According to expert predictions about the 2015 holiday shopping season, UK retailers should be prepared for two major trends this year:

  1. More UK shoppers will take part in Black Friday, the Nov. 27 day-after-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza, and Cyber Monday on Nov. 30, the Monday-after-Thanksgiving online equivalent of Black Friday

  2. More UK shoppers will be relying on smartphones to determine what to buy, both online and in the store

In fact, the UK will reach its first-ever one-day, £1-billion online shopping day on Black Friday, based on Salmon’s analysis of 2014 shopping trends and website traffic. Forbes notes that nearly four times as many UK shoppers (30%) will participate in Black Friday compared to 2014, when 8% did.

These fundamental shifts in shopping behaviours are occurring at the same time that major retailers are seeing more than half of their online traffic coming from mobile devices, based on 2014 stats. Deloitte also notes that more than 36% of in-store purchases are influenced by mobile/digital technologies.

Mobile marketing that works: frequent, targeted, personal

Against that backdrop, OtherLevels’ 2015 Retail Mobile Messaging Study found:

The frequency of mobile messages influences engagement and success. Shoppers who received “heavy” mobile messages (about 3/weekend in our client pilot project) responded with more activity and engagement than shoppers who received no messages. In fact, message recipients engaged up to 22% more than users who received no messages at all. Lesson learned: any UK retailer without a mobile app should start developing one as soon as possible, and once the app has been launched, marketers should keep a steady conversation going with users and customers.

Heavier messaging can also boost foot traffic -  with 11% more shoppers interacting with a store locator function, compared to users who received only light messaging (1 weekend message). The lesson? Make content helpful and part-and-parcel of the shopping experience.

Relevant, contextual content boosts engagement, especially around the holidays. Messages that enabled shoppers to pre-order holiday items by tapping a banner, for example, created an 11% increase in lift, and shoppers also responded more actively to messages with reminders to purchase favourite holiday foods or ingredients for favourite holiday recipes.

Use loyalty as a marketing opportunity. In this report, the client’s loyalty program experienced a 6.2% lift in the number of members-only promotions entered during the test period. For mobile marketers, loyalty programs offer plenty of relevant data to shape and inform messaging content, especially around known preferences, purchase histories and loyalty status. Effective mobile marketing embraces personalisation, and loyalty data can support personalised content.

Targeting and re-targeting can boost engagement - marked by 36%-66% boosts in open rates and response rates for mobile messages. Targeting and re-targeting tactics measure the impact of specific messages, and then use those metrics to build the next waves of content so that messages are fresh, relevant and primed for deeper proven engagement.

With the majority of consumers’ e-commerce interactions now taking place on smartphones and tablets, apps can deliver holiday-related information that resonates with busy, often distracted shoppers. Any content that makes shopping easier, intuitive, quicker and more affordable has a better chance of catching a customer’s attention and inspiring engagement, purchase or follow-up. Apps can deliver directly to shoppers critical information about what is available, where it is located, how much it costs and how to order it.

Finding the ideal holiday balance

A few words of caution should accompany any holiday marketing plan.

First, make sure all mobile apps are well-tested before they’re launched. The last thing holiday shoppers want to encounter are glitches or errors, especially if they interfere with what’s supposed to be a pleasant shopping experience.

And avoid over-messaging mobile customers. More frequent messages are effective, to a point. But if messages are too frequent, ill-targeted or poorly timed, customers and app users are more likely to perceive them as intrusive or irrelevant, and they might tune out altogether by ignoring the message or deleting the app entirely.

Holiday shopping in the UK is changing, thanks to new Black Friday-influenced shopping habits and as a direct result of consumers’ increasing reliance on smartphones as they search for products, deals and promotions.

Astute retailers and mobile marketers will make sure that their apps, mobile marketing campaigns and holiday-related messages are primed for the $1 billion-plus revenues that await in the 2015 holiday season.

 

By Ramsey Masri, CEO of OtherLevels. 

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