Christmas marketing: It's all about the timing - Business Review ...

By James Murray, Digital Insights Manager, Experian Marketing Services

Another year, another sense of ?Christmas-creep?. Ten years ago, Christmas lasted a fortnight but today - judging by when the decorations appear in stores, it begins at some point in late Summer.

With seasonal marketing, particularly around Christmas, sooner rather than later isn?t always the best approach. It depends entirely on your brand and the product or service that you have to sell. Getting the timing right is vital to ensure maximum returns on campaigns and marketers must use all the data and intelligence available to create an informed strategy for the festive period.

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Learnings from 2011

Figures from Experian Hitwise show that traditionally the first Monday in December , also known as ?Cyber Monday?, is the busiest day for pre-Christmas shopping year-on-year. In 2011, this day fell on the 5th December and UK consumers made 84.6 million visits to online retailers in just 24 hours.

Interestingly, internet traffic peaks just after Christmas and carries through into early January, with the first month of the year showing the highest average spend by far. Boxing Day 2011 was the biggest shopping day in the UK ever with 96.2 million visits to online retail sites (up 19.5 percent from Boxing Day 2010).This post-Christmas frenzy can be attributed in part to people going into shops, on and offline, to spend gift vouchers and enjoy the sales.?

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Essentially, the key time to start sending your seasonal campaigns is in the run up to these peak periods. The second and third weekends in November are especially important for transactions, seeing large peaks in rates.

The Monday after these weekends is also exceptionally powerful with the third Monday of November last year showing the highest transaction rates for a Christmas related email for any day in the lead up.? Launching a properly targeted campaign during this period will hit customers as they start to plan their festive purchases and ahead of the Christmas period, and keep them engaged during the January sales.

The day of the week and time of day that emails are sent have a big impact on engagement levels too. Throughout the Christmas period, mornings generated the best unique open and click rates as customers looked for the best offers available. Evenings came in second and afternoons were the least productive time to send.

While no single day emerged as a clear favourite in December and January (perhaps owing to disrupted routines due to the UK snowfall), in November, we saw that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were the best days to send email.

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Targeting the right offering to the right customer

As marketers, we all understand the importance of correctly tailoring email marketing campaigns to suit the interests of the consumer, and Christmas email marketing campaigns are no exception. The ?one size fits all? approach is dangerous, simply because, as a consumer, being inundated with offers for things we have no interest in is extremely annoying.?

It is important to ensure that emails are interesting and relevant to the customer. If a customer regularly purchases children?s clothes on your site, the likelihood is that this person has a family and will likely be interested in more expensive, big ticket purchases come Christmas. Compare this to other customers who perhaps purchase children?s products only once a year and are likely to be in the market for a smaller, less expensive purchase. ?

Using data and analytics can also drive cross and up-selling with existing customers; if you?re selling electronic goods, be sure to offer electronics insurance as part of the package.? Similarly, if selling Kindles think about including an Amazon UK voucher in your marketing campaigns to boost additional sales.

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Incentives for engagement

Competition for online retailers is at an all-time high during the festive period, so adding elements to your marketing campaigns that differentiate your email from the others and engage with your consumers. Incentives and rewards are a great way to do this. In 2011, 1st December was the biggest day for rewards sites driving sales to online retailers, so this year make sure to email your customers with special offers before or by the 1st December to maximise on this.

Evidence of this can be seen in keyword analysis during this period ? from Christmas 2011 we can see that:

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Perfect presentation to drive responses

Brands need to ensure they cut through the noise at Christmas and deliver campaigns that really stand out, so creativity is vital.? Perhaps should consider the possibility of including video in your mailouts or an animation to push up the open and response rates.

With email, creativity often comes from the integration of art and science; compelling content and pretty packaging made possible through some clever coding.? Be sure to run a preliminary campaign in a test environment to ensure readability and accessibility of your mail through all desktop and mobile email operating systems.

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Social media and mobile ? Christmas on the go

Email efficiency can be further improved by considering where and when customers open their email, whether that is on the move, at work or in the comfort of their own homes.

Research from IMRG in 2012 highlights the rapid growth of mobile retail ? sales through mobile devices continued to rise quickly, with growth put at 312 percent in September. The September conversion rate was 1.9 percent; the highest recorded to date. An increasingly high percentage of your customers could be opening their emails whilst they?re on the move in 2013, and if your emails aren?t optimised for mobile; your customers are not always getting the message.

Similarly, social network sites are increasingly starting to drive traffic to online retailers, with around eight percent of all visits coming from these sites (Sept 2012). Marketers should consider integrating social media into your campaigns with social buttons or real-time social updates.

And don?t forget to incorporate some of the more niche social networks ? retail brands such as Topshop and Dorothy Perkins are making great use of Pinterest and with the site receiving 7,985,316 visits in September alone, marketers definitely need to look beyond the likes of Facebook and Twitter when planning their campaigns

Remember these five tips to ensure your Christmas email marketing campaign is a success this year:

????????? Time your emails so that customer receive your content when they want to be emailed and are most likely to buy

????????? Use data and analytics to get the right email to the customer every time

????????? Optimise emails so customers can read them where they want to read them

????????? Get creative to ensure engagement and conversion into sales

????????? Integrate your campaigns with social media so that they can help you to spread the word

Source: http://www.businessrevieweurope.eu/marketing/christmas-marketing-its-all-about-the-timing

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