Holiday Marketing Ideas to Increase Your Ecommerce Sales

The holiday season is one of the most important times of year for any ecommerce company. During virtually any festive period, whether it’s the end of the year, or a 4th of July celebration, sales levels can skyrocket, as consumers increase their purchasing habits.

According to studies, even in spite of the pandemic, holiday sales were still phenomenal in 2021, growing by around 16.1% from the year before, to a value of $1.221 trillion in the US. In 2022, this number is expected to rise even higher, and online sales are particularly primed for growth.

After all, your customers are spending more time online than ever before.

Planning your ecommerce marketing plan for the festive period as early as possible will ensure you can make the most of your customer’s buying habits, and increase your revenue.

Here are some of our best ecommerce marketing campaign ideas for the holidays.

1. Leverage Audience Segmentation

This is one of the top creative promotion ideas worth using all-year round – not just at Christmas. Ultimately, today’s consumers are looking for more relevant, customized, and personal buying experiences. They don’t want to see you using the same online selling strategy for every prospect.

Customer segmentation involves dividing your users into different groups based on their characteristics, whether it’s location, gender, or even their previous purchasing habits. With segmentation, you can improve your chances of showing the right offers to the best possible people whenever someone visits your online store.

For instance, you could show specific recommendations for your high-priced items to heavier spenders, and deliver special offers to first-time users, to help convince them to trust your brand. Tools like Dialogue plug into your existing ecommerce store and help you intelligently segment your target audience into different groups based on your chosen categories.

You can create segments in a single click based on shopping behavior and real-time data, and use dynamic content to increase your sales.

Dialogue’s Segmentation Tool

2. Run Cart Abandonment Campaigns

The holidays are often a stressful and chaotic time. How many times have you found yourself adding products to your basket online to finish your gift list, only to be distracted by something else? As of March 2021, studies show around 80% of people were abandoning their carts on a global basis.

In the festive season, your chances of losing customers before they finish the purchasing process is much greater, so it makes sense to update your cart abandonment strategy.

There are a couple of ways to deal with cart abandonment. One option could be to use guest checkouts and a wider selection of payment options to make the checkout easier.

The most effective solution, however, is to use email marketing automation tools and dynamic content to remind your users of what they’ve left behind. You can send emails to people who already have an account with your business, and let them know what they’re missing.

During this email, try to generate FOMO (fear of missing out) with count-down timers, or reminders they only have so long left to ensure their item arrives in time for the festive period.

3. Draw Attention to Top-Selling Products

One of the biggest challenges consumers face during the holiday season is figuring out what to buy. Giving your visitors a little nudge in the right direction could be the perfect way to increase your chances of sales. For instance, you can create a carousel of your top-selling products on your home page, or showcase your latest deals to increase the chances of a quick purchase.

Using the personalization tools mentioned above, you could even showcase products based on the items a customer has previously bought. A personalization engine will automatically promote the products most likely to appeal to each member of your target audience.

To increase your chances of instant action when you’re promoting your top-selling products, focus on creating a sense of urgency. Updating your website regularly with a “deal of the day” similar to companies like Amazon will push customers to make decisions faster, rather than browsing through multiple sites before they buy anything.

You can even display the number of products you have left in stock to generate a more significant level of FOMO, or display a “countdown” timer showing how many days are left until the festive season begins.

Dialogue Demo Store

4. Use Upselling, Cross selling and Bundles

Whether you’re building a black Friday strategy, or a holiday campaign for Christmas, your main focus will be on generating as many sales as possible. Everything you do on your ecommerce website should be tailored to improve your chances of higher average order values.

To boost ecommerce results, few things are more effective than upselling and cross-selling on the product pages and in the checkout. When your customer visits their shopping bag, show them what kind of products customers usually purchase alongside the ones they’ve already selected. You can also draw attention back to the items your customers looked at, but didn’t add to their basket.

On product pages, suggest potential bundles of items which typically go well together. For instance, as part of a festive season sale, a clothing company could offer a deal on a great skirt and shirt combo, or a jewelry company could offer deals on necklaces and earrings.

You can even leverage cross-selling, upselling, and bundling strategies in the post-purchase “thank you” page. Give your customers an option to add another product to their basket for a discounted rate, with no extra shipping fees to worry about. This last-minute ecommerce marketing idea is a great way to take advantage of impulse buying trends in the holidays.

5. Update Your Website Design

Have you ever noticed how in-person retail companies tend to decorate their stores for the festive season? This can be a valuable way to enhance your holiday ecommerce marketing campaigns too. Updating the appearance of your online store for the festive season can help to make your site feel more memorable and engaging. It’s also a great opportunity to rearrange the content you promote.

You can change your homepage to show different selections of potential products worth buying if you’re looking for gifts “for him”, “for her ”, or “for kids”. You might also create a new section on your homepage where you showcase your latest sales and deals.

Some ecommerce companies even use “calendar” tools to offer a new deal every day, which helps to keep customers coming back to the website and checking what’s available. Just remember, no matter how you choose to enhance your store’s appearance, you still need to ensure it’s easy to navigate on every platform. If a mobile website has complex navigation, 61% of users will avoid it in future.

Dialogue’s Campaign Tool

6. Offer Free Shipping and Easy Returns

During the holiday period, your ecommerce marketing tactics are likely to be focused on ramping up profits as much as possible. This could mean the idea of giving something away for free “like shipping” seems a little unusual. However, it could be the best way to improve your chances of a sale. When dealing with the complex festive period, people want simplicity.

When your customers know they can get products from your online store without having to pay extra for shipping, they’re much less likely to abandon their cart. Some studies even show that conversions improve by 50% when you offer free shipping.

If you don’t want to give free shipping to everyone, you can simply offer free shipping as an option when customers spend a certain amount, which can increase your average order value.

It’s also worth highlighting how easy it is to return your products, so customers don’t have to worry if something goes wrong with the items they buy. The easier everything feels to your users, the more likely they’ll be to make a purchase.

Update your Holiday Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

Generating more sales for your ecommerce businesses during the holiday season is a top priority for a huge number of companies. The tips above should help you attract more customers, increase your order value, and boost your chances of rapid sales.

Remember, keep track of your analytics from each year, so you can learn from previous campaigns, and invest more of your budget into the strategies that work best in the years to come.

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Holiday Marketing Ideas to Increase Your Ecommerce Sales