There’s no time more lucrative, or daunting, for marketers than the holidays. Picture the beginning of the New York Marathon: elbow-to-elbow with competitors, with everyone fighting for the smallest advantage since they know it will pay dividends down the road.
How are you supposed to stand out? At WeWork Fulton Center on Thursday, November 6th, four all-star digital marketers sat down with plenty of pizza to talk shop about this crucial period of the year.
Never Too Late For Now?
Denise Chan, moderator and email marketing associate of Mailjet, began the conversation with a provocative question: If you want to start prepping for the holidays, is November 6th too late to start? Are you already screwed?
Many marketers start planning for the holidays around June, after all. The panel couldn’t settle on a single answer — Nicolas Claquin of Sellsy said it might be too late, Emily Grant of Plated said it’s fine — but Kate Nadler of Glam Squad summed up a general feeling when she said it’s not “too late, but it needs to be a priority”.
Who’s Your Customer, and What Are They Looking For?
When asked how to stand out in a crowded field, Plated’s Grant pointed to the power of specificity, the value of being able to paint an accurate portrait of who your customer base is and attacking it with ferocity. “Go after someone, not everyone”, she said. Find a base with actual desires and cash, ignore everyone else and “put them on your wall”.
Nadler suggested that gift guides are great, beyond personalized emails (or perhaps in addition to them). Sellsy’s Claquin mentioned approaching customers from the opposite end: Instead of giving them a guide to purchases, allow them to offer Amazon gift cards.
As for that all-important part of the digital ask, such as the email headline, Grant recommended self-reflection: “Look at the emails you click in your own inbox, and follow those”, citing a Club Monaco email that essentially pushed puppy dogs. “It was a cheap win, but they acknowledged that it was a cheap win, and I clicked it.”
Keep Tabs on Data
Glam Squad’s Nadler noted that even smaller businesses should focus on numbers. “Get scrappy with data! Even if you have just three data points, use them. Connect those three with social,” she suggested. And as far as which data points to look at, Nadler recommended the “undervalued” click-to-open rate (CTOR). While many ignore the metric because of it’s similarity to click through ratios, you can get a clear demonstration of what is making your customer respond.
The data gleaned from the holiday season can be overwhelming, and Grant recommended “a system. Make up a system” if necessary, but any regular pattern to help find the patterns of your customers is crucial. Above all, Nadler advised to not come into your post-holiday date with any assumptions: “Let data tell its own story”.