Cyber 5, the days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, is an important time of year for retailers to capture customers and generate peak holiday sales. Given issues in the industry with supply chain and privacy limitations, marketing during this upcoming Cyber 5 is proving to be a new and difficult challenge for retailers.
At CommerceNext IRL, our speakers shared how to best prepare for this year’s unprecedented Cyber 5. Check out these four tips for Cyber 5 marketing success:
1.iIt’s beginning to look a lot like SMS season: Over 89% of consumers are interested in communicating with brands over text—implement SMS marketing if you haven’t already. (Pro Tip: try using SMS as a VIP channel for early access to products or sales.)
SMS marketing is a great, fast-to-implement way to enhance your digital marketing strategy just in time for the holidays. This direct line of contact with your consumer is one of, if not the most, efficient method of communicating time-sensitive information, like holiday promotions and deals. Additionally, SMS marketing is a dependable channel and source of first-party data as we navigate the new privacy-led retail landscape.
2. The joy of personalization: With an influx of traffic during Cyber 5, understanding your customer’s journey is more important than ever. Leverage machine learning models to assign different values for each click in the journey and use that data to personalize the experience.
More than ever before, retailers across verticals have realized the importance of retention through personalization. And by personalizing a consumer’s digital marketing experience from the get-go, their gravitation towards your brand will last much longer than the Cyber 5 days. While many retailers have decided acquisition requires more investment this holiday season, it’s still a year focused on the consumer journey, their needs and how best to retain them in the long run.
3.Giving thanks for testing: With privacy changes influencing how brands can target and measure, incrementality testing is one sure way to learn the true impact of your marketing campaigns.
As the holiday shopping season rapidly approaches, marketers are challenged to target customers without the traditional third-party methodologies. Current privacy changes and cookie depreciation makes precise targeting difficult, thus marketers should implement incrementality tests versus last-click attribution. Invest and put effort into this tactic early to reveal a clearer view of the effectiveness of your budget allocation and cyber 5 marketing strategy.
4. Season’s greetings and timely communications: Communicate with consumers in a clear and timely manner to set expectations from the start. With supply chain issues and shipping delays, it’s important to keep customers in the loop to provide a seamless customer experience.
From issues in the supply chain, rising cost of goods, container shortages, labor shortages and more, consumers are being advised to start their holiday shopping as early as possible. Consumers want good deals and on time delivery, so marketers have a big job on their hands to manage expectations with transparent communication on their current capabilities in their cyber 5 marketing initiatives.
If you want to learn more about how to prepare your Cyber 5 marketing and Holiday 2021, check out the CommerceNext IRL session videos on our Youtube channel and don’t forget to subscribe.
