Christmas facts and stats Where are the opportunities? Easy wins Christmas happens every year Creative examples The importance of dialogue Top Christmas tips

1. Maximising the marketing opportunity
of Christmas
Lucy Wilsdon

2. This is me
Lucy Wilsdon
Senior Email Marketing Consultant
Special interests: shopping for lovely things, cooking
and
eating good food, drinking quality red wine
Things I am not quite so interested in: growing
vegetables,
four square and star signs

3. What we’re going to cover
• Christmas facts and stats
• Where are the opportunities?
• Easy wins
• Christmas happens every year
• Creative examples
• The importance of dialogue
• Top Christmas tips

4. What does Christmas mean to you?
Christmas is like 12 months
crammed into 6 weeks going at 100
miles an hour….
What it does mean is opportunity

5. Christmas facts
•Christmas costs a family with two children at least £182
•Most UK families will spend between £530 - £682 on
gifts
•Brands like Cocosa had a record Christmas 2011, with
online sales up by 125%
•UK shoppers will spend £7bn online and 50% of that will
be in the first two weeks of December

6. Where are the opportunities?

7. Where are the opportunities?
• Trade – as marketers you are always trying to
understand your customers buying habits. Christmas
is a spending window.
• Christmas is an optimum time to build your brand,
don’t get caught up with trading and forget this
• If you offer good customer service, Christmas is the
time that it will be called on and it is a chance for you
to get your customers talking about how good it is

8. Where are the opportunities?
• Invite feedback within your social space, talk about
Christmas with your customers and invite them to talk
with you – this will serve you well through the rest of
the year
• Data – capture as much data as you can, capture
what customers buy, what they buy for gifts, how their
buying habits change

9. Christmas email marketing – easy
wins
1. Welcome campaigns – your welcome campaign is the most engaged
campaign you customer will receive. Ensure that it reflects the
season
2. Social share – an entire email rarely gets shared, so only share
specific content pages
3. Change your content – templates are the scourge of email
marketing – if you change your homepage at Christmas change your
email design
4. Have a calendar of sends, understand where your festive emails
cross over your standard marketing
5. Schedule a Christmas day campaign, your audience is generally in
a good mood, a little bit drunk and primed to spend

10. Christmas happens every year…

11. Christmas happens every year…
• Try and implement wish lists – think of the
opportunities later in the year
• Profile your audience: understand what is a gift? Free
wrapping or simply ask...
• By doing this you will know what you can market at
other times of the year
• You will have a head start for next Christmas

12. Christmas happens every year...
• Drive data capture – use every opportunity to capture
emails addresses
• Use geo-targeting to create easy dynamic content e.g.
simply show a festive image of local landmark or
maybe a skyline
• Think mobile – we know these days that last minute
shopping is happening so optimise those emails for
mobile
• Try and sell in value beyond price and discounts

13. Best practice email examples

14. Best practice email examples

15. Dialogue
• Good Email Marketing should be seen as a
conversation, especially at Christmas
• Don’t just sell to your audience via email, notify them
of website changes, Christmas delivery times,
customer service numbers and refunds over the
Christmas period
• Present limited offers; limited availability gets great
response – use that in subject lines

16. Dialogue
• Have a strategy for how you sell your products - if
there is a long delivery period for larger objects, use
that in the marketing
• Reward your loyal Christmas spenders with special
benefits post Christmas – note this does not have to
be a discount
• Work out what you can give away and do that

17. Top Christmas tips
1. Review and change your creative including your welcome
mails
2. Implement a wish list
3. Present your offer with limited availability
4. Don’t be so focused on trade that you forget other
opportunities
5. Optimise your email (last shopping days especially) for
mobile
6. Do a Christmas Day campaign

18. Thanks for listening!
Thanks for listening!
Follow us @ pure360
Email me lucy.wilsdon@ pure360.com
Or even call me 01273 647871
Any questions??