Win the Holiday Season with These Four Marketing Tips

Another holiday season is right around the corner, and we know that it can be easy to start feeling a bit overwhelmed with all of the things you’ll need to do in the coming months. (Plan festive meals! Wrap gifts! Make a resolution! Keep your resolution!)

But if you sell stuff online—and you’ve connected your WooCommerce store to Mailchimp—you can rest easy knowing that you’ve already got the tools you need to sync your customer data, send targeted campaigns, and sell more stuff all season long.

Today, we’re going to share four tips that will help you take advantage of all these powerful tools and make the most of your marketing throughout this holiday season. Let’s get right to it!

1. Set Goals — and Plan For Them Accordingly

The holidays can be a hectic time for eCommerce businesses, so before things get too crazy, it’s important to set aside a few moments to think about your goals for the upcoming season—and how you’re going to reach them. You don’t need to block off time for an in-depth planning session (unless you want to, of course), but it’s a good idea to start making some preliminary decisions about what you’ll be doing, when you’re doing it, and how you’re going to promote it to your customers.

Think about sales or other special promotions you want to run (to showcase your best—or slowest—selling items, perhaps), new products you may want to introduce, and how you’re going to delight your customers throughout the season. Consider how (and when) you’re going to remind customers about your holiday shipping or return policies.

You could even set up a content calendar to lay out all of your communication and promotional plans — from blog posts to social media ads to important dates and anything else you’ll want to be sure to remember as the holidays draw ever closer.

2. Save Time With Automation

You’re going to have a lot on your plate over the next few months, but by removing a few manual tasks from your marketing to-do list, you can free up time to focus on other aspects of your business—or to just get some much-needed rest and relaxation. Mailchimp’s automated emails can help.

• Sending personalized, relevant content is important all year long, but it becomes essential around the holidays when inbox real estate is at a premium. Mailchimp’s tagging and segmentation tools make it easy to organize your contacts and send them automated content based on their interests, purchase history, location, and anything else you’d like throughout the season. Not sure how to put segmentation to use for your business? Consider re-engaging shoppers you haven’t seen in a while by offering them a discount or free shipping on their next purchase.
• Welcome new subscribers and thank customers for their patronage by setting up messages that send automatically when someone signs up for your list or makes their first purchase from your store. It’s a quick, easy way to show people your appreciation, and you could throw in a coupon or promo code to encourage them to make another purchase.
• And, when you connect your WooCommerce store to Mailchimp, you can also set up abandoned cart messages, order notifications, helpful product follow-ups, and a whole lot more. You can even include product recommendations based on purchase history in your campaign and increase sales per open by an average of 150%.

3. Try Something New

Implementing new marketing tactics, especially during the holidays, can be a scary proposition. But don’t forget: plenty of other businesses are out to attract your customers, too, so communicating with them in different ways can help you stand out from the crowd. And Mailchimp has the features that can help.

• Set up a landing page. Landing pages are a great way to advertise your products or grow your list. You could, for example, create a landing page where people can sign up to receive access to special promotions—like an early Black Friday discount, a presale for the season’s hottest item, or a special holiday in-store event. Pro tip: you can even use your existing domain and a unique subdomain to create customized, recognizable links for your landing pages, so the URLs look like a natural extension of your website.
• Send postcards. Go beyond inboxes—and stay one step ahead of your competition—by sending personalized printed postcards to your customers around the world. It’s a great way to announce your new winter clothing line, delight your audience with a fun holiday greeting they can hang on the fridge, and anything in between.
• Create Facebook and Instagram ads. Facebook and Instagram ads have become popular for marketers and online sellers because they make it easy to reach new audiences, drive people to your site, and sell more stuff. And when you set them up in Mailchimp, you can even use your existing customer data to target other people who will like your stuff. In fact, we’ve found that using your Mailchimp list for targeting is 25% more successful than interest targeting alone.
• Try Google remarketing ads, too. Not everyone who visits your site is going to be ready to make a purchase right away. Luckily, Google remarketing ads can help you make sure that your products stay top-of-mind. In just a few clicks, you can create and run an ad that brings back shoppers when they’re ready to buy, no matter where they go online.

4. Analyze, Adjust, Repeat

After each campaign, be sure to monitor Mailchimp’s detailed revenue, engagement, and growth reports to find out who clicked on your campaign, what they bought, and how much money you’ve made. These valuable insights will help you determine what’s working, so you can use what you learn to make smarter marketing decisions throughout the holiday season and beyond.

If one of your holiday campaigns performs particularly well, try digging a bit deeper to determine why it’s so successful and incorporate those findings into your future campaigns. If, for example, you discover that there’s a certain type of messaging or call to action that elicits more engagement from your customers, you’ll know to include that element in your next few campaigns. Or, if you find that a Facebook ad helps you increase sales of one of your products, try replicating that success by creating similar ads for some of your other products, too.

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Brandon Krutzky