The holiday season is here after three years of consumer distance-shopping patterns occasioned by COVID–19 pandemic. Although the global market is experiencing high inflations and economic uncertainties, consumers are expected to take a break, go on holiday or shop for family-get-together celebrations. In fact, consumers started shopping as early as October in preparation for the holiday season. E-retailers and travel organizations will take advantage of different big shopping dates during this holiday season including Black Friday held on 25th November, cyber Monday on 28th November, Giving Tuesday on 29th November, Jamuhuri day on 12th December, Christmas on 25th December and New year on 1st January. These are major holidays celebrated globally and specifically in Kenya.

The Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast anticipates eCommerce sales growth of 12.8% to 14.3%, YOY, during the 2022-23 holiday season. Retailers need to put together a progressive plan that will lead to higher conversion rate during the holiday season.

Create holiday Season goals

Be specific about the holiday season goals and define how to approach each holiday as a retailer based on your geographical location and target customer. Analyze historical data, sales performance and pitfalls then generate insights that will lead to increased sales conversions.

Create SMART goals specific to the holiday season. Eg increase gift basket sales by 15% from last year in our Nairobi outlet in the next 1 month.

Prepare your online creative assets and Message

• Develop a creative direction and messaging that will be used during the holiday season. Your creative assets should be slightly different to align with the excitement and holiday celebration. You can have holiday specific themes for the different celebrations.
• Develop attention grabbing message that will make your assets stand out of the clutter.
• Focus on dynamic creative optimization to develop contextually relevant assets for targeted audience based on location, browsing history and time. There are different creative units that resonate well with different platforms like single unit creatives, carousal or scroller units, etc. identify the right unit to use for your adverts
• Carryout AB testing on different assets for conversion rate optimization

Online store optimization

Your online store look and feel should reflect the holiday season

• Design a creative holiday theme for your landing pages, align your content, images and videos to the holiday season. You can have holiday focused category and product pages with optimized pop-ups and forms.
• Consider holiday gift cards that can be personalized through customization. Create a sense of urgency and where necessary have a countdown to quicken decision making.
• Set up a seasonal shipping arrangement and a flexible return policy that may expire immediately after the holiday.
• Check on browser and cart abandonment rates and retarget through email or WhatsApp.

Study the holiday shopper cycle and patterns

While we might have a standard approach to holiday shopping, we have to study consumer shopping patterns. There are consumers that will start shopping as early as October while there are consumers who will shop during the holiday season. Also, consumers have interesting shopping behavior during the festive season eg Understand where and how consumers shop between 24th December and 31st December. How do you connect with consumers that have travelled from their traditional shopping centres, who are they with that time and what are they likely going to buy?

Consumers with higher purchasing power will make impulse buying and spend more on gifting than lower income consumers who will spend on needs only. These calls for a well targeted promotional campaigns directed to specific consumers with the right product, price and place.

Some consumers may decide to shop early in anticipation of price increase, shipping lead time and Product unavailability during the holiday season.

Offer Flexible Phygital Shopping Experience

COViD-19 taught consumers convenience through omnichannel shopping experience. During the holiday season, retailers should offer phygital shopping and fulfillment options that suit consumer interests and convenience. According to the Deloitte holiday retail survey, 63% of shopper will shop online with 34% using social media while 35% will go in-store.

Use different options including BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store), curb-side pick-up methods and order online from instore etc. Allow the consumers to choose from different options convenient to their shopping needs.

Full funnel visibility

While holiday shopping is a seasonal business activity that generate spike in consumer acquisition and sales, it can have a long-term impact on customer relationship and brand image. Sales lead magnets and competitive promotional activities can have a long-term impact on customer onboarding process and retention. Retailers should recalibrate their marketing funnel and design activities that may not have long term negative impact on the brand and consumer journey.

It may become hard or even impossible to retain customers who shopped during the holiday season when retailers where giving crazy discounts. Such consumers might only afford a product when it is discounted or on offer. Marketers have to generate different activities to protect their brand during the holiday season.

Effective customer Support

Intense marketing activities during the holiday season generate a lot of interest that lead to exponential customer support calls. Customers will look for decision making support during the shopping process, make enquires about a product feature or shipping details or generally get clarification if the offer is legit.

Retailers should optimize customer care platforms and retrain or upskill customer care teams to provide exceptional customer support during the holiday season.

Make sure to define your average response time in all the channels that you establish to connect with your customers. Test all telephone numbers in your marketing collaterals and website to make sure they work. Your social media and emails should have a dedicated resource throughout the holiday season.

For high traffic retailers, support from different tools will go along way in effective customer support. Set up an omnichannel customer support platform, chatbots, live chat support, self-service options etc

Connect and operationalize customer data

“The average retailer uses 44 different systems to engage with customers across digital and physical touchpoints. Data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to add new customers and 6.5 times more likely to retain them.” State of Marketing, Seventh Edition, Salesforce, 2021.

Marketers that centralize data from different silos are able to anticipate their customers’ needs and preferences, personalize shopping journeys and makes it easier for customers to find the products they want which can increase sales. A good example is Intelligent product bundling where customers who buy wrapping paper might also need tape, ribbon, and gift tags. By analyzing past purchase behavior, you can pre-configure product bundles that increase units per transaction.

Such bundling of products can be made easier buy using customer shopping data and analyzing all the key touchpoints throughout the purchase journey.

Seasonal Outsourcing

High demand generated during the festive season require extra hands on the deck to deliver value to customers. Retailers will hire seasonal workers for a short period and are not obliged to retain them post-holiday season. However, they have to train and manage them every time they hire making the exercise more expensive.

The Ecommerce value chain is at an advanced stage where key players provide specialists expert services. Retailers can outsource customer support services, last mile delivery, Marketing, Talent management etc. This gives the retailers time to focus on strategy to increase efficiency and conversion rate during the holiday season.

Sustainability Marketing

According to a salesforce survey, a whopping 78% of consumers say a company’s environmental practices influence their spending decisions. And for holiday shopping, the number is even higher: 83% of consumers say they’ll seek out sustainable products and shipping options. To advance a net zero focus, retailers should reward loyalty members when they engage in environmentally friendly behaviors. At Starbucks, for example, loyalty members earn points when they buy with reusable cups.

Retailers can also identify programs and initiatives to support during the holiday season. This will capture customer hearts and minds and strengthen their relationship.