Kerrin Hardy writes a blog (kerrinhardy.com) for online store owners on the practicalities of ecommerce for small business. Join Kerrin for her free workshop ‘How to run a Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign’ – a series of daily tasks to guide you through running a successful campaign this Valentine’s Day holiday.
It’s holiday season again already! Just when you thought you could put your feet up after the Christmas rush and New Year madness, you realise you should have already started your next promotion campaign. Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and according to the US Greeting Card Association, more than $16.9 billion is spent on the holiday. The average consumer spends almost $120 and as an online store owner you know you can’t afford to pass up your share of the spending this holiday.
So, you know you need a Valentine’s Day Campaign but don’t know where to start? I’d like to share my top 5 tips to running a successful ecommerce promotion campaign.
Don’t start without a campaign plan
An ecommerce promotion campaign generally has one or more of the following three objectives:
- increase your number of customers, and/or
- increase the number of orders placed by existing customers, and/or
- increase the order value of orders placed by existing customers.
While many successful campaigns work on all three objectives, you may decide to focus your campaign on just one. Plan your campaign around what you want to achieve. For example, your campaign may consist of a discount for new account sign-ups or successful tell-a-friend purchases to focus on increasing your number of customers. Whereas a campaign such as buy 3 for the price of 2 or buy the matching set half price will focus on increasing the order value of orders placed by existing customers.
A campaign is more than an email
From your home page to your landing pages to your offline promotion materials to your customer service staff, your campaign message should be visible, have a consistent look and feel and a consistent message. If a potential customer clicks on an email as part of your promotion campaign, will they easily find the offer promised in the email?
A campaign needs to offer value to customers
Plan your campaign carefully to ensure that it offers value to customers as well as meeting your objectives without eating away your profit margin to an unacceptable level. Look at the possibility of minimum spends, as an example, before a customer qualifies for the product or shipping discount.
But don’t think that offering value always has to mean more and more discounts. Customers are looking for solutions and your value-add services may be just what they are looking for. Think about services such as gift-wrapping, PDF guides, low-cost set-up services, access to online help guides and so on.
Test, test and then test some more
Every aspect of your promotion campaign needs to be thoroughly tested. Any time you make changes to your store’s home page (and creating new landing pages), test your store pages using all the main browsers to ensure your changes are successful for the vast majority of visitors.
Same goes for your email messages. Have a test list that consists of a number of accounts with different providers that you have set up and also include email addresses of close friends and family. Double check that the email is still legible if images are not displayed as well as the basics ensuring your communication is free from typos and the like.
Next is to test that your promotion offers are actually available. For example, if your promotion campaign consists of free shipping with every order over $100, test and retest that your ecommerce software is set up correctly to apply the discount automatically and accurately in the shopping cart.
Remember the all important follow up
Lastly, don’t leave your customers hanging! Part of the promotion campaign is to engage your customers and bring your online store to mind. Leverage this new relationship by keeping up regular contact – this will continue to remind customers that your online store is the place to browse and purchase items when they are in the buying mood.
Good article. I would like to add one more point to this.
Once the campaign is completed, you must measure how successful it was. This goes hand-in-hand with point 1 that you have made – setting objectives for the campaign.
It is important to measure the campaign success against the base case scenario. For example, if your objective was to increase the number of customers buying from your site, then you should compare your number of customers during the campaign period against the number of customers during the same time period during the previous year (or previous month or whatever cyclicality you have) without the campaign.
Hi Jagath, I’m glad you enjoyed the article. Thank you for your comments.
I absolutely agree with everything you have said. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up just moving on to the next thing after your campaign but, as you said, you really need to analyse the success of your campaign before any lessons learned are forgotten.
There is a brief overview in my post ‘Day 21 – Analyse your Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign‘.
Thanks again,
Kerrin
I have a question, during what time or event will a campaign be more helpful? I mean does it only have to fall on holidays example? Anyway, thanks for posting this helpful insight.
A good marketing strategy involves jumping on the bandwagon, so to speak, of a more well-known event in order to take advantage of the natural advertising and promotion that takes place. This strategy is not limited to just holidays but other high profile events such as the Olympics or a Royal Wedding, for example.
Take a look at what’s coming up in the near future that will be big news in your area and then think about ways you can ride that momentum in your own marketing and promotions.
It’s a great question. And you know sometimes it’s actually better to run your promotion at a time when it won’t be lost in all the noise and busyness of a main holiday period or big event. It’s all part of the fun of working in ecommerce.
Cheers
Kerrin