As the holiday season approaches, many stressful customers will be looking for quick and easy solutions for their holiday gifts. This year, holiday season sales are predicted to break the record and make $83 billion, including Cyber Monday which is predicted to generate $3 billion in sales.

As clearly seen, the numbers keeping rising and online businesses must prepare their site and optimize it for the surge in traffic they will be seeing over the next few months.

There are countless tips on how to prepare for the holiday season however the most important part of the preparations will be understanding your customer’s emotional state before, during and after the holiday season. Understanding this is crucial for identifying the right customer journey that will fulfill customers’ needs. So here are some last-minute, important tips to boost holiday sales. Keep them in mind when preparing for this season:

---

This year, holiday season sales are predicted to break the record and make $83 billion
Click To Tweet

---

Setting Up for the Holidays:

Before optimizing design elements and launching new holiday campaigns, there are many technical elements you can optimize to avoid issues. More traffic coming to your site opens a whole world of bugs and technical issues that need to be addressed before they happen.

1. Optimize Your Site Speed

Make sure your site speed is optimized and that everything is loading quickly and correctly. With 40% of visitors willing and ready to leave your site if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds, and 79% of your customers not even willing to give your site a second chance if the site loads slowly, you want to make sure everything’s running smoothly so that these technical details won’t cost you the holiday season.

Gain site speed insights from your google analytics account by clicking on Behavior → Site Speed.

 

Understand  your loading times on different browsers, along with the loading times of specific pages. You can also go to Google’s Page Speed Insights and get specific instructions and recommendations on where you need to improve. And in this day and age,  you should constantly work on optimizing your page loading times.

 2. Review Tracking and Optimize for the Holidays

To understand the power of your holiday marketing strategies and to know how effective they are, make sure your tracking is set up correctly. Know the difference between a holiday shopper and an everyday shopper. Use utm campaign tracking and google analytics integration with the tools you use in order to know exactly where your users are coming from, and to know what marketing efforts are paying off.

Also, enable Enhanced e-Commerce Tracking on google analytics to make sure you are tracking your revenues accurately as well! With this information, you can learn how to improve, what to optimize and where to focus your efforts. next holiday season as well!

3. Take Advantage of Mobile Web Potential

According to Adobe, for the first time ever, mobile web is going to overtake desktop with 51% of online shopping visits, and will make up 29% of online sales on Thanksgiving day.

In fact, according to MarketingLand, mobile device purchases increased by 140% last holiday season, and this trend is supposed to continue this year as well.

These days, over 50% of eCommerce sales are taking place on smartphones and tablets, so if your mobile site is not ready, you are most likely going to lose some very relevant customers.

Make sure that your site is running smoothly on google analytics by checking your google analytics site speed insights (as mentioned above), and reviewing the loading times for your different browsers. To get the most our of your mobile visitors, understand their behavior, their goals, and create a dedicated solution for them Banana Splash could be a great tool for optimizing your user’s experience with personalized calls to action on mobile.

Planning your Holiday Campaigns:

4. The Power of Shipping

When asked what  most influences consumers to buy online vs in person, 80% of people said that the biggest element that influences their decision is free shipping.

 On an “every day” occasion,  shipping costs have a huge impact on purchasing decisions, however during the holiday season that impact increases tremendously, and the customer’s biggest concern is time of delivery. During this time, most customers are stressed and worried they won’t receive their purchase on time which is why guaranteeing a delivery date in a prominent location on your web page is key for higher conversion rates. Make sure people can see easily that their package will arrive on time.

• Pro Tip: Not everyone can pull an “Amazon” and have same day shipping, but guaranteeing that the shipment will arrive in two days, or in two weeks even, can help give the user a sense of ease and control.“Buy now and get this delivered by November 27th, 2015”: If you add a sense of urgency to it, you can make it even more powerful, like Amazon does.

So among your cheerful holiday deals and discounts, we recommend offering free shipping and guaranteed delivery dates in order to improve everyone’s holiday season – your customers satisfaction and your revenues.

---

Offer free shipping and guaranteed delivery dates to improve everyone’s holiday season
Click To Tweet

---

5. Promote Sales and Exciting Discounts with Pop Ups

When people do their online holiday shopping, they usually have many tabs open and spend most their time searching for the best products at the best price. One thing you can do to stand out from your competitors and get your potential customer’s focus, is a perfectly timed pop up.

The pop up can be informative and let your visitors know you offer free shipping to their country, a free gift, or a coupon.

When creating your pop up, remember it has one goal and only one call to action button so that your users do not experience analysis paralysis - too many options which result in customers passing on your offers.

Take advantage of the many different popup options available:

• Time-based pop ups: This type of pop up is configured to show up at a preset time, for example – once a visitor has spent long than 20 seconds on a certain page. These types of pop ups help differentiate the “serious” customer from the hesitant one.

• Exit popups:  these types of pop ups appear when someone is about to exit the site.

• For desktop, you can see what plug ins and different pop up options you have for your site. There are hello bars, pop ups, and exit pops of all different sizes, shapes and styles!

Walmart takes advantage of their drop down menu to offer  $5 savings:

 

6. Utilize Thank you pages to increase retention

Your job does not end once your customer has completed their purchase . The thank you page, or order confirmation page, is your gateway to increasing retention and getting more out of the customer. In psychology and persuasion, there is a compliance technique called the foot-in-the-door technique, where a person is more likely to agree to a large request if they first agree to a smaller request. In this case, your customer has already taken that first step and purchased something, so you have an opportunity to motivate your customer even more and develop a relationship for future purchases.

A thank you page can include  additional registration steps to get more info about your customers, a request to share or review a product, or a discount for their next purchase.

Consider offering discounts in return for newsletter registration.A little personalization including suggestions for similar items can also increase conversions.

---

The thank you page is your gateway to increasing retention
Click To Tweet

---

7. Personalization

Almost three-fourths (74%) of online consumers get frustrated with sites where content (e.g. offers, ads, promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests.

40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels (MyBuys).

Customers appreciate relevant content and suggestions which make their life easier. This is crucial for the holiday season as most people struggle with finding the right gift. For example, personalized lists with suggestions make it much easier on customers to get ideas.

 

“Epic gift ideas” – Not necessarily personalized for a specific person, however sent at the right time, customers will definitely click on these lists as they are in need of some help.

 

Another special touch is offering an option to add a personal note to a customer’s gifts. In this day and age, people live far away from their loved ones so sending a gift straight to someone’s door happens often. Giving your shoppers the option to personalize their gift with a message or  gift wrap can make a huge difference. It’s those small touches that can really create a connection and a happy, returning customer.

8. Beautiful, Relevant Content – Straight to Your Customer

Quite honestly, I believe that Email Marketing deserves a post all on its own, what with the complexity of subject lines, the email content, the imagery, the link tracking, etc. But with Email Marketing expenditure in the U.S alone at $2.07billion, and the number of email users in the US in 2015 at 232.8 million, it also deserves quite a nice mention in here.

1. First, plan your email marketing schedule. We have a busy holiday season so you want to strategically plan out your announcements and discounts in an effective way. This may mean scheduling the big discounts right after Thanksgiving or two weeks before Christmas (if you can make sure shipping will get to them in time).

2. Next, write your emails out in advance. Even with your schedule, you want to have these emails ready in advance because you do not want to have to write them in the middle of the holiday season storm. You want to have time to think about these emails. Think out the subject line,the copy and the imagery to make sure you get it all right.

Sending out a special email to those loyal, top-customers who have purchased from you once or twice can help create brand loyalty. Thank them for being loyal, and give them something special (perhaps an exclusive discount or offer) to show them you appreciate them.

The Number of Digital Shoppers in the United States from 2010 to 2018 (in millions):

With the number of online shoppers estimated to continue increasing during the next 3 years, you should definitely learn what you can from the successes and failures of your Holiday strate-cheer (that was a failed strategy-holiday pun) and improve it over the next  few years to optimize, keep testing, and optimize some more!

What are some ways you’re preparing for the holidays?

 

The large penetration of smartphones has made email (and email marketing) a present and useful part of our lives, even better than instant messaging or SMS. Here are a few interesting statistics about email usage that demonstrate how important and prominent this form of communication has become in our lives:

• In 2013 there were over 2.4 billion email users
• 182 billion email messages are sent each day (tweet this)
• Over 74% of adults today prefer email as a method for commercial communication (tweet this)
• 48% of emails are opened on a mobile phone first (tweet this)
• Most emails are opened within the first hour of their arrival

Email Marketing Pros & Cons

These numbers emphasize how important email marketing is in our online marketing strategy, so there are a few important features of this platform that we have to keep in mind.

While providing a direct and less intrusive way to engage with our clients, emails also provide the recipients with a greater amount of control over what they choose to receive, and what they choose to open and read.

Have you ever tried ignoring an IM or SMS message? Admit it, it will take a great toll on your nerves until you can revisit. In addition, blocking text messages on our phones can be tricky. Ignoring an email however, or blocking an unwanted sender, well that’s usually an easy task.

Email marketing can have tremendous influence on our conversions if used properly. This is why we should be well aware of some important guidelines in order to eventually achieve conversions using email marketing.

4 Email Metrics You Should Follow

There are many different metrics you can track and analyze in your email marketing campaigns, but there are several important email conversions metrics  you should pay attention to:

• Open rate – How many of the recipients opened the emailץ

• Click-through-rate – how many of the openers have clicked on the major CTAs.

• Opt-out rate – how many of the recipients have asked to unsubscribe from the mailing list.

Of course email opens and clicks are important micro-conversions, but always keep in mind that the real long-term metric is your email marketing’s contribution to overall conversions, i.e. leads or sales, on your website and landing pages.

So the last and most important metric you should follow is:

• Website conversions – how many of your conversions originated from an email referral.

Optimizing your email marketing activity means getting more opens and more clicks, keeping a low opt-out rate, and making more conversions in general.

5 ways to boost email marketing conversions:

1. Deliver emails when your customers are available to read them

People’s attention shifts during different hours of the day, according to their schedule and activities, so it’s important to carefully consider the point in time in which your messages are being sent.

The following describe how email opening rates vary between days of the week, as well as during different hours of the day:

Another important statistic to take into account is that the majority of email opens will occur within 1 hour after arrival, so timing your email messages to right time and day for your target audience is important.

Key Takeaways

• The timing of your email deliveries should be adjusted to your users’ schedule, not yours. Aim your delivery to day and time in which you users are available to read and engage with your email. Choosing the right time will of course lead to better conversions.

• Planning ahead can be very productive. For marketers who maintain extensive email marketing, it is highly recommended to prepare a weekly and monthly editorial schedule – rather than improvising and sending at the last minute, or sending medium to poor content.

• Test for your mailing list’s ideal timing. Each company and each mailing list are unique. Always test different delivery times with different contents, and check what works best for your specific audience if you want to see conversions increase.

2. Personalize Your Emails

According to an extensive study conducted by Experian during 2013 Personalized promotional mailings have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates than non-personalized mailings (tweet this).

According to another study by Hubspot, simply adding your customer’s first name in the subject line of your message can drive an additional 1.5% to your CTR (tweet this), which could sometimes make all the difference.

What we learn from this is that people like to be treated as individuals, and so communication that they feel is aimed directly for them and their needs is more likely to get their attention.

Key Takeaways

• Make sure to collect every piece of information you can about your customers and prospects, and make sure to document it in your mailing system.

• When drafting your email message think what kind of offers and content you can provide based on personal information (that wouldn’t be too creepy).Birthdays and anniversaries, as well as holidays, make excellent opportunities to offer a coupon or other promotional offers.Of course using the recipient’s first name as we mentioned can be very effective – just make sure you have the right name!

Check out how Custora personalize their emails:

3. Don’t Neglect 48% of Your Users

According to a study by Lithmus, mobile usage accounts for 48% of email opens, gaining a 10% rise from 2012 to 2013 (tweet this).

As smartphones and tablets are growing in numbers, this number is expected to continue growing. Another important thing to know is that approx. 80% of recipients delete an email if they find it looks bad on their mobile device.

check out this important article about mobile conversion optimization.

This is what happens when you forget your mobile users

 

Notice how Dropbox’s email is clean, easy to read and provides a big, clear CTA straight away. On the other hand, Trello’s email is clearly not designed with mobile in mind – there’s no clear CTA and the text is small and impossible to read without zooming.

The images are also not optimized for mobile view; they get readjusted and appear so small that they are nothing more than a colorful blur.

Key Takeaways

• Don’t use fixed image width. If you fix an image width, say, on 600 pixels, while most devices show no more than 320 pixels, it will inevitably lead to horizontal scrolling, which you probably know is rather annoying on the small mobile screen. Some mobile email clients don’t even allow it, making your email impossible to view.

• Don’t rely on image based elements such as buttons, and definitely don’t base your entire email message on a single image, as some mobile email clients only show text (by the way, this is true for desktop email design all the same)
  .
• Take font size into consideration, as it’s hard to read small fonts on mobile devices, and zooming in order to read can be annoying and tricky. A font size of 17-22 pixels is usually recommended.

• Keep your email conversion-oriented. Your user don’t have to guess what you expected them to do, and they definitely don’t need to make an effort in order to do it. Make sure to Keep the main CTA above the fold and make it crystal clear, big and easy to click on.

4. Make sure your message can be seen

Most web based email providers (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook.com) as well as Microsoft Outlook block images by default as a security measure, only showing them after the user approves them.

This means that if your email message is based solely on a large image, there’s a good chance your user will initially see, well, nothing!

The way to deal with this obstacle is actually not that complicated. Your emails should be based on live text, with images as supporting elements. No more promotional emails that are based solely on a large image.

Other than using live text, all of the images within your email message should have “alt” tags that describe either what the image is showing or the action that it asks the user to perform (in case the image is a button with call-to-action).

See how image can make or break your email design:

 

 

The entire message is based on images, and since my email is set not to display them by default I have absolutely no Idea what they have to say or offer me here. this is a waste of my time and their effort.

This dramatically reduces the chances a conversion will take place.

Now check out the email from Dropbox I presented earlier when the images are disabled. Notice that other than the Dropbox logo not showing, everything else look exactly the same:

 Most importantly – the call-to action is text-based, so I can still see, and it also states exactly where it will lead me – so there’s no doubt as to the message’s purpose.

Here’s what Fiverr’s promotional email looks like, with images enabled (on the left) and disabled (on the right):

 

Notice that although the images are not displayed, all of the important information is available, easy to read and understand, and presented with smart usage of live text and image “alt” text.

There’s a clear unique selling proposition that is easy to see without enabling images, as well as the “order now” call-to-action on the items below.

I am positive the these email messages are showing great conversion results.

Key Takeaways

• Prefer live text over images and elaborate design in your emails. Use image only as supportive elements, rather than as containers for the main message.

• Make sure to provide “alt” text describing what the image is about. That way if your image isn’t showing, the “alt” text will, so the user will not receive an empty email.

• Even if images are a major part of your message, at least 2 elements of your email must be based on live text – the selling proposition – i.e. what your email is about, and the call-to-action. (Learn more about call-to-action best practice)

5. E-commerce Email Re-targeting

When a user enters an e-commerce website, piles products into his virtual shopping cart, heads towards the checkout and then suddenly leaves, obviously something happened.

Maybe this was the first time he saw the shipping costs, maybe something else diverted his attention and he forgot to come back and finish the experience. Either way, he did not complete his purchase.

You shouldn’t get disheartened when this happens, as this study (and many others) shows that 99% of new visitors on e-commerce websites do not purchase on their first visit (tweet this).

What you should be concerned about is how to make the new visitor become a returning one, keeping in mind that of those abandoners that eventually complete their purchase, 72% of them do so within 24 hours.

This is where smart and personalized email marketing comes into play, more accurately referred to as “Email Re-targeting”. As many studies show, sometimes all these shoppers need is a small incentive and an easy way to recover their cart and finish their purchase – and a personal email could be just the push they need.

Key Takeaways:

• Design and send a set of personalized email messages to users who abandon their cart, timed for 1 hour, 24 hours and no more than 2 weeks within time of abandonment. Studies show that these milestones are when your visitors are usually ready to complete their purchase.

• Make sure to include the items that were left in the shopping cart, as well provide a link that will enable its quick recovery and fast route to checkout.

• To create additional incentive you can also offer an additional discount coupon, either for this purchase or for future use.

One last tip: Test Test Test

Every company has its own unique mailing list and target audience with its own preferences and behavior. The information and tips I provided here are all based on hard evidence and extensive research, but these are suggestions, not rules written in stone.

Most mailing systems (MailChimp, Active Trail and many more) offer an easy to use platform in which you can conduct split tests and a/b testing, so be sure to use them and test your basic assumptions in order to achieve better results.

Test regularly and often, change designs, play with subject lines, and test for the optimal time and date for delivery – and do everything you can to provide your customers with a friendly and useful experience when communicating through email, and be sure to see a profound and positive influence on your conversions.