Ecommerce seasonality offers a multitude of opportunities and challenges. Making the most of retail seasonality involves a lot more than just maximizing your Christmas sales. Proper marketing strategies both account for and utilize seasonality to their advantage. In this article, we will discuss how.
Crucial to almost every marketing strategy is not only getting the most out of every holiday, but also out of every season. With the passing of various holidays and seasons, retailers experience great fluctuations in:
Accounting for ecommerce seasonality is but one part of customer centricity. By making your marketing efforts as relevant as possible to your potential customers based on the season or holiday, you’ll ensure their ecommerce experience corresponds to their wants and needs of the moment.
To really understand the
Location is always an important factor to consider, not just because different countries or regions may have different holidays, but because often times even within a country the climate may starkly vary.
For example, a New England shopper in November is probably looking for completely different apparel compared to a Southern California shopper still enjoying the sunshine of a late Fall. So a smart clothing retailer might use segmentation tech to promote winter jackets to the New Englander and light jackets to the Californian.
Another pertinent example of the crossroads between geolocation and seasonality is Germany. German states celebrate different holidays and sometimes the same holidays at different times of the year. An adult beverages retailer might utilize geolocation-based segmentation to promote beer in Bavaria before Octoberfest. Or a costume retailer might use geolocational segmentation to send out a special online sale email to customers in Cologne before the famous Karneval festivities; while not spamming customers living in Berlin who don’t celebrate Karneval.
Yet another powerful use case for combining segmentation and seasonality is sports teams. If the NFL season is about to start, a sports retailer would be wise to Nosto’s Segmentation & Insights and Content Personalization to promote local NFL teams in their respective markets with localized banners and recommendations.
Nothing puts a customer in the holiday spirit quite like an immersive and consistent holiday season themed experience. Use UTM-Tagging in your holiday email and advertising campaigns in combination with Onsite Content Personalization to provide relevant holiday experiences to shoppers who interacted with those campaigns.
One use case would be a Valentine’s Day campaign for a jeweler. This hypothetical jeweler could send out a special email campaign to men with UTM-tagged links that lead to a customized website highlighting women’s necklaces and rings. A separate UTM-tagged email could go out to the jeweler’s women customers, leading to a customized Valentine’s Day website offering a special deal on men’s watches.
The strategies for engaging customers should vary depending on if it is the off- or on-season.
During the on-season customers are much more likely to buy and to buy impulsively. So during this time, it may be prudent to consider the following strategies:
During the off-season customers tend to take more time in making purchases, especially if it’s for a larger ticket item. During this time:
In your mission to provide your customers with the most relevant experiences possible, seasonality can play a large role. Optimize your ecommerce marketing strategies by:
Curious to learn how these and other tactics can be used to fuel your commerce experiences? Request a demo with us and we’ll help you find solutions that are aligned with your business goals.
