This year is flying by, and the biggest time in the retail sector is fast approaching. Black Friday will kick off the Christmas shopping period, followed quickly by Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday Celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, and its popularity continues to grow at an exponential rate – Reaching sales of $7.4 Billion in the USA alone. Cyber Monday is arguably bigger than Black Friday in the UK. But just because Cyber Monday (and the week that follows) is a strictly online affair.
It doesn’t mean that offline marketing can’t help you promote those fantastic deals. So here are our top tips on how to utilise offline marketing for Cyber Monday.
Reactivate customers
Our first tip is to utilise Direct Mail’s power to reactivate customers. It’s five times cheaper to bring a customer back than to acquire a new one. Direct Mail has an excellent conversion rate of existing customers. The chances are that you will be offering massive discounts on your products for Cyber Monday. Use these discounts to reel in some existing customers.
You can personalise your piece of Direct Mail to mention the customers’ name and previous products they have bought. Personalised marketing has a much higher success rate than non-personalised marketing, and with the added benefit of discounts, your piece is sure to drive a high conversion rate.
Send a gift guide
Gift guides are a perfect way of drumming up interest in your products and your Black Friday/ Cyber Monday promotions. Depending on how many products you have and/or want to highlight, you can either send something as simple as a postcard highlighting one product or a full brochure highlighting multiple products. The marketing piece can include exact times that the products will go on sale and what the discounts wills be.
Catalogues hold a special nostalgia in our hearts. Do remember circling your dream presents in the Argos catalogue as a child just before Christmas or birthdays?
Letting your potential customers know exactly what’s on offer and when in a brochure is a match made in heaven. Direct Mail that included information about products or services was put aside to read a later date by a whopping 26% of people. This means that the lifetime value of the brochure increases and people can learn about your products when they are more receptive to the messaging driving conversion rates higher.
Use vouchers
If your aim is to drive footfall to your store for Black Friday then having a removable voucher with an additional discount is sure to encourage people to your store. 12% of people who received a Direct Mail piece with a voucher or discount code used it to make a purchase. A further 6% of people went into a store to use that code.
Vouchers have a long history within offline marketing for one reason, they work! Vouchers play a big part in the buyer decision process; they can either, help an indecisive customer choose to purchase from you or, push smart shoppers towards purchasing your brand. An incredible 83% of respondents changed their shopping habits as a result of a discount code according to an inmar study.
Discount vouchers also resonate with the younger generations with 8 out of 10 Millenials saying they use voucher codes while shopping online and an astonishing third saying they use them regularly. Perfect for Cyber Monday, don’t you think?
Personalised URL’s
Personalised URL’s or PURL’s are unique web addresses created specifically for the recipient of a marketing campaign. Every single person can have a unique address. This opens up multiple avenues for you to drive business on your website. 10% of people visit a site when they receive a piece of Direct Mail through the post. Now that Offline marketing has done its job driving people to your site, how do you take advantage of the PURL?
PURL’s open up a variety of avenues, Because each one is different with a little bit of IT trickery you can make every page specific to that person. Greet them with personal messages, apply the discount directly to their account as soon as they click, show them personalised products ready for Black Friday which have been “hand-selected” based on their previous purchases.
Marketers can often see a 20% increase in sales when offering a personalised experience throughout their marketing campaigns.
The early bird catches the worm
Don’t forget to start drumming up interest for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals early. At least a few weeks before the big events. A great and inexpensive way of drumming up interest for any big event is utilising insert marketing.
If you are sending out daily dispatches and are not including inserts within those dispatches, then you are missing out on a massive marketing opportunity. Not only are you missing out on the ability to easily cross-sell your products, but the ability to drum up interest in your brand or brand activity.
Insert marketing has great conversion rates because the recipient is already in the right frame of mind your messaging. They have, after all, just purchased something from your company.
The fact that you are advertising Black Friday or Cyber Monday early, ensures that you are reaching the customers before they are bombarded with the same messaging and get blind to general Black Friday marketing.
Mix it up
The best strategy for you Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns would be to do all of the above! Advertise early, send gift guides with vouchers, make it personal, and don’t forget about your current customers. PSE has over 25 years in offline marketing and can help with your Black Friday Marketing, or any campaigns you are starting. Take advantage of our free planning session, where one of our marketing consultants will offer at least seven pieces of information to take your next campaign to the next level.
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