those represent just online sales, but some of the same people also spent money in stores over the Thanksgiving weekend. According to the National Retail Foundation(NRF)  over 89 million gave business to both online and physical retail outlets, which represents an increase of close to 40 percent over last year.

Investing in the technology that enables multichannel shopping had a real payoff, according to the NRF. “The multichannel shopper outspent the single-channel shopper by up to $93 on average.”

So what role did marketing play in the billions of dollars of spending? Working with DialogTech, 4C Insights put out a report that presented the data on ads, social lift, and phone calls. What they found was that the top 10 advertisers were made up not just of retailers but also financial services, automotive and other industries. The impact of their TV ads appears in the increase in social media engagement that immediately followed their ads...

Read more in 

Why Cyber Monday 2018 Was Biggest Ever

Related posts: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2018/11/time-to-say-tis-season.html

http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2018/08/capitalizing-on-holiday-marketing.html

Time to say "'Tis the season?"

pic from https://c1.staticflickr.com/8/7002/6507951677_df700b0401_b.jpg

The song "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" may have been running through people's heads yesterday due to the snow. But for marketers, the picture of Christmas starts to form a lot earlier -- too early for some, in fact. But there is some method to the madness of holiday marketing for those who pay attention to their customers. 

Here we are in November, and holiday marketing is in full swing already. In fact, some holiday marketing has been in place already since early October, much to the chagrin of those of us who think they should at least let us get through Halloween before decking things out in red and green. 
Read more in  
‘Tis the season for what exactly?

Related post: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2018/08/capitalizing-on-holiday-marketing.html

Capitalizing on Holiday Marketing Throughout the Year

Every holiday occasions sales, though some have greater effects than others, and Labor Day is anticipated to be one of those bigger days. According to Adobe’s Digital Dollar Report, this year’s Labor Day is expected to reach the $2 billion mark in sales.

What marketers can do to capitalize on these occasions is not just to offer the usual promotional pricing but to engage customers by reaching out to them in a data-driven and emotionally intelligent way.

The data that Optimove  pulled up on holiday sales indicates Labor Day, like Memorial Day, enjoys a marked lift in sales. While the Fourth of July does occasion an increase of nine percent over an average order, which is ahead of Labor Day’s three percent and Memorial Day’s one percent, it falls behind other key measurements.

Read more in 

What to Expect on Labor Day

Marketing for Mom's Day

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A mother's love may be priceless, but there is definitely a price tag on Mother's Day. 

While Mother's Day does not have the status of a federal holiday like Easter, in fact, it occasions significantly more spending. The National Retail Foundation (NRF) forecasts that this year's Mother's Day spending will reach $23.1 billion.  For comparison, this year’s Easter spending was estimated to be $18.2 billion.  

Obviously, marketers have to seize the day for their brands, particularly if their brands feature jewelry. That's the top choice of gift for the day. According to the NRF's survey, 34% of shoppers intend to buy something in that category, bringing that total spend to an impressive $4.6 billion.

While many jewelry brands are, no doubt, sticking to the standard sentimental messages, some are breaking out of the box in their depictions of different types of mothers with strengths that go beyond the stereotyped image of a woman in an apron. Crimson Hexagon's data on what people are talking about the most and what garnered the most positive conversations. It uncovered some fresh takes in mother images in some jewelry campaigns, as well as some surprises.

Read more in Mother's Day Marketing

See some of the ads featured below:

Alex and Ani's “Symbolize Your Love” campaign includes the outtakes of commercials filmed with real people (which fits very well with increasing demands for authenticity in marketing)