Are you feeling the end-of-year shopping fever in the air?
I definitely am.
The Holiday shopping season starts in November with Black Friday, followed closely by Cyber Monday and finally ending with Christmas.
According to reports, the Holiday months of November and December generate 30% more revenue on average than non-holiday months.
Take a look at this number: $63.1 billion. That’s the total amount of online holiday sales last year in the US.
If you’re like me, you may feel a little bit overwhelmed by the Holiday season. But I have good news, if you have the right tools and you’re well prepared, you can generate record sales. And I’m here to help you get ready in time for the Holiday rush. 😉
I want to show you a great way to increase your sales this Holiday season. It’s called Onsite Retargeting.
Onsite retargeting gives you a second chance with your visitors before they leave your site. It works by monitoring the behavior of your visitors and displaying a secondary message to them at the perfect moment. This could be when they want to leave your site or if they have been inactive on a page for some time.
Why is onsite retargeting such a great tool for the Holiday season? You can save up to 20% of your abandoning visitors and convert them into leads & sales.
To give you a jumpstart, we’ve collected 5 proven onsite retargeting campaigns for you to capitalize on the end-of-year shopping fever. Read on.
1. Promote special offers
Promoting a special offer is always a great way to attract customers, and it works even better if you tie a promotion to a specific event or holiday. This is a really effective way to grab the attention of price-sensitive visitors.
The best part of onsite retargeting is that you can show your offer to the visitors who are interested in it.
Here’s an example from ZooShoo that offers a $20 or $30 discount on Black Friday, depending on the total cost of the order.
2. Launch a contest or sweepstakes
People love free stuff. People love winning. People love being part of a contest.
Do you need more reasons to believe me when I say you can capture a lot of new subscribers with this approach?
In the example below, Guilty Soles promotes a contest to win a pair of shoes in exchange for the visitor providing an email address. It’s definitely a win-win situation.
3. Setup a VIP club with special access to promotions
This approach can be a great way to persuade visitors to sign up for your email list. Everyone likes to feel important. Plus, people like the feeling of “belonging to a club”. And, if they don’t want to miss out on your offers, they will sign up.
WineEnthusiast uses this technique and offers private access to holiday season promotions only available to subscribers.
4. Limited time offer for cart abandoners
According to the Baymard Institute, 7 out of 10 visitors who add an item to their cart will leave the average store without buying. Onsite retargeting is highly effective at capturing visitors who abandon their cart. And it’s even more effective when you put a deadline on the offer to encourage people to “act now”.
You can increase the sense of urgency even more by adding a ticking clock. Check out the example below which has a 15-minute countdown timer – once the clock reaches zero, the discount is no longer available:
5. Offer a choice to segment your visitors
Targeting is a really important part of every online campaign – onsite retargeting, email, PPC.
With this technique, you can create more customized and more relevant email campaigns in the future by developing segments for your visitors when they sign up for your list.
You can do this by simply offering two options for a sweepstakes or discount. Here’s an example from Extreme Digital where they ran a Christmas contest that segmented their visitors based on gender by offering two choices for the prize:
Summary
To boost your sales this Holiday season, you’ll need to plan ahead. Get prepared for the increase in shoppers who will be visiting your online store over the next months. You don’t want to let them leave your site without converting.
While you can boost immediate sales with onsite retargeting, you can also capture leads which allow you to continue marketing to these visitors via email over the course of the year ahead. Using the tips I shared, you can easily create a plan that will convert more visitors to sales and leads. Good luck breaking your sales records this Holiday season! 🙂
About the author
Csaba Zajdo is an ecommerce specialist, founder of OptiMonk and several other projects specializing in conversion. OptiMonk is an award-winning onsite retargeting platform, which helps small and medium-sized businesses leverage the power of onsite retargeting. If it has to do with conversion optimization and e-commerce, Csaba is interested. He’s always looking for the best and brightest and he’s constantly on the lookout for game-changing solutions. Csaba has been involved with web marketing including search, lead generation, e-commerce, CRO, PPC, and analytics for over 10 years. He is also a frequent presenter at seminars and conferences.
