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INTRODUCTION
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PRE-HOLIDAY PLANNING CHECKLIST
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STATS & TRENDS FOR THE 2016 HOLIDAYS
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TOP 4 HOLIDAY MARKETING HURDLES
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2016 HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN RECOMMENDATIONS 9
Set Yourself Up For Success
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Using Campaign Tools & Channels
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Fill Your Funnel With Campaigns That Convert
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Design Ads Like Never Before
| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
GET READY FOR THE HOLIDAYS It’s time to start strategically crafting a marketing calendar that will drive sales right into the New Year. Whether you’re well underway or just getting started, we’ve got you covered.
WE’VE GATHERED ALL THE HOLIDAY MARKETING TIPS,
trends, and campaign recommendations you’ll need to make the most of this busy shopping season.
Click here to get in the holiday spirit with Mariah Carey’s Christmas album, it helped us!
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
KNOW YOUR STATS | What was your site traffic last
holiday? How much of it came from mobile? How much did your raw site conversion rate increase?
DETERMINE WHAT WORKS | Review the performance
from past holiday campaigns to know which combination of promotions and channels work for your brand.
GRAB YOUR CALENDAR | Do you have special sales
planned? Remember to keep some offers in your back pocket so you can quickly react to any changes.
SET YOUR GOALS | What are your digital marketing goals?
CPA, ROAS, CTR? Communicate these so your campaigns are designed to meet your goals.
GATHER YOUR ASSETS | Gather or create assets that can
be used in your holiday campaigns. Don’t forget video!
THINK ABOUT CHANNELS & DEVICES | How do people engage with your brand - mobile, tablet, desktop? Where do people engage with your brand the most - email, retargeting, social?
UNDERSTAND YOUR COMPETITION | How has your
competitive landscape changed over the last year? Are there any new developments to consider when creating new campaigns?
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
We’ve Gathered The Essential Stats & Trends To Consider As You Plan
YOUR HOLIDAY MARKETING CALENDAR 2016 Holiday eCommerce Dates: Don’t forget about the post-holiday season! Start thinking about your Q1 campaigns early since sales don’t slow down after the new year.
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
BREAKDOWN OF HOLIDAY MOBILE SHOPPING
BY CONSUMER AGE GROUP
If you’re missing mobile, you’re missing out. The 2015 holiday season showed us that mobile is bigger than we thought – even consumers underestimated how much they would rely on their mobile devices. Smartphones in particular saw a surge in adoption, and 2016 looks like another strong year for mobile.
Learn why audience segmentation is the key to successful mobile campaigns.
Sales on mobile and tablet grew
59%
1
year-over-year.
Retail sales nearly doubled on smartphones compared to 2014, increasing
95.8%
1
Consumers’ preferred METHOD OF ONLINE SHOPPING saw a change in favor of mobile for every generation PRE
POST
Millennials
Gen X
Baby Boomers
For more on marketing to millennials
Holiday Mobile Shopping Preference
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
THE SHOPPING BEGINS ON THANKSGIVING
CUTOFF DATE FOR HOLIDAY DELIVERIES
According to U.S. Merchants, 2014 vs 2015 % of Respondents
While it’s true that one in five US Internet shoppers start their holiday gift-buying in the summer, the overall data suggests shoppers are waiting for their turkey dinner before jumping in. You’ll be able to enjoy your turkey a lot more knowing your campaigns are already collecting conversions.
of shoppers have not done any holiday shopping by November¹ Thanksgiving Day 2015 saw ecommerce sales grow over
¹
SANTA DELIVERS LATER & LATER
Consumers are ordering goods later into the year, and retailers are looking to accommodate these procrastinator purchases to ensure the gifts get under the tree. That means if you do offer expedited shipping, make sure your messaging makes that clear and you have campaigns ready to launch right before the holiday.
Saw the BIGGEST year-over-year increase for ecommerce sales.¹
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
What Digital Marketers Have To Say When Asked...
WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES DURING THE HOLIDAYS? We’re finding out if your marketing vendors have been naughty or nice. Here are the common challenges marketers have faced during holidays past, and how we make sure we’re always on the nice list
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SURPRISE! Your CPM just skyrocketed, along with your blood pressure.
Although we recommend increasing CPMs for the holiday, suddenly realizing your CPM is much higher than anticipated is not the way to spread holiday cheer. [last year CPMs were 3X higher on Black Friday]
SteelHouse constantly monitors your campaigns and will adjust immediately and let you know if CPMs are higher than the levels you set. The only holiday surprises we like come with huge bows.
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CHANGES ON THE FLY 10%, 20%, no wait . . . FREE SHIPPING!
Promotions and messaging repeatedly change. Even minor adjustments to ad creative can take a long time, but they don’t have to. With the SteelHouse Creative Suite, you don’t have to worry when your ads need to change, you can make the change immediately and launch your ad in minutes (see page 15).
Plan to make last minute adjustments to campaigns based on performance data from campaigns currently underway. STEELHOUSE
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
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BLOWING THROUGH YOUR BUDGET Empty pockets mean you’re leaving sales on the table.
Even when you take the time to analyze trends and last year’s budget, every year is different and can be full of surprises. Last year many marketers didn’t plan for Cyber Monday to outperform Black Friday as much as it did. At SteelHouse, we research trends and recommend how to prevent spending your budget too soon so you can adjust for any unexpected changes.
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HELLO, IT’S ME Not being able to reach your vendor is the worst!
There’s nothing more frustrating than calling or emailing multiple times to get an answer to a question or confirm a change was made to your campaign. At SteelHouse we live by “work hard, play harder” but NOT during the holidays – we just work hard. SteelHouse reps are always on call. Our average email response time during the holidays last year was under 15 minutes.
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
SET YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS Achieving the best performance doesn’t just happen. Here are a few ways you can make sure your campaigns are set up for success. FIRST RUN CONTROL GROUPS | Attribution is not a perfect science, but it is a vital piece of information you use to determine what is working and where to shift your budget. We recommend running control groups in September as the easiest way to determine the most accurate attribution for Q4. EXPAND HOW YOU DEFINE ATTRIBUTION | Speaking of attribution, you may want to start considering view-through conversions when determining the attribution for your campaigns. If you’re only considering clicks you aren’t seeing each channel’s contribution accurately, which will result in restricting reach. After all, you want to reach users who buy, not users who only click. Learn how view-throughs show you the bigger picture. RETHINK GOALS | For the rest of the year, it makes sense to track performance by focusing on eCPA and ROAS, but the holiday season is unique. We recommend setting revenue goals instead and drive as much business as possible.
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
RECOMMENDATIONS continued... HIGHER CPM FOR THE HOLIDAYS | Temporarily increasing your CPMs is the best way to make sure your holiday campaigns actually get in front of your audience. SteelHouse allows you to set your own CPMs, as high or as low as you want. Test multiple bids and CPMs per campaign, finding the sweet spot for performance and reach. Optimal CPM is $3-$4 in Q3, but it increases up to 40% Q4.
BUDGET IN FLIGHTS | Create your budget in flights that are in line with expected traffic increases based on YoY, instead of setting budgets strictly on a 1st – 30th monthly basis. Additionally – start increasing budgets BEFORE the holidays, and give November 22nd – 30th its own budget to take advantage of the busiest shopping period of the year. With SteelHouse, you can manage your budget down to the campaign level and make changes any time you want. Last year, we drove 30% of all conversions for one client between Black Friday & Cyber Monday by temporarily increasing their CPMs. The combination of killer creative and increased reach lead to phenomenal performance. They were so satisfied, they increased their budget by 4X in December.
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
It gets so hectic this time of year, it’s easy to forget all the different tools you can draw upon to give your campaign performance an extra boost. TEST TO KNOW WHAT WORKS A/B test messaging, offers, and creative. Marketing is a science after all, there’s no reason to guess. We’re often surprised at the combination that performs the best when we run our own advertising.
SEQUENCE & ESCALATE | Try escalating your offers until a purchase is made. With the custom creative offerings SteelHouse provides, you can have multiple messages built out proactively so we can schedule them as needed to ensure you can enjoy the holidays, or at least have one less thing to worry about.
Find out if your campaign tests pass the test.
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
INCREASE REACH | Increase reach by expanding the number of channels you’re running ads – mobile and social are a must. Keep in mind that CPMs on social platforms tend to be higher for younger age groups, and 3-5X higher overall during the holidays. Nearly 80% of social media time is now spent on mobile devices. ⁴ Read about eight best practices for retargeting on Facebook.
Learn how to get the most out of your social media campaigns.
START WITH PROSPECTING | Begin Prospecting before the holidays to build up your audience. Find out how to bring in fresh prospects the right way. If you’re spending marketing dollars on television, mirror the online and offline experience without the crazy costs. Use the commercials in your top-of-funnel and prospecting campaigns to keep a clear and consistent message and drive as much efficiency from your marketing dollars as possible. Read about 5 retargeting mistakes and how to avoid them.
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
LOAD UP | Before the holidays, launch Prospecting campaigns to start with a full conversion funnel. • PROSPECTING Combine tactics such as Look-alike, 3rd party data, demographic audiences, and contextual and vertical targeting to reach the largest pool of prospects who are likely to convert. Launch retargeting and prospecting through one platform so the overlap can be measured and messaging is consistent. RE-ENGAGE | Leverage your CRM data and email lists to reach last year’s buyers. • SPECIFIC CATEGORY or PRODUCT CAMPAIGNS Custom Variable Campaign Use your CRM to identify site visitors who purchased 10-14 months ago and re-engage them with unique messaging. Email List Prospecting Compliment your email efforts with on brand messaging from the display side. FAMILIARITY | Cast a wide net with an evergreen retargeting campaign to reach those that are simply aware of your brand. Get them back to your site, and gather more data for future campaigns. • ALL SITE VISITORS Engage all site visitors in the past 90 days with a lower CPM, just for the holidays.
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
FILL YOUR FUNNEL continued... CONSIDERATION | It’s time to get specific. Target users shopping your category or product pages with dynamic product recommendations. • Specific Category or Product Campaigns 2+ page views HIGHLY ENGAGED | Zero in on those with a deeper level of intent. Reach those who have not yet added a product to their cart by increasing your CPM. • Engaged Shopper 2+ site visits in past 30 days. • Reluctant Shopper Above average page views in a single visit. • Lingering Shopper Has spent an above average time on your site. CLOSE-TO-CONVERSION | Target users who are most likely to convert. • Cart Abandonment Site visitors who have put product(s) in their cart but have not made a purchase.
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
T’was the night before Christmas and all of a sudden you need to run a flash sale, or you need to quickly change your offer from 10% to 20% and you can’t afford to wait. We all know this stuff happens.
Introducing
THE STEELHOUSE CREATIVE SUITE
Watch the video
Ad Builder + Creative Library
Use Getty Images for free
Upload from YouTube
Incorporate your own photos or video
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| 2016 Holiday Marketing Guide
1
“eMarketer US Holiday Shopping Preview 2016: Absorbing the Lessons of 2015”
2
“2015 Post Holiday Consumer Insights Report,” TrendSource
3
Multichannel Merchant, “MCM Outlooks 2016: Operations Special Report,” April 28, 2016
4
“Nearly 80% Of Social Media Time Now Spent On Mobile Devices” Marketing Land, April 2016
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FROM THE STEELHOUSE TEAM NEED MORE TIPS? To receive customized recommendations tailored to your industry or your brand, give us a call or contact your dedicated account manager.
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