Mobile and SMS E-Commerce Marketing For The Holiday Season

This is a guest post from Tangoo, one of our trusted agency partners. Tangoo is a Digital Marketing Agency focused on helping and empowering partners within the e-commerce, hospitality, tech, professional services, and real estate industries.

Guess what people? Even though Black Friday and Cyber Monday are in the rear view mirror, we are still in full holiday swing. But let’s not sit on our plunder and spoils for too long.

It’s time to reset and push forward to capitalize on the most wonderful time of the year if you want to come out on top. After all, tis’ the time where shoppers are giving and receiving left right and centre— and it’s important they know your product makes the perfect gift.

Now is the perfect time to not only to attract new customers, but also to leverage your existing customer base to fall even more in love with your brand through irresistible holiday offers. To do this, you must prioritize the channels they spend the most time on to capture customer wallet-share for the rest of the holiday season and well into 2020.

One of the most powerful channels for the holiday season is mobile and sms marketing. Here are some things to consider to ensure you’re baking a mobile-first mindset into your strategy.

Use a multi-channel approach

To compete, you must be where your customers are. They’re not just hanging out in one place, they spend time on various platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, and Etsy… the list goes on.

You know your customers better than anyone. You know where they spend more of their time and the communication channels they prefer. These days, it’s rare for any consumer to only use one or two channels so a multi-channel approach is essential.

The more channels you have available, the better. Think:

• Social media: Engage with your customers with strong marketing messages across their preferred platforms
• Email: The tried, tested, and true marketing channel. Consider utilizing the email signature to deliver important marketing messages and offers!
• SMS: Bot marketing is here to stay. Consider sending your customers SMS offers!

The message is clear: Be where your customers are.

In direct sales, increasing the number of touch points you have with a potential customer is crucial for landing a sale. Adopt this same mentality with your e-commerce business as well.

Make mobile a priority

The future of marketing is mobile… and the future is now.

Perhaps the most important channel of all in 2019, mobile accounts for more than 52% of web traffic and that number continues to grow year over year. We’re sure you even notice it in your own buying behavior.

If you want to increase your sales during the holiday season, mobile needs to be top-of-mind when designing (or re-designing) your online store, crafting killer Facebook ads, and creating landing pages. The quicker you adopt a “mobile-first” mentality, the better.

Optimize your email marketing for mobile

When it comes to mobile-first, your ads and website are only part of the equation. It’s official, email is now opened more on mobile than on desktop. More than 68% of emails are opened on mobile, surpassing desktop as the main device used to view emails. As your most inexpensive form of advertising (generally), it’s crucial to ensure your emails are optimized for a mobile experience.

To do this, make sure you’re using a responsive template through your email campaign software. This way, your emails will appear correct visually and read clearly on different screen sizes.

Some other pro tips for improving the mobile email experience:

• Try breaking up text and using bullet points to improve readability. This keeps your emails relatively brief, relevant, and easily digestible. Nobody enjoys a wall of text when they open their inbox and most don’t have the patience to read to the end.
• Make sure you have plenty of clickable elements and CTAs, such as “buy now” buttons at the beginning of your email. Your images should also be clickable and link the customer right to your store.

So friends, it’s the end of the year and your last chance at one final e-commerce “hurrah”. Leverage the hard work you have done throughout the year and focus on delivering important messages and generating sales from the customer base you have built. Reach your audience on multiple channels and optimize your efforts where they spend most of their time—their smartphones. Adopt a “mobile first” mentality for a successful year-end and profitable 2020.