Station 2 | Mastering Black Friday: Experts Dish On Critical Holiday Engagement Strategies

So. Hello, everybody. I'm Ben Norton. My job title is long — it's VP of Consultancy, Transformation, and Agency Scale. I've been in the job quite a short time. What I did before I took this very long title up was I set up the services business inside Emarsys, and I have a long history of doing that. My job now is to share some of those best practices with some of our agency partners across the world. So, that's me. And I'll introduce… I'll let Alicia introduce Hi, everyone. Alicia Burns. Title is Customer Experience Consultant. So, a little bit about what I do here at Emarsys is I partner with our clients to, basically, maximize the use of the Emarsys technology to fit their business needs and use cases. So I partner with them for strategy, best use of the platform, matching marketing trends with the best fit of their business goals to help them achieve them. Thanks, Alicia. So I'm going to add a little bit to what Alicia does. Really, Alisha is the best example of what one of our customers should be trying to do. So she's worked very closely with the biggest and most ambitious. What we're going to try and do today is I'm going to try and cue up Alicia, who's the real brains behind this, with a few topics. And we're going to be talking about three things that we think as marketers you should be getting ahead of in readiness for the Black Friday promotional season, holiday season. We often see… We know that many of our customers are aware of these events happening in their corporate lives, in their work lives, but they're not always great at getting ready for them because there's business as usual. There's other priorities. So what we're going to try and do in the next 30 minutes or so is just give you three — they're not even strategies, they're not tactics, they're just three ideas based on the experience we've gathered working with with our customers over the years. So let's talk about our first strategy, which is how to test your discounting. Now, look, we all know discounting works well. We also know that once we've started using it as a tactic, it's very difficult to wean ourselves and our customers off discounting. So, it's very important that there's some data science and some rigor behind that discounting strategy, not just to roll straight in there and start knocking money off. Because it's a very hard thing to roll back on, and that's going to impact margin. And we are seeing more and more of our customers being measured on that margin as they move forward, not just how many boxes they can ship, how much product they can sell. So, our first strategy, if you will, is testing discounts. And I'm going to throw it back over the fence to you, Alicia, so you can give an example of what we think a marketer should actually be doing in real terms to get that discounting testing done upfront. Yep, for sure. So to even preface discounting and testing those discounts, I think you hit on something that's pretty important, which is going to be to start early. The sooner that you can test the segments, test the discounts, the better off you're going to be, the more prepared you are, and the more you're going to see from your strategy when you get into holiday season. So from discounting, I think that there's a lot of different things that we can test. I think the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to testing discounts is going to be the value. So how much… is it going to be 10%? Is it going to be 20%? Is it going to be a percentage off or is it going to be a dollar amount off? But I think it goes deeper than that, and I think that we can even test with segments. So if we parse out our database into various personas, we can not only test what coupons are working and what values and discounts are working, but what variations of coupons and discounts work for each different persona, each subsegment within your database. So, I think there's a lot of various ways that we can test discounts, not even just limited to the value or the dollar amount. Would you say that you agree with that? Are there… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think… I think the biggest thing is trying to identify… We're going to use a lot of different words to describe the same thing, right? So we're going to say segment, cohort, group — whatever. We're just talking about a bunch of customers. Right? So we're talking about a segment, a group, a cohort. Those words are interchangeable. The most important one of those, I'm going to go for cohort. I'll probably change to segment later just to keep you on your toes. But the most important cohort, for me, is the cohort that doesn't have any price sensitivity at all, that you don't need to discount. And where we see the biggest opportunity is… is there. So if I've got a platinum group of customers, my most loyal, if you want, that are continuously coming back to me, I don't need to pull a discount trigger with them. And identifying that cohort, that segment in the holiday season, in those promotional windows, that's critical, because they're going to buy with a very, very mild discount offer. They're not going to become accustomed to a big discount and, therefore, start that expectation rolling. So for me, it's primarily about finding the non-price sensitive — open brackets, "loyal" — customers that you've got and identifying them and pulling them out of your discount strategy, right? For sure. Yep. I even think we could take it a step further and testing the way that we present the coupons. So, I think testing the value, testing the cohorts and/or segments, and then even potentially testing the way that we present them. So I know this year there's going to be a big focus on in-store as well. So maybe we could try potential discounts for going in-store that are maybe different than the online discounts that we offer. We could even… the actual method that we are sending them… we could even send barcodes that make it that much easier, right in the email, for them to use it. Does that see more conversion that if you just… Yeah. Say it's an overarching sale? So it feels more exclusive? I have this specific barcode that I can scan in-store versus just going in and trying to find the items on the rack, or find the items on the shelves that are applicable to get to that coupon or discount. So I think there's even ribbons on the site or online, does that, you know… Yeah. …convert more than an auto-coupon in each checkout? Yeah. I think that's a good point, because what you're saying — again, we know, as an incentive… I mean, we spend a lot of time thinking with our customers about what's an incentive to make a purchase beyond offering money off, right? And what we're aware of is, obviously, we're making an assumption that you've identified customers that want to buy your products or service first. But once you've got that, then the excellence with which you execute personalization, both in sense of timing and channel, which we'll talk about in a bit, that's the thing that makes me happy to make purchases — is the fact that you know me well. You're not forcing products down my throat at a time when I don't want them. So, we know that. So, therefore, when you do begin to pull the discount lever, the idea of adding a little bit more — not incentive, but asking them to perform some action on the back of it. So actually saying, not just, "here it is" with no barrier to entry, but, "here it is, go in store to redeem it." That, again, a lot of the time, customers miss that opportunity. If you've got a customer base that are not necessarily conditioned to a huge discounting culture inside your CRM, then when you do begin to offer it, make them work for it. Like, get them to do something that you want them to do, whether it's, like, cross-selling across your inventory — so you're trying to get them to buy different items — or whether it's going into a physical store, what is the action that you're trying to promote? Yeah? So I think that's a really good point. Yeah. And to kind of even piggyback off of that, I think that you hit on a really good one, which is, like, the category. So, obviously, most companies and most brands have their bread-and-butter product. This is going to sell, regardless, because it's a hot item and people are going to want to give it as gifts because they receive it as gifts. But there are, maybe, complimentary items that you also sell that maybe have less brand awareness, maybe see lower conversion rates, maybe offer a steeper discount on the items. Or maybe even don't discount your main product, don't sell the golden egg, and make sure that you're giving the discount on the products that you need to, or would want to give the discount for, to maybe push brand awareness for maybe new launch products or other maybe unknown products that your brand has that could be really great for holiday season as well. Yeah, cool. So listen, you can probably gather that Alicia and I could keep on going down this rabbit hole for a while. So I'm going to call it. Now I'm just going to wrap it up. I think the points that we've made — most important for me, anyway — is identify that cohort, that segment that don't have any sensitivity on price, that don't need a discount. Don't go giving discounts when you don't need to create a purchase. Alicia's point around: Once you've done that, further your segmentation with understanding what level of discount is needed outside that, right? That's super important. But the really nice bit is: What's the behavior you're trying to drive with that discount? You're using it as an incentive, don't just get the purchase, but also, try and influence the behavior that you want. So, discount is a powerful tool, and use it wisely. Don't just think discount, purchase — job done. Think about whether you're cross-selling across your inventory or whether you're trying to promote a different behavior. Cool. Let's move on to strategy two. Let's talk about limited-time holiday customers and how you can best engage them. Well, we say limited-time holiday customers. So I think what we actually mean is those customers that only come by when you're on promotion or you're in holiday. Right. Now, we all do this. We all know that we sit waiting for the brand or the retailer that we know and love. We wait for that window where we know we're going to get some incentive — whether it be discount, whether it be a product that's early release, whatever it is. And we sit and wait for it. And outside of those windows, we don't do anything. We're not really interacting. We might be opening a few emails or we might be looking at some of the push stuff coming to mobile; not super engaged. So, understanding how you're going to make the most of those customers that buy in those windows is our strategy, too. I'm going to throw that back over the net to you, Alicia. Yeah, absolutely. So I think spot-on with the fact that we know that there are customers that are doing this and waiting. Everybody's aware that with their with their company, you have your loyal customers and then you have your periodic seasonal purchasers. So I think to really, truly target these, we can we can take into consideration a couple of things. Gift cards are going to be one of the items that you're going to know. If you sell gift cards, you offer gift cards, and you pair that with the time of holiday season, then you're going to be able to target that cohort more individually and narrow down who are your holiday shoppers. Who are the people who are shopping during this time only? And then, if they did purchase a gift card last year, maybe you could re-present a gift card this year again: Hey, we know you loved this last year, you'd love it again, your family would love it again, here you go. So we could start presenting some of the similar items to what they have purchased last year. In addition to that, narrowing down the segment is going to be really important. So the more specific that we can get with the holiday purchasers is going to be the higher chance we're going to have it conversion. Obviously, we know personalization is a heavy contributor to conversion, and boosting our conversion rates. And I don't think holiday season for even periodic and seasonal shoppers are any exception to the personalization rule. So if we know what they… It makes it easy. Holiday can be stressful. Shopping for everyone can be stressful. So if we have those small reminders of what they purchased last year. Make it easier to one-click, add to cart, and buy again. And then Aunt Suzie is taken care of. So, I think that would make it a lot easier when you get more granular with the segmentation. Yeah, I think it's a good point. I mean, again, it comes down to how much data you've captured, and it's always down to the segmentation piece, right? We talked about the same thing in our first point around discounting. If you are aware of the segments of customers that are buying in those windows, if you are aware of the fact that they're doing it last minute, and you know what products they've purchased, then you've got a fair guess on what they're probably going to want to buy this time. Anything you can do to remove the friction from the transaction for a customer like that is likely to get you a sale. And again, you're probably going to get lucky. You're not going to need a discount, right? They're going to be coming back to you with a minimal discount. But as long as you're showing them… I mean, we all know this, we're all consumers… If a brand is able to show us recognition and memory of what we did last time we were there — right? —without tipping over into that world where it feels a bit spooky, but they're actually able to say to us, "Hey, look, we know that you're in this category, maybe. That it's cosmetics that you looked at last time, and that you made a purchase in, how about this?" Seamless, frictionless; let's go. Just press, just click and go. Right? And so you get that opportunity. I think it's also interesting when we look at those people that are buying inside those holiday windows, they're not necessarily only buying there, they're also doing some activity in between. So again, it always comes down to intelligent segmentation, right? Yep, absolutely. And I think to even, to hit on that even more, with the intelligent segmentation, when we have that, we know our maybe loyal holiday shoppers. They're not necessarily, obviously, our active and most loyal customers, because those folks are purchasing throughout the year-round. But I think there's an exclusivity play here as well because, obviously, a lot of brands offer percent-off sitewide, whoever — come in, everyone is applicable, everyone can take advantage of this discount. Great for lead acquisition, great for new customers. But if we can maybe hint at, in our messaging, in our content, that, "Hey, we know you've been here last year, we know you've been a customer for the past two years. You haven't been purchasing year-round, but we know that these past two holiday season, we've seen you in the store, we've seen you on site." And then maybe even offering different coupons, get that offering something for… It doesn't even have to be a discount. It could be to content. It could be to bump a tier in your loyalty plan, if you have a loyalty plan. So, I think that that could be a way to receive even additional conversion for those periodic, seasonal-holiday shoppers — an exclusivity play. Yeah, I mean, again, we do keep coming back to just the straight-up power of personalization, right? The idea of saying to someone, "I recognize you, I value you as a customer," rather than the blanket discount, is very powerful for us as consumers when we see that a brand or a retailer that we are engaged with recognizes us. And understands that we've been there before — to your point — that there's some reward for that, for our loyalty, even if our loyalty is a little bit sporadic and we're only really loyal on discount windows. Well, hey, look, we're still loyal, right? So I think it's a great point. It's a great point. So when targeting your special holiday customers, also consider how you're going to meet them on the channels they prefer to use. And that leads us into our third strategy. Right? We're always going to talk about omnichannel. And I think omnichannel… I've been in this space for more years than I care to remember. We've been talking about omnichannel for all of those years. And listen, it's not always been reality. Let's be honest. I think in the last two, three years, omnichannel is becoming a reality. We're actually seeing things happening — web, mobile, the outside of email. We know email is the highest-performing channel. We know it's got the great ROI. We know it really works. But omnichannel now seems to be happening more and more and more. We're seeing it more in the retail environment where it's not quite as clunky and mechanical as it was. We're seeing properly seamless experiences where you're able to redeem those QR codes — you were mentioning in the discount area, in one. It doesn't feel quite as stitched together as it was feeling three, four, five years ago. Now we are starting to see that omnichannel happening. So I think it's so important if you have multiple channels — and we all do — that you are doing your best to meet your customers there. We know how difficult it can be from a technical perspective to get that working. But I think it's really important. Absolutely. I think this one is one that we could we could get into all day. I'm really excited about omnichannel this year. I'm really excited about, you know, the Black Friday that we're going to see. It truly is a seamless customer experience. We're getting to the seamless customer experience from online to in-store. I think there's quite a few strategies, but one of the biggest ones is, I think, going to be offering those specific in-store discounts. So, we're offering some sort of… Some sort of in-store exclusivity. It's going to be a way to get foot traffic indoors, hopefully increase those average basket sizes, and hopefully be able to give you a great way to generate leads. So, another thing that we could do for… obviously, this is a great time of year for new customers. So, in order to merge that from literally day one, we could have QR codes in-store, and have — everybody has their cell phone — so use your mobile, take a snapshot of the QR, it sends you write to a form, and you're already in the database. Now we know what store you signed up in, we know what time of year that you came — you're at holiday, that's when we acquired you. We can tie that back. If you go and you check out, we have your basket size from that first purchase. And then we can try to use other tactics to get you to your second. So I think acquisition and then in-store exclusivity for the season is going to be really important to kind of merge the omnichannel. Yeah. And it's strange to me how — I'm going to say mobile, though you're going to say mobile, so, you know, we'll translate it across the Atlantic — but I… it's strange to me how mobile has suddenly seemed to have reached maturity. We've seen QR codes for many years, but just, again, in the last 18-to-24 months, it seems that something's clicked in the mind of the consumer where QR codes are being used. I don't know if it actually might be the pandemic, actually, that's actually caused us to trust even more in our devices, because we've become so much more relying on them. But the QR redemption and use of QR codes seems to have become much more acceptable, whereas before we were often, as strategists and consultants, we were pushing QR codes as a way of getting offline. Right? But it wasn't always working, right? It wasn't getting the adoption or the engagement that we hoped it might. But now this seems… something seems to have changed. Do you think that that's the case? Definitely. A lot has to do with the pandemic. I think there was a learning curve, and then the tech needed to catch up as well, for the QR codes. So the… there's some older generations that may not have been familiar with, you know, "How do I scan this? I don't… Do I need an app for this? Do I need…" So I think that the fact that now most mobile devices within the built-in camera functionality can just have you click and take off to your browser makes it that much easier to adopt the QR code. And then that opens up so much functionality for mobile and for connecting the in-store experience to online. I think we have tried that with SMS. I still think SMS is extremely powerful. And I think that holiday is a great place to maybe have those leads enter their SMS, or maybe securing more purchases throughout later in the year. But as we all know, SMS can be extremely expensive. So, I think QR codes, web push notifications, if you have an app, app notifications, are a really great way to still send the holiday messaging without having to spend a ton of money on SMS and save those SMS campaigns with the really powerful messages for those, and then maybe, through the other ones that you just want to notify folks, through the other means on mobile. Yeah. Listen, it's worth making a special night on SMS. It's hugely… It's hugely dependent on where you are in the world as to whether SMS works. I mean, we know SMS works really well in the US; in Europe, it can be quite patchy. We know in certain parts of Southeast Asia it's almost the only channel. And so, you know, it's very globally dependent. But as you rightly point out, it carries a cost that none of the other channels carry. So you want to make sure — and obviously, it's tech friendly, right? So you want to be absolutely sure that you're getting that bit right. I want to just come back and talk quickly about Web. Because I think that the idea of web personalization is probably one of the oldest, and yet, we're using that as part of an omnichannel journey if you… if we can call it that. If we're taking someone from email into a QR code, back to web, that's quite interesting, and I think we're seeing that starting to work. I don't know if it's got better or not. What do you think — is it improved? Or is it just — it's always been this effective. I definitely think it's improved in the conversion rates. It's improved in the way that we're able to achieve our goals now. And to be honest, the technology has definitely improved as well. So I think it's definitely improved on both sides. I think that it's enabled marketers to be able to tie both, all the departments in one. I think it's a lot more seamless. Because before, I might have to go to the tech department to get specific stats on, you know, where are my… where's my traffic going? But now our tools have been able — right within one platform like Emarsys — to be able to see the pages they're visiting, how long they're spending on the site, then, did they open an email? Then, did they click through? Did they engage with my pop up? So we have all of the tools in one place to be able to understand the engagement on all of these various devices and various sites. And then we have it in one place. And then we can leverage that to then increase — back to segmentation and cohort — segment them, and then increase the personalization within the messages. And that doesn't just translate to site or email messages. I mean, we can take that information on what pages you browse, put that into an ad, and if you're on Facebook now, now you've been in… been in the inbox, you've been on site, and now we're sending you personalized ads on Facebook. So I think it really encompasses everything — the fact that one tool can give us all the insights from all these various omnichannel type of environments. Yeah, look, I think it's a good way to wrap it up. Because I think… we've talked about omnichannel for a long time because, I mean, let's be honest, we're kind of paid to. But also… it's real now. And I think the QR-code topic that we covered is super relevant. It's really popping. It seems to be really working. We're seeing marketers use it in a really intelligent way, and we're seeing consumers, and ourselves as consumers. It always amazes me how when we're in the marketing seat, we suddenly forget that we buy stuff as well. And we know, we know, that we're using QR codes way above what we were doing before. And the web personalization, as you say, it's getting much easier technically on our customers' side to actually execute that. It's not so arduous, going across all the multiple departments in order to get that web personalization working. And that was our third and final strategy for this chat. I'm just going to try and wrap up what we talked about. We talked about three things today. We started with testing discounting, and we talked an awful lot about segmentation and discounting, and about trying to find that segment, that cohort, that don't need any. And, also, about driving the behavior that you want using discount as the lever. Then we looked at your customers that buy within the promotional windows, holiday windows, and how to really get them engaged, how not to alienate them, how to welcome them back, and how to make sure that you're getting it as frictionless as possible for them to continue to be that type of loyal customer. And then we just wrapped up with omnichannel, which is probably, in my experience, we're now having really good conversations about omnichannel. We've got lots of really good, real world examples of omnichannel. So, that's it. That's it for our Mastering Black Friday chat. Thank you very much for listening. Get inspired… …and keep exploring.