Your eCommerce Checklist for Super Saturday

Also known as “Panic Saturday’ and another retail event adopted from the US retail event calendar, ‘Super Saturday’ can be just as important to maximise your peak season sales and make your Q4 targets. With all the extra activity and time to be taken for personal holidays it can be a bit overwhelming to keep your digital touch points and eCommerce organised. With a week to go we thought it would be a good idea to provide a pocket sized  eCommerce Checklist for Super Saturday so you can keep all your digital assets in order to cope with the last minute rush!

Last-minute eCommerce Checklist for ‘Super Saturday’

Get Ready For the Final Rush…

• Email is the most engaging channel and drives the highest conversions for eCommerce, so make sure to utilise it!. If you have an account signup facility on your eCommerce store this is the perfect place to start, do some analysis on your customers buying patterns and history. Draw up a segmented email marketing list and include those who haven’t shopped with you in a while on a “Where have you been” email campaign, highlighting last minute promotions & offers. It’s a great way to utilise data from your customer database and squeeze as much as you can from your email marketing activities to capture the last minute madness. 

• Re-examine your deals and promotional mechanics, if you are running any new offers ensure they don’t give too much away and have a negative impact on your bottom line. If offering last minute bundle deals, consider how profitable they are? Sometimes it’s more prudent to prioritise profit over sales volume, especially if you’re using non-seasonal products in your bundle offers. 

• Drive Gift Card Sales with more messaging throughout the buyer journey on your website. Over 60% of last minute shoppers will be in a hurry to pick up some sort of token present, gift cards are normally a first choice with many. Go a step further and launch a “Last Minute Gift Shopping” PPC campaign promoting your gift card availability and value.  

Courtesy of Power Reviews 

• Consider flash sales highlighting limited time offers, they’re a great technique to create urgency and push any stock that’s slow in shifting. It’s also a great way to get people to check your website regularly for last minute deals and offers. Don’t forget to utilise your email marketing platform to drive more visibility and awareness on your flash sale events.    

• Re-evaluate your new year January sale stock quantities, if you are holding back on any consider releasing a small quantity for your ‘last minute campaigns’, boosting the opportunity of selling some quantities off. Be frugal though, there’s nothing worse than an eCommerce store with too many out-of-stock product listings in the January sale period. 

• Analyse your social media advertising performance, if you have more budget, leverage your social advertising to boost your brands visibility to wider target audience. People spend more time on the internet during the peak period and with social commerce offering a more seamless checkout experience it would be a lost opportunity not to utilise it more. 

• From the point above it’s also good to re-check your stock orders for the month of January. Review your analytics from last year, see what you ordered, keep in mind inventory lead time. If you’re shipping your products from China take into account that January is ‘Chinese New Year’ festival month. Most factories and businesses come to a halt as workers take time off to celebrate. Pin January 25th in your diary as the date the 2020 Chinese New Year festival starts. Make sure to have your orders in a couple of weeks before taking into account your products manufacturing timeline.

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Planning your Christmas eCommerce strategy well in advance gives great freedom in testing your online sales mechanics to see how effective they are. Don’t be afraid to make changes on the fly to maximise your sales, brick and mortar stores do it all the time in peak season. Whatever you decide at this point keep one thing in mind, engaging with your customers and bringing value and personalisation to their shopping experience is the ultimate goal. eCommerce brands that are most successful at this time of the year are normally well connected to their online shoppers, they know what they want and have developed a trustworthy relationship with them giving allowing the ability to add personalisation to their shopping experiences. 

What so for 2020?…

izest Marketing is a commercially focused strategic marketing agency offering a full service across creative, marketing and digital channels. We have vast experience within our team in developing brands strategically both off and online, we utilise the latest eCommerce software and digital marketing technologies to create seamless online buying experiences for our clients customers. If you’re still looking to plan and execute your 2020 eCommerce strategy, why not contact us or call direct on 01 685 4610.

Best of luck!

Happy Christmas from all of us at izest Marketing.