BFCM: 20 E-Commerce Tips for Your Holiday Marketing Campaigns

Oh my, it’s already November!

We are not here to panic, but you get what it means for e-commerce merchants. The holiday season. Sales. More sales than in the years before. So skipping the curtsey: let’s get ready.

Here are 20 ideas for nailing your holiday marketing campaigns. If you have an online store with Ecwid E-commerce, all of them can be easily implemented, so make sure you’re using your store at full tilt.

What’s inside

1. Show "Compare to" Prices in Your Storefront

If you’re going to offer steep discounts, make sure all the store visitors are aware of them. Show them what the price used to be before the sale and how much they can save now.

Discount prices in Ecwid

Go to Settings → General → Cart and set up the manner your "Compare to" price will be displayed.

Compare to price

To set up the discount for each product, take the Catalog → Products route. Navigate to your product, find the "Price" section and set up the "Compare to" price. Save the changes.

Learn more about sale prices in Ecwid →

2. Offer Discounts on Order Subtotal

This type of sale is based on the expectation that people will buy additional stuff to reach a certain threshold to get a discount.

To run this promo successfully, you should have a good portion of repeat customers that already know your product and are open to ordering more of it.

Set up discounts on order subtotal in Promotions → Discounts.

How to set up discounts →

3. Set Up Bulk Discount Pricing

Give a hint to your customers that they can buy several gifts of the same type for good money.

Bulk discount pricing

To do that, set up bulk discount pricing. Every next item will be cheaper and Ecwid will automatically calculate the total discount in percent for even more impressive deals.

4. Create Discount Coupons

E-commerce merchants love coupons for their flexibility. With their help, you can run a promo on many different terms:

Give a discount to repeat customers only
Give a discount depending on order subtotal
Offer free shipping on specific conditions and more.

It works like this: you set the rules when the coupon can be applied, Ecwid generates the coupon code (or you can create it yourself, for example, BLACKFRIDAY2017). Then you share the code on your website, on social media, personally via email, by chanting it in the streets, by dropping a bottle in the ocean — the distribution really is up to you, depending on who you want to reach.

rockabilly-bowling-shirts.com

You can limit coupons in time (e.g. active for 24 hours only) to run flash sales and last-minute deals.

How to set up discount coupons →

Tip: It’s so handy to create, enable, and stop your discounts on the go with the Ecwid Mobile app.

5. Run BOGOs

There are many fans of the Buy-One-Get-One(-Free) type of sale. Ecwid makes it possible with the BOGO app from the Ecwid App Market. Get the app and set up the rules.

BOGO settings

We’ve talked about BOGO sales in detail in another post: 5 Types of BOGO(F) Promotions You Can Run in Your Store

6. Offer Free Shipping

Free shipping is a bulletproof marketing strategy:

Most effective holiday marketing campaigns

Source: stamps.com

You can set up free shipping for every order or for specific regions in Settings → Shipping & Pickup.

How to set up shipping in Ecwid →

Or create a coupon code to apply free shipping based on the order subtotal, or to share it with certain customers only.

If you have decided to offer free shipping, it won’t hurt to remind your customers of it on each relevant product page. With the Free Shipping Icon app you can easily add a standard or custom free shipping icon to your product details section.

A free shipping icon

And if you run a daily deal with free shipping to everything in your store, it’s possible to enable the free shipping icon for all products with one click. Or tick separate products on the list and apply the icon to them.

Learn more: 6 Free Shipping Strategies and Their Alternatives

7. Offer Gift Wrapping

For free or for sale, gift wrapping offered together with a product is a time-saver. You can sell it as a separate product, or include it in Product Options.

Wrapping in Product Options

Learn more: 100+ Christmas Wrapping Ideas to Excite Your Customers

8. Add a Sale Description to Your Homepage

Offering a great deal? Declare it immediately as someone comes to your online store.

Go to Catalog → Categories → Store Front Page → General and add your deal description. You can add a text, an image, or even a video.

Sale description on the homepage

9. Add Special Offers to Category Pages

The same can be done for each separate category, if your discount applies to a certain group of products. Go to your Catalog → Categories, click on your desired category, and add a description.

Deal description on the category page

10. Push Your Deals at Checkout

Share offers and gift ideas at checkout with the Checkout Notices app. Use it also to notify customers about important shipping terms or holiday business hours.

Promo at the checkout

11. Offer Flexible Discounts Based on Cart Contents

Depending on what you sell and your holiday campaign goals, you may need to create more sophisticated discounts than just "50% off on everything". For example, you probably want to offer a special price on shoe care products if they are bought with shoes in your store.

To make your discount apply only to certain products or product combinations, categories, cart amount, local customers, date, customer groups etc., check out the Advanced Discount Rules app.

Create flexible offers with the Advanced Discount Rules app

12. Display a Promo Bar

If you want to inform customers about your deals regardless of the store page, you can add a promo bar with a CTA.

The Promo Bar app is free to use and has numerous customization options, like colors, texts, fonts, and styles.

Promo bar

13. Highlight Items for Sale with Labels

The Product Labels app is built to let you add and customize your labels the way you need. Use "Hot", "New", "Sale", "Sold Out", or other custom labels to draw your holiday shoppers’ attention.

Product labels

Learn more: How to Boost Sales of Certain Products in Your Store with Product Labels

14. Show Related Products

Showing related products on product pages or at checkout can increase the time customers spend in your store and result in a higher order value. If you sell supplementary products (e.g. razors and shaving cream), a ‘You May Also Like’ section is your sales machine.

15. Remind Visitors of Recently Viewed Products

The holiday sales frenzy can make customers distracted easily. There are so many deals out there, so many products to choose from. Follow them with the reminder of what products they just checked out as they are browsing your online store.

The Recently Viewed Products app is a free extension that helps you do just that. Choose where to show this section and the number of products you want to display.

16. Add Popups and Banners

Imagine a lot of salespeople would work for your online store during the holiday sales. They’d push your deals right when a customer needs it:

welcoming newcomers with a special offer
catching those who are about to leave without a purchase with a nice discount
navigating customers to your bestsellers.

It’s great that you don’t need staff to do this job in your online store. Set up pop-ups for different customer actions: exit intent, scroll, time spent in store, etc. The Easy Popup app will do the sales work for you.

Easy Popup

Pop-ups can even hold an engaging contest. Launch the Scratch and Win pop-up to capture leads and grow fans in a fun way, or add the gamified wheel to let visitors win discounts, coupons, or free shipping.

17. Enable Social Selling Tools

Use social media to spread the word and drum up more people. Go to Settings → Social Tools to:

Open a storefront on your Facebook page or sell on Instagram to allow customers to buy without leaving their favorite social media.
Add like and share buttons to your products
Add the Facebook Comments widget to your product pages
Ask customers to share their purchase and follow you on Twitter
Let customers ask their friends for advice while shopping.

To quickly share your product pics on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, turn to Ecwid Mobile.

18. Create Urgency and Scarcity

There is a number of ways to cheer up your customers while they are browsing.

Add a countdown timer — because no one wants to miss a great deal. The Ecwid App Market has two timers:

Timer Plus: a countdown next to the "Add to Bag" button on the product details page
Countdown Timer Popup: display it immediately, after a set period of time, on a page’s scroll down or upon site exit.

To create additional scarcity, show customers how much (or not so much) you have left in stock. Go to Settings → Design and enable to show stock to customers in the "Appearance" section.

show stock

Last, choose not to hide products that are out of stock; seeing that some products are sold out creates additional Fear-Of-Missing-Out (FOMO). Add a "Sold Out" label to emphasize the feeling.

thepinkporcupine.ca

19. Advertise

If your marketing budget allows you to run paid ads, here’re some tools to help you out:

Remarketing and dynamic ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network with the Facebook Pixel (now free!) and the Facebook Product Catalog
Automated Google Shopping Ads
Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr ads with the Orange Twig app.

20. Improve Overall Shopping Experience

Lastly, there is a bunch of features in Ecwid that improve the shopping experience in general, which can’t do anything but good for holiday shoppers.

Enable "Buy Now" buttons to let customers buy in one click (in Settings → General → Cart).
Offer in-store pickup to have fewer shipping issues.
Write a clear return policy (and other legal pages) and display it properly.
Add reviews to your products to gain more trust.

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You might be using something else for holiday marketing campaigns in your online store. Why don’t you share your tecniques with us in the comments below?