Recently, our VP of Customer Success Amber Haack sat on a webinar panel with Zao Founder Justin Sainton and A.J. Morris, Product Manager of WooCommerce Hosting at Liquid Web. The webinar,
Continuing the Momentum After the Holidays, provided a framework for how eCommerce merchants can find success even after the big holiday season has passed. You can view the webinar here.
Whether you were unable to attend or couldn’t take notes, no worries, here are some highlights from their discussion.
Review Last Year’s Data
There’s no wrong time to review your campaigns from last year. Whether you want to tackle it all at once or dive into it on a quarterly basis, it is absolutely crucial for eCommerce retailers to review their marketing campaigns from the previous year.
Reviewing your eCommerce retail promotions will help you get a better feel for what really resonated with consumers, not just from a purchasing front but also from the marketing side as well. If you can correlate purchases to the various channels you used to reach your target audience, then you can really analyze what worked for your business.
Campaigns that didn’t pan out well should be reviewed and a decision should be made about optimizing and running them again. Your eCommerce marketing campaigns that succeeded? Those should also be reviewed so that they can optimized for further success.
Understand Your Social Channels
While you may be factoring your social media outreach into your eCommerce marketing strategy, it’s important that you really understand your audience on these channels. Here’s what Zao founder Justin Sainton had to say:
Clear understanding of which social media channels apply to your target market is key.
For example, while it’s true that 35 percent of online adults are on Instagram, and of that, nearly half make over $75,000 per year – you may know that YOUR customer lives and breathes on Pinterest, and has an average income of $45,000 – making Instagram a poor use of your marketing efforts.
Beyond that, understanding the primary behavioral interactions on each platform is vital for engaging effectively.
Take the time early in the year to get thorough understanding of your social channels’ audiences so that you can continually optimize your eCommerce marketing strategy throughout the year.
Keep Your Site’s Performance Top-of-Mind
A common issue eCommerce merchants (especially those in the small-to-medium size business space) found during the holiday season was how their online stores performed. For most consumers, sites that don’t fully loaded within a matter of seconds aren’t worth their time.
Get ahead of that holiday rush this year by making sure your site is in peak performance year-round and don’t hesitate to reach out to experts like Liquid Web to do an audit so you won’t find yourself running into this issue again.
Get Personal With Your Consumers
If you want to stand out in the crowded eCommerce space, then personalization is the best way to do it. This is another callback to reviewing your customer data. The more you know about your customers, the more effective marketer you’ll be. From Justin:
Be proactive in getting to know your customers at a human level. Find a way to get face-to-face with them and learn about what they love (and what they don’t) about interacting with your company.
You can provide this face-to-face experience by deploying unique eCommerce marketing campaigns such as cart or onsite abandonment emails. Additionally, run preference campaigns that allow you to begin loyalty and VIP messaging to turn one-time purchasers into brand advocates.
Don’t Miss Out on Early Marketing Opportunities
There are plenty of opportunities for eCommerce retailers to market to consumers. Aside from seasonal clearance sales, there are plenty of hallmark opportunities early in the year for eCommerce marketers to capitalize on. These include:
- Groundhog Day
- Valentine’s Day
- Presidents’ Day
- St. Patrick’s Day
And various other, smaller more targeted days of observance marketers can really lean on to stay relevant to consumers.
Watch the Replay
Again, these are only a few of many great points Amber, Justin and A.J. touched on in this Continuing the Momentum After the Holidays. We recommend you watch the entire webinar, which you can do so here.
Springbot is ready to help you simply your eCommerce marketing efforts. Set up a demo today and capitalize on that early-year revenue.
