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Christmas Marketing

How can marketers avoid Christmas campaign horrors?

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By Ayesha Salim, Content Lead

August 15, 2017 | 6 min read

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We are only in August so it might seem bonkers to start thinking about Christmas now. But is it? A study by Adept Marketing reveals that 25% of shoppers said they had done some Christmas shopping before Halloween, while 49% of e-commerce marketers have created and launched a holiday marketing campaign before Halloween.

How to avoid Christmas campaign horrors

How to avoid Christmas campaign horrors

While Christmas can bring many fruitful returns, most digital marketers are downright terrified of messing up their campaigns. To help them, AdRoll has teamed up with The Drum to quell these fears by giving them a chance to enter their winning tip when it comes to planning their strategy for Christmas.

When it comes to planning, what should marketers be thinking about in the months leading up to Christmas? In conversation with The Drum, AdRoll’s marketing director EMEA Gavin Flood, talks about the importance of planning, usage of first-party data, experimenting with creative, and running effective prospecting campaigns.

Christmas + August – now that's a scary proposition. Why are we talking about this now?

I think everyone accepts that Christmas is no longer just a few weeks running up to December. A lot of the heavy lifting and activity starts in November. You've got events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so you don't just flick a switch and be ready to go. There are lots of things to prepare for in terms of building out a list of viable prospects, testing your campaigns, and having your offers in place. And also making sure that the wider organisation is prepared for this busy period – which for some companies can account for 30% of their annual sales in that heavy four-week period between mid-November to mid-December.

How can marketers avoid the Christmas campaign horrors this year?

There is no substitute for preparation when it comes to getting ready for this period. But there are key areas marketers can focus on. Firstly, they should deep-dive into their first-party data to get insights on demographics, content messaging, and customer feedback - which all takes time.

Secondly, they should make sure that their website is ready. Some people make the mistake of focusing entirely on the campaign and then not thinking about their site usability, UX, and page optimisation. Even simple things like making sure potential questions around your offers are addressed is often missed.

It's also important to be able to communicate cross-functionally. It's hugely important as it is a wider organisational effort to make Christmas successful for your business.

Should marketers be changing their creative regularly during this period?

Marketers have lots of opportunities to experiment with ad formats; whether that be ad size or messaging. But there's also subtlety around changing up call-to-action messaging and colour schemes and the actual copy as well.

There is a danger of changing things up too frequently too. We recommend marketers to make a change every two to three weeks.

How do you create urgency in a market where there is a tendency to leave things until the last minute?

By having more action-orientated messaging and different calls to action. You're not going to change the age-old habit of people rushing around in December and trying too hard can be a turn off. It’s important to start building your prospecting campaigns now.

At this stage, it can be more brand focused and about building more engagement and insights around products and offers that are showing real interest. Then you're setting yourself up for success when you know that when you get into the very significant transactional period, you will have good insights and a strong pool of retargeting.

Cookies and Christmas – a good combo, right?

Cookies and Christmas can be a very good combination and when it comes to digital marketing. Traditional cookie windows for conversion for e-commerce brands is usually in the order of about seven to 14 days. If you want to maximise that retargeting pool, you really need to widen that window.

Christmas brings a lot of people online who are not usually active the rest of the year. How do you plan for that?

You've got to look at the user journey and be very transparent in your offering. Don't rely on live chat because not everyone will be overly familiar or comfortable with that piece of technology. So, focus on your UX, and address any potential cart abandonment issues by way of a Q&A. I would also not be too creepy with the messaging and just present it in a very engaging way.

Finally, what is your number one top tip?

My number one top tip for Christmas is: start prospecting now. From that pool, you can get key insights that helps you shape your segmentation and test your UX. All the while you're taking advantage of lower CPMs.

You've got that big window of opportunity from August to September when your CPMs are significantly lower than usual and you can run very effective prospecting campaigns.

Do you have any additional tips for the silly season? Submit your number one tip here for a chance of winning a Moleskine Smart Writing set.

Christmas Marketing

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