Online Shopping Holidays: A Boom for Retailers

When retailers think of “holiday shopping,” many set their sights on the heavy sales expected in the fourth quarter, when holidays like Diwali, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas are clustered in quick succession. In addition to these traditional, gift-giving holidays, some retailers are now starting to invent their own shopping holidays.

Regardless of the occasion, it’s clear that the growing prominence of shopping holidays is a trend worth noting for retailers hoping to stay top-of-mind when consumers are most inclined to spend.

Shopping the Classics

In the U.S, Valentine’s Day brought in close to $20 billion this year and Mother’s Day sales were around $21 billion according to the National Retail Federation. Year-end holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas always go off with a big sales bang – U.S. e-commerce sales during November and December increased to $53.3 billion, up from $46.6 billion in 2013.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the US, is now making a name for itself around the world. In Brazil, e-retailers saw R$1.16 billion in revenues, or $327 million, a 51 percent growth compared to 2013. Of 1.2 million Black Friday shoppers in 2014, 18 percent made first-time online purchases.

With many holiday bargain-hunters turning to clicks to avoid the crowds, e-retailers now have an unprecedented opportunity to capture more sales from these classic shopping days than ever before. The market leaders are taking the trend one step further: creating their own shopping holidays.

Retailers Innovate New Shopping Events

The overwhelming success of Black Friday begot online shopping holiday Cyber Monday. Last year, American consumers spent a total of $2.04 billion during Cyber Monday (22 percent of that from mobile, according to IBM, up almost 28 percent year-on-year). Riding on the coattails of this spending frenzy, India’s Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) was created by Google in December of 2012. GOSF received 8 million visitors in 2014 and online brands increased user engagement by up to 700 percent, according to The Times of India. In fact, GOSF was so successful that Google launched it in Singapore this past February.

Still, the number of sales from Cyber Monday and GOSF are no match for sales from China’s 11.11 Shopping Festival, which sprung from the country’s widely celebrated Singles Day. Online retailer Alibaba Group created this 24-hour shopping holiday in 2009, and last year’s event brought in $9.3 billion of gross merchandise volume, a huge leap ahead of 2013’s $5.75 billion. Whether classic or created from scratch, it’s clear that shopping holidays provide a tremendous opportunity for retailers, especially as they spread from market to market.

So what can marketers do to help their shops capture the biggest possible share?

Staying Ahead of the Competition

Here are three tips to stay aggressive in today’s crowded holiday shopping climate:

1. Start Early

In 2014, American retailer Kmart shocked and awed the industry by releasing the first Christmas-themed commercial of the year on September 3, when many people were still in the thick of back-to-school shopping. This is just one example of how retailers are learning to engage with prospects and customers early enough to learn best practices, and optimize accordingly, so they can capture more conversions during peak-time. For most data-driven marketing strategies, a minimum three-month ramp-up period is recommended for testing.

2. Go Mobile

Last year mobile accounted for around 50 percent of sales for Singles Day in China. As the offline component of these shopping holidays grows more hectic, mobile strategies can make all the difference when it comes to engaging on-the-go consumers. Data-driven, cross-device, customer-centric advertising strategies will make all the difference when it comes to capturing mobile sales.

3. Personalization

With so much competition during these periods, retailers must find a way to stand out from the crowd, so data-driven personalization will be key to winning conversions and loyalty.

A 2013 Infosys study concluded that 86 percent of consumers felt that personalization has some impact on their purchase decisions, and 31 percent of consumers voiced that they would like to see more personalized messaging while shopping. New advertising technologies like programmatic make it possible for retailers to use CRM and other first-party data to create ads personalized in real-time for both likely-to-buy prospects and existing customers.

As more consumers use mobile devices to shop and are becoming more drawn to online sales and promotions, it is clear that the shopping holidays trend will only continue to grow. For retailers and brands alike, these events present incredible opportunities for increasing revenues, but can also pose potential threats. If marketers don’t plan for shopping holidays, then the competition will.

*Image via Shutterstock