This is a guest post, written exclusively for us by SocialToaster.
A few weeks ago, we shared a couple of our favorite strategic tips for increasing e-commerce holiday seasonal sales.
This time, we’re going to go a bit deeper into this topic to focus on a few specific marketing tips and tactics online stores can use to capture the ever-elusive millennial market.
It’s the season of giving (and receiving) and we’re gifting you with the perfect seasonal strategies to drive millennial purchases.
The Holiday Buying Power of the Millennial
Millennials might get a bad rap in the media about killing industries (RIP cable tv, cereal, and fabric softener) but that doesn’t mean they aren’t shopping or spending their money. In fact, the average millennial shopper spent about $419 during Cyber Week in 2017. More than any other generation shopping that week.
It’s not that they’re afraid to spend money, they’re just particular about where their dollars are going. Great news for brands and e-commerce stores that both understand the millennial audience and tailor their online shopping experience to fit their millennial needs.
Increase Millennial E-commerce Sales with These 4 Tips
Create Shareable Best Seller Lists
Online shopping rule #1: if your shopper is confused or uncertain about what to buy, they’re not going to pull that “buy button” trigger. They might spend hours on your site, reading reviews and looking at pictures, all the way searching for the “perfect” gift. Only to leave the site without making a single purchase.
Spoiler alert, not all shoppers know what they’re looking for when they’re shopping online. They want to be inspired. Frankly, they want your store to reassure them that the item they’re considering is indeed the perfect gift for their Mom/Dad/Spouse/Secret Office Santa.
A simple way to showcase your most popular gifts is by creating a best seller list. Better yet, take your list to the next level by creating multiple lists based on the intended gift receiver. Think “Best Seller Gifts for Men” or “Top Gifts for Partners”.
Earn a couple bonus points by making the list shareable by fans on social media. Also, don’t be afraid to share it on your own social media sites and with your email list. 91% of Americans like receiving promotional emails and 92% of adults use emails. Emails featuring seasonally themed content generates a 33% higher conversion rate than business as usual messages – meaning these seasonal best seller lists represent a larger than average sales-driving opportunity.
Related reading: Hold to your Black Friday customers after the sales.
Hold A Wish List Contest
Remember when you were younger and you would make a wish list to give to Santa? In the past, your wish list was only shared with your immediate family and friends. Today, your holiday wish list can be shared with hundreds, even thousands, of individuals.
Most online stores offer wish list functionality, but this is just the beginning. A wish list can be so much more than a simple shopping to-do list.
Some easy ways to incentivize your customers to create and share a wish list include:
- Publicizing your most popular items on people’s wish list
- Enable list builders to set goals and offer discounts once a goal is reached
- Surprise list creators with random, unexpected gifts like discount codes or free shipping
- Include options for your customers to easily email or send their list to a potential gift-buyer
Is the traditional hand-written wish list already a thing of the past?
But the best way to incentivize building a list?
Hold a wish list contest.
Rewarding your list creators with the chance to win their wish list is a fun and exciting way to get people sharing and utilizing your list features. The more shares a user’s list has, the higher their chances of winning the contest.
Pro Tip: Keep track of social shares, impressions, and contest ROI by managing your incentivized wish list contest through an advocacy marketing platform like SocialToaster! Simply have your biggest fans join your advocacy marketing program by signing up with their favorite social media account. Then invite them to build and share their wish list through the platform. As a bonus, once they’ve signed up to join your advocacy marketing program, you can continue to rely on them to share your content for the year to come.
New Product Alerts
This might seem like a no-brainer but with the holiday season, it’s easy for even the crème de la crème products to get lost in the hustle and bustle. Be sure that your site and communication channels highlight when new products are available on your online store.
New product alerts are effective and important because they help capture the early adopter market. Nearly 52% of millennials rank far above or above average when it comes to being an early adopter.
Many millennials want to be the first to discover a new product or trend. By communicating when a new product drops, you can better tap into this desire to be on the cutting edge.
Provide and Build Product Gift Bundles
The classic gift bundle. Your favorite products in an easy to wrap package that includes a potential freebie or two. While cosmetics and fashion have historically been the experts in holiday gift bundles, by no means are they the online industries that can benefit from this sales tactic.
While online stores are perfectly capable of creating and selling single-recipient gift bundles (the type described above), we’ve worked with a couple stores this year that have started to think outside the gift bundle-box to earn some astounding returns.
Related reading: Product-sourcing 101-Finding profitable goods to sell
Their secret? Create and sell gift bundles that enable customers to gift multiple recipients with a single purchase. The customer saves a ton of time being able to purchase several gifts at once. The store makes more money as the average cart price for bundled products is higher than a single product purchase.
Gift bundles allow buyers to purchase for multiple people at once
You can create different gift bundle themes like…
- Best sellers
- For him
- For her
- For the office
- For mom/dad/grandma/etc
Include 2 – 5 gifts in each bundle and charge accordingly. Consider offering a small discount to further encourage bundle shopping versus induvial product buying.
Once received, your happy customer can then wrap the individual products and deliver to their myriad of friends and family. Confident that they’re providing the perfect gift.
Be sure to advertise your bundles across all your marketing channels. Personalized emails, re-targeting ads, and your advocacy marketing efforts should all be tapped to introduce these products to your market.
‘Tis the Season
If you’re looking for an end-of-year marketing strategy with a success rate better than mistletoe, then you’ve found it. SocialToaster can help you ensure a successful holiday season through an advocacy marketing program. Not sure what advocacy marketing is? Call us at 855.62.TOAST and we can help you ring in the holiday season.
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