3 Tips For Nurturing Customers Beyond the Holiday Season

It’s that time of the year when baubles, wreaths and angels pop up in our stores. As the world inches closer towards the biggest and best holiday season, this is a great opportunity for businesses to make the most out of this occasion by promoting and building strong brand relationships through innovative email marketing strategies. However, to be ahead of the pack, you’re better off ensuring your strategies are consistently updated all year round; this keeps your customer base growing and allows you to nurture them beyond the holiday season.
The Black Friday Global report shows that, in Australia, consumer interest has reportedly increased by 614 percent over the past five years, with 57 percent of Australians planning to shop both online and in-store. A further 37 percent are expected to shop exclusively online this season. The brisk holiday shopping season that kick-starts with Click Frenzy and Black Friday followed by Cyber Monday, is key for retailers to generate consistent customer engagement and excitement. Here are three key tips for businesses to ensure your seasonal marketing strategy can be sustained to continually nurture brand relationships – even when the holiday season is over.
Personalisation Makes Your Customers Feel Special
It goes without saying that the holidays are a busy time for everyone. Customers are inundated with more emails than usual and hard-sell communications won’t be the ones cutting through the noise. Hence, with personalised emails delivering conversion rates six times higher than those without, it is a no-brainer to concentrate on personalisation with catchy subject lines. Additionally, dynamic content based on subscribers’ likes and needs is bound to create a great impression and generate better ROI. Whether it’s in design or copy, personalisation will ensure that customers feel they are special, valued and prioritised.
The festive season is also one of the best opportunities for brands to cement their relationships with existing customers through special loyalty rewards. A global study by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, shows that 66.3 percent of Millennials indicated that they are more likely to shop from stores where they are part of the loyalty program. Using the behavioural and transactional data at hand, personalised seasonal email campaigns can give an extra nudge to a pre-existing brand relationship with customised offers and tailored deals.
Re-Engage With Your Inactive Customers
With so much competition to get people’s attention, it’s almost inevitable to have a small percentage of your subscriber list lose interest and stop engaging with the brand. Therefore, holidays are a crucial time to win those customers back and pique their interest once again. By sending out teasing messaging in advance of upcoming offers and leveraging the excitement and clamour of the season, you will generate engagement and have consumers looking out for emails at those important times.
For those with a B2B focus, it could be a wrap-up at the end of the year with award ceremonies or parties. A wrap-up could be a recap of what the customer might have missed out on and should create excitement for future activities. For retailers, it could be offers and holiday merchandise aimed at strengthening brand image. Evidently, leveraging customer data gathered earlier in the year and adopting re-engagement strategies using recommendations tailored according to past customer shopping behaviour are key for retailers.
Automate for Faster Processing
With personalisation and re-engagement strategies on the priority list during the holiday season, one of the best ways to reach out to more customers in less time is by email automation. Key stages of the purchasing process can be automated to further strengthen the customer relationship. Since the holiday season is prime time for purchases, businesses should establish a secure and strong sale using a post-purchase program. Customer reviews are a key component in a shopping decision process. In fact, according to ‘The eMarketer E-commerce Insights Report’ by Bizrate Insights, 40.8 percent of respondents clearly look at reviews prior to purchasing. So, it’s critical for retailers to invest in a post-purchase email program and send an aftersales review email to customers.
If we consider that nearly 70 percent of carts are abandoned globally, as revealed by the Baymard Institute, automating cart recovery emails can help increase sales. People add items to their carts to see whether postage has been added or to keep the item and compare prices elsewhere. To address this, retailers should engage with individuals by offering alternatives, showing reviews and, as a last resort, adding an offer. By setting up an automation flow in a cart abandonment strategy, retailers can make the process faster and increase customer retention.
To capitalise on the excitement and joy that this time of the year brings, retailers can not only leverage sales using personalisation, re-engagement and automation strategies but also maximise customer experiences. Email marketers who are consistent with these strategies can ensure that their customers’ loyalty will endure throughout the whole year.
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