1. 10 Last-Minute Tips To Improve
Your Holiday Ecommerce Efforts
November 5, 2020

2. Today’s Presenters
Larry Wasserman
Chief Marketing Officer
Kalio Commerce
Scott Wanamaker
Sr. Director, Marketing
eAccountable
Morgan Newberg
Sr. Director, E-Commerce
Outward Hound

3. 2020… A Year Like NO OTHER
What did it mean for ecommerce?
Source: CommonThreadCollective: Data via US Census Bureau, FRED (ECOMPTCTSA) & Retail Geek

4.  The shift towards digital will continue
 The holiday season is already underway
 Reduced emphasis on Black Friday & Cyber 5 this year
 Supply Chain & delivery issues will be a challenge
 Consumer purchasing behavior is shifting as a result of Covid-19
What’s in Store Ecommerce for Q4?

5. What’s in Store Ecommerce for Q4?
Source: Bain & Co.

6. Last-Minute
Tips to Win
the Holiday
Season!
Ecommerce Website
Digital Marketing Activities
Amazon Marketplace

7. Your Ecommerce Website

8. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
1.Shift Your Website Merchandising Mix
 People are cocooning
 Focus is on self-
improvement, home,
WFH, personal
entertainment
 Declines in apparel,
automotive,
restaurants, luxury
goods, and travel
Focus on casual, small luxuries, home improvement/entertainment,
self-improvement, games and hobbies.

9. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
2. Proactively Manage Inventory
 Monitor and re-sort category lists
moving low and out-of-stock SKU’s to
the bottom
 Build customer confidence by
leading with available inventory in
promotions
 Create a sense of urgency to
order now!
 Set up marketing automations to
notify when items are back in stock
 In lieu of promotions, message
limited availability to stimulate
demand

10. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
3. Managing Delivery Expectations
2020: The Year of “Shipageddon”
FedEx, UPS face 'shipageddon' with
potential shortfall of 7 million
packages a day over holiday
season
Container slots sell out,
risking holiday
‘shipageddon’
- American Shipper- NBC News

11. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
3. Managing Delivery Expectations UPS Pre-Covid Baseline
Currently at baseline = 2.96 Days

12. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
3. Managing Delivery Expectations USPS Pre-Covid Baseline
Currently above baseline = 3.1 Days

13. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
3. Managing Delivery Expectations Action Items
 Set realistic delivery timelines
 Anticipate a 25-50% delay (FedEx, UPS) between
Thanksgiving & Xmas
 USPS delays could be 50-100% higher
 Avoid in-home delivery date promises
 Add 2-3 days on final shipping deadline for Xmas

14. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
3. Managing Delivery Expectations Action Items
 Communicate delivery expectations
 Message broadly and often
 Encourage early ordering!
 Product detail pages & transactional emails
 Banner at top of page w/link to more details

15. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
3. Managing Delivery Expectations Backcountry CEO Email

16. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
3. Managing Delivery Expectations Action Items
 Utilize text messaging / SMS
 High awareness, open rates
 82 - 98% vs. 20% for email
 Keep customer informed post-purchase
 Reduce stress and ultimately inbound customer
service inquiries
 Create instant demand for hot, or hard-to-find
items
SMS Order Messaging

17. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
4. Improve Conversion with Direct Response
Landing Pages
 High-demand or DR products
 Drive from DRTV, Radio, Email or Social
Media efforts
 “Super” product detail page
 Self-contained, limited navigational
capabilities
 Integrate directly to ecommerce cart
even from 3rd-party URL

18. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
5. Speed, Speed, Speed
Minutes Hours Days Weeks
• Price updates
• Image updates
• Copy changes
• Inventory
• Promotion setup
• 3rd-party tags
• Banner changes
• Landing pages
• New categories
• Platform upgrades
• Page layout changes
• A/B testing and
modifications
• Extended functionality • Sub-brand site spinoffs
• Replatforming
Modern technology platforms = a new standard in tactical execution
If NO = set a reminder for January 2nd, 2021
Tactical Execution Speed

19. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
5. Speed, Speed, Speed Site Speed
Site Speed
Source: HubSpot

20. E-Commerce Holiday Tips
5. Speed, Speed, Speed Action Items
 Performance-optimized site hosting
 Ensure the right resources and capacity between your ecommerce platform
and your site hosting
 Optimize your CDN and data caching
 Moves content closer to the end user and reduces data transmission
 Eliminate, or back-load, 3rd-party call tags
 Mitigate slowdowns caused by performance-intensive calls
 Utilize image compression
 Minimize page weight caused by oversized images
 Lazy-load pages to improve document complete times
 Improve user start times by completing page load in the background

21. Digital Marketing Tactics

22. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
6. Segment Your Paid Advertising Campaigns By
Customer Type
 New customer acquisition has grown with the closure of brick-and-mortar stores
across many US states

23. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
6. Segment Your Paid Advertising Campaigns By
Customer Type
How are you thinking about your customers?
Active Customers Lapsed Customers Engaged Prospects New Prospects
• 0 – 12 months since
last purchase
• How often you expect a
customer to purchase
• Micro Segments
(0-3 months, etc.)
• 13+ months since last
purchase
• Need to win them back
• Engaged shopper who
has recently been on
your site
• Last 30 Days
• Someone yet to
come to your site
 Define these segments for your business, factoring in metrics like lifetime value for
your customers and other demographics to fine tune your campaigns, segment
them and try and bid or pay appropriately to reach them

24. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
6. Segment Your Paid Advertising Campaigns By
Customer Type
 Begin in Google Analytics under Admin
> Audience Definitions > Audiences
 Apply your audiences to be shared with
Google Ads and Google Analytics

25. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
7. Stay Top of Mind With Remarketing
 Remarketing performs best as you build
larger audiences so capitalize on your
increased holiday traffic
 You can use remarketing to reached
previous customers, not just recent traffic
that hasn’t converted
 Remarketing will drive an additional 5% -
10% of your sitewide revenue
On average, only 2% of visitors convert on their first visit.

26. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
7. Stay Top of Mind With Remarketing
 Review the audiences you’re targeting. Is there anyone else you should be
trying to reach?
 Are you testing different ad formats? Dynamic Ads with products vs. Static
Ads
 Is your creative updated and reflective of the look and feel on your site?
 Do you have a strong call to action? You should incentivize traffic with any
offers you have running
What can you do if you already have remarketing campaigns live?

27. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
8. Affiliate Program? Look For Last Minute
Placements
An affiliate program can be a great way to drive top line revenue and help close
sales. 10% - 20% of your sitewide revenue should be coming from the Affiliate
channel.
 More inventory than normal with many
brands being more restrictive with their
spend
 Over $300k in media dollars saved by
compensating affiliates with higher
commissions

28. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
9. Be Ready to Capture Emails
 With increased holiday traffic
consider how you're engaging
with visitors once they’re on the
site
 An email capture popup should
help you collect email addresses
from 20% - 30% of your site traffic
and you don’t need to always
offers a discount

29. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
9. Be Ready to Capture Emails
 Most email captures can be customized
to fire based on different user behavior
 On Entry vs. On Exit
 Frequency
 Should you provide an offer?
 Side tabs can be less than
 A/B Test to see what works best

30. Digital Marketing Holiday Tips
10. Tie it All Together With User Generated Content
The increase in shoppers during the holidays presents more
opportunities than just sales. Engage with your consumers post
purchase to collect site and product reviews, plus use that
engagement to generate User Generated Content (UGC) to use
on your site and in your marketing.
 Consumers are 2.4x more likely to view user-generated
content as authentic compared to content created by brands
 It’s all about creating trust. A full 92% of consumers trust
recommendations from people they know, and 70% trust
online consumer opinions
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190220005302/en/Stackla-Survey-Reveals-Disconnect-Content-Consumers-Marketers
https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2012/consumer-trust-in-online-social-and-mobile-advertising-grows/

31. Amazon Marketplaces

32. Amazon Marketplace Holiday Tips
11. Amazon PDP Optimization Action Items
 Find style guide for GL
 Update top 10 PDPs to
minimum best practices
 Virtual bundles
 Self-serve through Seller
Central
 Add holiday keywords
 Relevant keywords with high
search volume

33. Amazon Marketplace Holiday Tips
12. Amazon Brand Store Optimization Action Items
 Utilize product modules
 Move modules above the fold
 Best-Sellers
 Featured Deals
 Add video modules
 Top-Selling products
 Update Category Pages
 Top-selling categories
 Utilize Posts and Sponsored Brands
 Use advertising to drive brand awareness,
engagement, sales

34. Amazon Marketplace Holiday Tips
13. Amazon Advertising & Promotions Action Items
 Set up Deals
 Fund promotions
 Feature at top of brand store
 Amazon supports through search &
deals page
 Use Posts (Free)
 These show up on mobile
 Available to those with Brand Registry
 Sponsored Brands
 Brand keywords
 Competitor keywords
 Other ads
 Sponsored products, video in-search,
display

35. Thank You for Joining Us Today!
www.outwardhound.com
www.eaccountable.com
www.kaliocommerce.com