Valentine’s Day Campaign Ideas for Retailers
The magical Valentine’s Day is approaching and consumers are starting to have a hard time in deciding the right gift. People are willing to spend more and more money on beautiful, quality gifts, and at the same time, expectations for gifts are getting higher. According to the US NRF 55% of the population celebrates Valentine’s Day, and last year the average consumer was expected to spend over US$140, slightly more than a year prior. Valentine’s Day has a growing presence in the UK: in 2017 consumers spent £60 on average on gifts, compared to £41 in 2016. For retailers Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to bring old customers to stores and online and attract new customers. They key is to understand what type of gifts customers are looking for and for whom. The most likely material gifts are typically jewelry, flowers, clothing and gift cards. Valentine’s Day is no longer just for romantic partners. People shop gifts for their family, friends, coworkers and even for pets. Indeed, In 2016 19% of people in the US bought gifts for their pets, totaling $681 million. Given, the amount of single people, many choose to spoil themselves with extravagant gifts. Clearly, there is a market niche for almost every business.
People start looking for gift ideas a few week prior to the critical day. Personalised and well-thought out gift ideas are more than warmly welcomed by most consumers. Last minute shopping is not unusual. To minimise last-minute shopping stress, clever retailers focus on creating painless eCommerce and mobile shopping platforms where latecomers can quickly click gifts and order them on-the-go.
Create Seamless eCommerce and Mobile Shopping Experiences
Consumers interest towards mobile shopping is constantly increasing. According to a report by Forrester Analytics, the US retail sales via smartphone is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18% between 2018 and 2023!
Moreover, half ot the US retail sales is digitally impacted and the figure is expected to grow to 58% by 2023. Last year, the US NRF found almost one third of Valentine’s Day shoppers planned to shop online and over one third of smartphone owners said they were planning to research Valentine’s Day products on their phones. Furthermore, an average US adult spends almost 24 hours per week online, and Instagram alone is used 53 minutes a day by an average user according to data by SimilarWeb, and figures for Facebook and Snapchat are very close to that. These numbers are good news for marketers: the more time people spend on social platforms, the more time there is to reach them with personally-tailored marketing campaigns.
Since most consumers are connected to multiple devices, it is essential to create frictionless omni-channel marketing experiences. A shopper can for instance start by searching for gift ideas with a desktop, and endup on the website of their favourite brand. However, the consumer lives a very hectic life and doesn’t remember to choose a gift until a day or two prior to the deadline. If the omni-channel strategy is fully implemented, a consumer should be able to complete their shopping experience effortlessly even weeks later on a different platform. Especially when catering to last-minute shoppers, user-friendly mobile shopping experiences are critical: people expect to be able to place their last-minute gift, grocery and flower delivery orders on-the-go.
Retarget Loyal Customers with an Email Containing Personalised Gift Ideas and Lookbooks
Since most consumers leave gift shopping until the last minute, personalised gift ideas are a powerful way to convert inspiration-seekers into buying customers. Major global brands are leveraging their CRM data systems by using Spirable platform to generate hundreds of thousands of personalised style guides which can be delivered through email. Each customer receives a highly personalised lookbook video enabling the customer to click the products as they feature in the video. Personalised lookbook videos have high view-through rate and can help to triple online conversions. At the same time, email with a highly personalised content serves as an engaging reminder of the celebration day.
Inspire and Boost Sales with Dynamic Shoppable Instagram Stories
Instagram is used by over 1 billion people worldwide. Most use it to get inspired by influencers and brands they follow. 60% of people discover new products on Instagram. Still, a major challenge for most brands is to create new, engaging marketing videos: the process typically requires lots of resources. With Spirable brands can take full advantage of their existing assets and combine them with relevant data to generate effortlessly contextually relevant, personalised videos to audiences of hundreds or even millions of people.
Dynamic Shoppable Instagram Stories are a cost-effective method to drive conversions and can be made even more effective using the Spirable platform that generates personalised video ads for each defined audience. Brands can retarget consumers based on their browsing behavior. Dynamic Shoppable Stories make shoppers life easier: by clicking a shoppable video, a viewer is led directly to a specific product landing page where they can easily finalise a shopping journey. Additionally, Dynamic Shoppable Instagram Story Ads are a clever way to boost cross-selling and upselling with beautiful, individually tailored lookbooks showcasing complementary products. The Stories Ads videos can be updated multiple times a day based on various data feeds, such as location, time, weather and bestsellers. Thus, the content is always fresh and timely for a particular viewer.
Contact Us to find out how Spirable can help supercharge your Valentine’s Day sales.