10 eCommerce Marketing Apps for Holiday Season It’s not even the last quarter of the year yet but here we are discussing the holiday season. Too early? Not at all. 40% of customers begin researching their holiday shopping as soon as October. This is why it’s the perfect time to prepare and get ahead of the holiday rush before it even begins. For many eCommerce stores, the holiday season is one of the busiest and most profitable periods of the year. It’s even more lucrative this year as 2017’s holiday shopping spending is forecasted to reach $923.15 billion with eCommerce share projected at 11.5%. So how can eCommerce stores take advantage of this highly profitable holiday season? If you want your holiday sales to be merry and bright, you need to make a serious commitment to your online store’s holiday marketing plan. Fortunately, we have the perfect eCommerce marketing apps to make your life much easier. To kick-start your marketing this holiday season, let’s have a rundown of our 10 best eCommerce marketing apps.
1 – Reach out to last year’s holiday shoppers with Metrilo Analytics As early as now, take one step ahead of your online holiday competitors by using artificial intelligence from Metrilo, an eCommerce marketing analytics app. Instead of focusing your efforts on driving new customers to your online store, why not re-engage with your past holiday shoppers? The holiday season is a perfect time to reach out to old customers and get them using your store again. Start a reactivation marketing campaign by getting a database of your last year’s holiday shoppers together with essential purchase information such as what products they purchased and when they bought them. What can you do with past holiday data to reignite your relationship and amp up this year’s holiday sales?
Send a thank you note of their last year’s holiday purchase and include a reminder that
the holiday season is fast approaching Based on the products they purchased last year, offer this holiday season’s new products
and when they will be on sale. Ask a feedback and reward them with a special promo that they can redeem during the holidays
You can import all your previous holiday season’s order data to the Metrilo platform in order to get a complete database of your shoppers’ profile and holiday purchases. Metrilo’s analytics solution also has a step-by-step retention guide made for your holiday retention marketing. Available on: WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopify Pricing: Starts at $59/month for Small Businesses
2 – Show real-time notifications of holiday purchases placed by other customers with Sales Pop ‘2 people booked this hotel!’ ‘Hurry! Deluxe room was booked now!’ Have you seen these popup alerts when you book hotels? Widely popular for hotel booking websites, the real-time sales notification strategy displays a live pop-up alert whenever a room’s booked. This strategy helps in increasing a shopper’s confidence in buying a product since it shows that other people are buying it. Now, you can employ the real-time purchase notification system to your online store by installing Sales Pop, a highly flexible eCommerce marketing app. Whenever a shopper buys a product, a visible notification popup is displayed on your website. To prevent obstruction of your customer’s browsing experience, the notification popup will automatically fade out after a few seconds.
With the busy holiday shopping season, you want to convert every traffic as immediate as possible. By displaying a Sales Pop, you give an instant social proof from recent buyers. This social proof encourages new visitors to buy, resulting in an increased conversion rate. Available on: Shopify, WordPress, BigCommerce, Lightspeed, and Weebly Pricing: FREE
3 – Add holiday e-Gift card sharing buttons with Gift Wizard Aside from personal purchases, the holiday season is also a high-yielding time for gift giving. Shoppers are browsing through various websites to find the perfect gift for their family, friends, and colleagues. Why not allow your shoppers to directly send the products to their loved-ones with an e-Gift card? This way you make the shopping easy for the gift senders because they won’t have to wait for the packages to arrive before they can gift them. Gift Wizard is an eCommerce marketing app that lets you run an e-Gifting solution. You can integrate an e-Gift card sharing button directly displayed on your product page.
Once a gift recipient’s email information has been filled, the e-Gift will be directly sent to the recipient. Gift Wizard also allows the gift recipient to modify the product’s size and color to match his or her preference.
The Gift Wizard’s alternative checkout enables shoppers to send their holiday gifts without filling out information of the gift recipient’s shipping information and choosing the item’s size and color. This prevents possible returns and exchanges to help maintain your profitability. The orders will arrive with the gift recipient’s preferences allowing convenience to your buyers and more time for them to send more holiday gifts. Available on: Many platforms Pricing: From $0.00/month. FREE trial for 7 days
4 – Send automated thank you and special holiday deal emails with MailBot Email campaigns during the holiday season will also be a battlefield for online sellers. This is why putting an email automation strategy will help ensure that you always get the chance to follow-up your visitors or keep the flame alive with your customers. Start simply by setting up an automated email campaign directed to thank customers for their holiday purchases and subsequently sending them with special holiday deals and discounts. You can get the most of these automated holiday email marketing tactics with Mailbot, an eCommerce app that helps you implement a smart rule-based email campaign by targeting your customers with relevant and automated emails based on their shopping behavior. Mailbot’s rule-based functionality allows you to set up different holiday email campaigns such as a thank you email every time a new shopper made a purchase and a rewards email to motivate customers to return to your site. All these email campaigns are automated to help you with the hectic holiday season.
Available on: Shopify, WordPress, BigCommerce, and LightSpeed Pricing: Starts at $19/month
5 – Design holiday themed email pop ups with Better Coupon Box With the possible density of traffic this coming holiday season, you want to make sure that you capture every visitor as soon as they enter your site. How? Strategically place an email opt-in form asking for a new visitor’s email information, so you’ll have the time to convert them into purchase. But you need to make the email popup form as enticing as possible. Remember, what’s in it for new visitors if they subscribe to your email list instantly? Using Better Coupon Box, offer an irresistible discount coupon that can only be redeemed during the holidays in exchange for their email address. Better Coupon Box’s pop-up themes are fully customizable so you can create unique designs. The most exciting part is it’s holiday themes collection so you can match the season’s festive and joyful mood.
Available on: Shopify, WordPress, BigCommerce, Lightspeed, Magento, Prestashop and Weebly Pricing: Basic version: FREE – Premium version: $99/year
6 – Create urgency on your holiday promotions using a countdown timer with Checkout Boost We may have said it a couple of times but we have to reiterate that the holiday season is such a busy period for online shoppers that each second matters. Aside from the busy nature, online shoppers also have many eCommerce stores to choose from. This is why when shoppers enter your site, you have to create urgency to prompt them to make a purchase instantly.
How do you create that sense of urgency? Offer a special holiday promo with a countdown timer using Checkout Boost. Online shoppers are urged to make an instant purchase if they have a limited time to qualify for a sale or a special offer. This is why flash sales and time-limited promotions can be extremely helpful during the holiday season.
You can easily build flash sales and time-pressured deals with Checkout Boost’s countdown timer to drive shoppers to complete their holiday purchases before time runs out. Plus, Checkout Boost is highly customizable so you can decorate a festive mood using these holiday icons:
Available on: Shopify, WooCommerce, Lightspeed, BigCommerce Pricing: $20.00 – $29.00 / month. Try it for FREE
7 – Offer holiday gift wrapping and greeting options with Gift Checkout Traditionally during the holidays, brick and mortar stores offer free gift wrapping service to their customers. This simple add-on service during the holiday season is a very valuable gesture for shoppers who give gifts to their loved-ones.
Did you know that you can implement the same marketing strategy to your online store? With Gift Checkout, you can allow your shoppers to select a gift wrapping option. Plus, they can also include a greeting card in their package. Now that’s a value-add service perfect for the holiday gift giving spirit!
Available on: Shopify Pricing: From $0.00/month. FREE trial for 14 days
8 – Integrate automated and customized holiday product upsells with Personalized Recommendation Do you want to increase your customer’s average order value during the holiday season? Upselling is a popular year-round marketing technique that has been proven to increase a shopper’s order value. The good news is it’s still as effective during the holiday season. You can use upselling and even cross-selling strategies the same way you approach it throughout the year. To have an effective upselling and cross-selling strategy program during the holidays, you need to apply automated and customized product upsells and cross-sells. The key is to present a supplementary or higher priced item based on what the shopper is looking for.
Thankfully, there’s Personalized Recommendation, an eCommerce marketing app that can automatically provide a customer with a tailored fit product recommendation based on his or her buying behavior and product history.
You can define which products and related items to offer in advance. You can also upsell the products with the most profitable returns or push underperforming items during the holiday season. Available on: Shopify, WordPress, BigCommerce, and LightSpeed Pricing: From $0.00/month. Try it for FREE
9 – Share your best holiday reviews and ratings to your business’ Facebook & Twitter pages with Yotpo For new customers, there’s a high tendency for them to be skeptical about the quality of the products, and the overall reliability of your online store at first. Building your credibility is very important as not to lose your potential customer to a much popular site during the holiday season.
How to disperse your shoppers’ doubts during the holidays? Harness the trust of your past customers to drive new visitors into shoppers. Customers rely on the opinions and experiences of fellow shoppers before making a purchase. So, showcase customer reviews and ratings by focusing on the best holiday feedback and testimonials from your shoppers. First, collect customer reviews using Yotpo’s content generation solution. Then, seamlessly share the best holiday reviews and ratings across your Facebook and Twitter pages. Yotpo is a powerful app that lets you run a seasonal and tailored holiday campaign. Available on: Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce Pricing: By request
10 – Help holiday shoppers find the right item with product finder and gift guides with Guidelines Holiday shoppers spend a considerable amount of time looking for either personal products to reward themselves or great gift ideas during the holiday season. This is why presenting product inspirations for your shoppers is a very important aspect in speeding up their path to purchase. Create helpful product finders and gift guides for your customers especially made for the holiday season. You can easily build your gift and product guides using Guidelines. The guides can be customized based on your design styles. You can also make and launch a dedicated landing page with call-to-actions for your guides like this Rip Curl’s holiday gift inspiration.
Available on: Shopify Pricing: Free – $29.99 / month. FREE trial for 14 days
‘Tis the season to be jolly and fruitful! Remember that every day counts as we are fast approaching the holiday season. Holiday marketing should be your ongoing effort now. To help you plan, we have the above guide of eCommerce marketing apps that perfectly suits the holidays. Get started today, so you can achieve your most successful and profitable holiday season yet!