Merry Marketing!

Three Articles to Inspire Your Holiday Marketing

Tis the Season for Holiday Branding

Bored with the usual "Seasons Greetings" client postcard? Use a bit of holiday spirit to warm up your social campaigns! Meghan Gargan has made a list of do's and don'ts for sending social holiday greetings with panache. "While you should capture the magic and merriment of this time of year, brands should also be cautious of not excluding

or isolating audiences with ver-the-top holiday themes," she writes. Here's a sampling of her holiday advice: DO refresh your profile imagery on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and promotional landing pages. You might give your Facebook photo strip a festive refurbish, or promote a holly-laced campaign on all platforms.

DON'T overdo the red and green. Use holiday accents, but also incorporate other seasonal colors (like white, blue, silver, gold). DO seize the moment to play with your audience, using a holiday-themed game or giveaway that ties back to your service. This

lovely Starbucks AR cup app comes to mind. The spirit of

giving translates beautifully into sharing, so make your work as share-worthy as possible. If there's a charitable aspect (such as donations made easy by mobile phone), all the better. DON'T isolate your public by focusing too much on certain holidays or traditions. Highlight general fun activities like shopping, eating, family time.

DO feel free to theme your content with cheerful celebration. Play off notions of gift-giving, partying and winter activities with multimedia content, and

customize responses to fans and followers. DON'T use generic holiday messaging that isn't brand-relevant. Keep your message consistent with your brand

voice for maximum engagement value, and encourage customers to spread the message in partnership with you. The Po!nt: Celebrate the joy of it all. The holidays are a prime opportunity to rally enthusiasm and engage users with an authentic sense of spirit. Spread cheer in your own unique way!

Make the Most of Holiday Marketing: Five Things Online Retailers Should Do Now by Liz Elting Every year, your stakes are at their highest during the holiday season. This year, with the US economy still in recovery, retailers got some encouraging news

from Chicago consumer retail research company ShopperTrak: For the 2012 holiday shopping season, retail sales are expected to increase 3.3% from last year, and a good chunk of that increase will come from online retail. Every retailer wants to maximize the influx of shoppers at this time of year, and those that sell online have more opportunities than ever before to convert website visitors into buyers. Cyber Monday is becoming as much of a tradition as Black Friday. Holiday deals and discounts, such as free shipping and special coupons for program members proved especially attractive to online shoppers last year.

But what else can retailers do to boost sales online? And how do retailers keep these shoppers coming back when the holidays are over?

1. The time to prepare for the holidays is now Experts agree that if retailers want to be first to capture shoppers' attention, they need to get ready now. Hanukkah falls 11 days earlier this year than it did last, so expect an early start to the season. Also, two extra calendar days fall

between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, so retailers need to prepare deals and offers accordingly.

Many online retailers have already put the final touches on their new website code and are rolling out holiday-themed landing pages and deals.

2. Reduce shopper anxiety at every point in the sales process Though you may pick and choose

products, product families, or services to create the right mix of offerings for your target market, the one thing you can't selectively omit is your end-to-end sales cycle support.

According to the National Retail Federation, an estimated 9.9% of all holiday gifts end up being returned or exchanged. So, shopping cart interfaces, checkout information, terms and conditions, shipping details, and return policies must offer online shoppers a seamless experience.

If shoppers have any doubt that they won't get their purchases in time for holiday gift giving, they're more likely to move on to the next site.

3. Like Santa, transcend international borders Some US-based retailers need to be prepared for incoming site visitors from around the world, especially hotbeds of growth like Latin America, China, and the Middle East. In those regions consumer spending is on the rise, and residents of many countries there both need and expect to shop in their own languages.

Accommodate global shoppers by translating your website copy well and providing customer service such as email, phone support, and chat in various languages.

4. What you don't know can sink you The holidays have different meanings for consumers from different cultures and countries. Your website, text, images, social media presence, mobile sites, apps, and advertising campaigns should reflect those differences. Know the markets you are targeting, and understand that a simple language translation is likely not enough if you don't want to sound "foreign"—or, worse, negative—to a potential consumer.

Successful website localization shows that you understand your consumers' expectations. For example, what may sound "braggy" to people from one culture can be the perfect pitch for another.

5. Design all of your holiday promotions to be consistent

A holiday retail website doesn't operate in a vacuum. Big-name department stores engage consumers online with the goal

of luring them to brick-and-mortar locations. (That's because 70% of shoppers still favor the security and convenience of ordering items online and then picking them up in a physical location.)

Emails, mobile apps, online offers, and social media are all great mechanisms for increasing sales online and in stores. For such a multipronged strategy to succeed, retailers need to deliver consistent messages via each method—and to do so in other languages as well.

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Retailers depend on the last two months of the year for up to 40% of their annual sales. It makes sense to prepare your company's most valuable asset—your online interface—early. It's also smart to open up your site to as many visitors worldwide as possible. Planning ahead with successfully translated and localized site content, from the landing page

to the shopping cart, will make this holiday season considerably more merry and bright.

Three Strategies for Inspired Holiday Email in Tough Times by Karen Talavera

It's holiday marketing time. Yet, in recessionary periods, what is normally a festive season is not all sweetness and light—for consumers or retailers. Still, that doesn't mean advertisers can't find

ways to add some luster to their email-marketing programs this season.

Especially during down times, here are three ways to make your holiday email shine.

1. Put an extra treat in their stockings this year Most holiday email is focused on e-commerce, but it doesn't have to be all about simply driving sales. If you're still selling by way of promotion rather than service, you're missing an important opportunity to build brand equity and long-term relationships.

In the spirit of the holiday season, focus your email on both giving and receiving. What immediate non-purchase-related value can you offer for free?

How about some cheer, as OfficeMax has done for several years running with its Elf Yourself program? Or, better yet, feature additional, seasonally relevant and helpful content such as recipes,

shopping tips, or ideas for a new holiday tradition. Or launch a holiday-themed sweepstakes or contest. There's no time like gift-giving season to award those big prizes.

2. Holiday time is story time The holiday season is the perfect period for a limited-time email series.

Think of a series as a way to tell a story. Just as good fiction follows an arc, so can your holiday email series. Plus, we love to hear our favorite holiday stories year after year, so craft your email program to tell a new one about your company or products.

Easier to launch than an ongoing continuity program such as a newsletter, the limited-time series is palatable both to marketers and to subscribers.

Provided you don't go overboard with frequency, subscribers love a limited-time email series because it clarifies and manages their expectations from the start and promises not

to go on indefinitely. It's also an extended opportunity to build a solid foundation with the many new subscribers or first-time customers you're sure to attract this time of year.

You can go with the tried-and-true holiday season "countdown" approach, but what about something more unique? Ask subscribers for feedback and then vary the content within a series to suit their needs.

Maybe you launch a weekly gift-suggestion campaign that highlights gift ideas for the people most people are buying for—parents one week, siblings another, the boss the next.

Be sure to set clear expectations about what subscribers will be getting, when they'll get it, and for how long. And, of course, give your list members a chance to change their minds or stop the flow of email mid-stream if that's what they want.

3. Come Dancer, come Prancer: Expect more online shoppers and reward channel loyalty Even during last year's recession, online sales on December 1, 2008 (known as "cyber-Monday"—the Monday after Thanksgiving), jumped 15% over 2007 levels, to $846 million, making it the second heaviest online-spending day on record, according to comScore.

More people are shopping online than ever before, and we can expect the trend to continue this year, for three reasons:

1. It's more cost-effective to comparison-shop on the Internet than to spend gas money driving from place to place.

2. Consumers are looking for the very best deals and believe they are usually found online.

3. Ordering online for delivery saves time and money, and is less of a hassle than in-store shopping and shipping.

Reward your site visitors and email loyalists with channel-exclusive offers and inventory they can't get anywhere else. Use the unlimited real estate of your website to promote

"Internet exclusives" that aren't available in-store or via catalog.

And for the love of e-commerce, if your company isn't using abandoned-shopping-cart-triggered emails yet, start a program with a holiday-purchase discount tied to it.

Last but not least, remember that you can issue post-holiday rewards for holiday-period purchases. Numerous retailers routinely do so at intervals throughout the year.

That strategy prevents erosion of holiday-sales margins while igniting post-holiday sales during typically slow periods. Brookstone did it last year; think also of Gymboree's Gymbucks program, and PacSun's Repeat Rewards, which kick in around back-to-school time.

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Seasons change, but we must remember the basics survive. Sure, it's email and it's holiday time, but it's still marketing.

Be in it for the long haul. Build on the new relationships you've forged rather than never calling again. January 2 isn't time to breathe a sigh of relief, cease and desist, and return to your off-season status quo.

Instead, think about how to ease off from, yet continue, holiday momentum through gift-card redemption offers, upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and post-holiday sales.

You'll also want to debrief in January and take a look back at how your holiday email performed to develop a benchmark for next year.