E-commerce marketing ideas to boost summer Season
Summertime seems to be a slower season for most retailers. Usually, consumers are preoccupied with traveling or enjoying their time in the sun, or doing things at a leisurely pace. They spend less time on the web and therefore less go shopping. That doesn’t necessarily mean that summer is a lost season.
The summer sales season 2020 was on fire. With in-store purchasing on pause for the foreseeable future due to the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers were not missing the website traffic. But they had to restructure their businesses, operating models and enhance their e-commerce strategy to engage consumers and drive sales.
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The pandemic will continue to reshape the industry and accelerate trends from consumer preferences to industry norms and structures in the year ahead. The long-term changes to the retail landscape are inevitable.
With store closures and social distancing measures that limit store capacity, retailers have no choice but to compete in the already crowded e-commerce space.
With the right marketing strategy in place, you can get your point across, drive more customers to your website, engage them better, and increase sales. Every savvy e-commerce marketer recognizes summer as an opportunity to boost summer holiday sales with relevant digital marketing campaigns and seasonal sales tactics. With that said, we’ve put together a list of summer marketing ideas designed to be easy to implement and with small businesses in mind. If you own a retail store in addition to your online store, these ideas may be a useful addition to your overall summer marketing strategy, so let’s take a look!
Summer is full of holidays and therefore sales opportunities. There are plenty of occasions to be creative, to identify the summer holidays with your sale, to delight your customers, and to promote your e-commerce business.
Let’s take a look at some of them:
- 31st of May - Memorial Day
- 20st of June - Father’s Day
- 4th of July - Independence Day
- 5th of July - National Bikini Day
- 7th of July - World Chocolate Day
- 5th of August - National Underwear Day
- 1st of August - Back to School Day
- 6th of September - Labor Day
So, start timely – plan your holiday-specific promotions the least 2 months ahead.
#1 Dress up your homepage for the summer season
1.1 Create enjoyable feelings suitable for the summer season
The first impressions have a profound impact on how we interact with people and objects. Websites are no exception. When the first impression is positive, it will lead users to continue browsing the site. As an online store owner, you may want to go big and bold with your summer season promotion. It’s important to showcase that you are running a seasonal offer the moment your website visitors land on your website. To make it stand out, you can use a banner that displays the upcoming sales promotion or be a little more subtle and differentiate the seasonal offer in the navigation bar via color or font-size.
Introduce phrasings for summer. Right phrases create sensations around the wording and also promote the sale that you’re currently talking about.
Consider bright and bold colors and strong contrast in your summer design. It will make your page look fresh and relevant and it will delight your customers.
Colors have a massive effect on people. Blue skies, yellow beaches, and the orange of sunlight can be an effective color palette when changing your website’s themes and color schemes and creating visually dynamic summer-themed content.
Discounts and offers remain an effective way to drive sales throughout the year. On the homepage, brands can encourage conversions by offering exclusive codes or discounts on specific categories suitable for the summer season.
Identify holidays with your sale, e.g. use red, blue and white color for Independence Day.
1.2 Create an enjoyable onsite customer experience
- Add navigation boxes with CTAs
The top navigation is obvious, but you can use additional navigation boxes to showcase your summer season promotion. If you want to save visitors the click and reduce your bounce rate, make your navigation boxes descriptive. Your goal is to help people easily find your offer, not show them a new way to get around a website.
- Keep your delivery details clear and marked
Delivery can be a key differentiator for retailers, so it must be conveyed clearly and prominently (especially if it’s free delivery or next-day delivery). Either way, customers should always be able to find it on your homepage.
- Add key information to all product pages
In accompaniment with traditional images, bullets-lists, and informative text paragraphs, feature highlights are a way that can strongly suggest the user take a moment to slow down and look at the details more closely. Users will better understand a product’s key specifications and make a purchase decision faster.
- Explain the return process
Before completing their purchases, consumers want to know what would be the return process if an item doesn’t fit or is different from the photos. It’s important to explain in detail your return policy and to address all the main points your returns and refunds policy could include.
- Optimize for mobile shopping
Consumers are reliant on mobile devices now more than ever which is changing consumer shopping habits. M-commerce is becoming a major channel for shopping. Therefore, you should think mobile-first to make your customers smoothly navigate to complete their orders in the mobile environment.
#2 The Landing Page to Heat Up Your Sales
Before anything else, prepare a dedicated landing for the summer sales campaign. This page needs to create the type of online shopping experience that greatly pleases your customers and moves them faster to the end goal.
“Landing pages are 25% or even more likely to convert on average than the regular product page. them faster to the end goal. “
Make your online customers easily navigate through your product offerings.
- Use high-quality photos of the products.
- Add description that clearly defines products and their benefits.
- A call-to-action that encourages a sale should be repeated at the beginning and end of the page.
- Write a strong copy that clearly states discounts and other offers to persuade customers to put a product into their cart.
#3 Promotion Types to Delight Your Customers
Most businesses face a sales drop during the summer months. Choosing the relevant sales tactic will help you bring in more customers during this period and combat seasonal income changes. We’ve outlined four proven sales tactics that may help you boost sales during the summer slowdowns.
3.1 Summer exclusive offer
Offer up some deals to go with the season as consumers are more likely to spend their hard-earned money if they have the feeling that they are getting an even better saving. Offer feelings, not only things.
3.2 Limited time offer
Create a sense of urgency for your customers to get a hold of a new experience. It’s a proven technique for increasing sales and conversions. By putting a time limit on your offer, you nudge your customers to act right away.
3.3 Flash sales
By holding a flash sale on specific products, you will get an opportunity for upselling and cross-selling since your customers are already on your website. You can also utilize social media to announce flash sales to reach more people. Furthermore, you can combine online and offline sales to provide your customers with a true omnichannel experience.
3.4 Loyalty coupons
Summer season is the right time to utilize your loyalty program. You can start it by offering coupons that can be saved to your loyal customers’ wallets on their smartphones. You can also offer a discount through tokenization to ease and insure the buying experience. Either way, coupons should work as a strong incentive for your customers to stop by your store.
#4 Create a buzz about your summer offer
When the time comes to run a summer season promotion, you have to decide how you are going to reach out to your target audience. For this, developing a summer marketing plan and incorporating it into your overall marketing strategy is vital for your online business, but at the same time, it is equally crucial to figure out which marketing channels bring in more quality visitors to your site and generate more sales.
Spread the word of your summer sales offer by announcing it across all available digital marketing channels:
- Email Marketing (announce the sale to your subscribers)
- Social Media (boost awareness within your audience on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok)
- SEM (paid search ads or shopping ads can bring a significant number of visitors to your online store)
- Affiliate marketing (reach out to more consumers)
- Content marketing
#5 Heat Up the Season with Personalized Emails
For a summer promotion designed to encourage visitors to happily do their shopping and at the same time enjoy summer vibes, consider email marketing. A more targeted approach that may be more relevant to customers though, is to segment out your newsletter list and deliver targeted messaging and offer for each segment. Even if your inventory isn’t typically focused on summer gear, introducing just one summer-themed product can go a long way, especially if you’re featuring it as a gift with purchase.
5.1 Early access email campaign
Hint at the summer sale deals and build anticipation before you launch the campaign. Allowing your subscriber to sneak-peek at new seasonal arrivals or discounted products will tickle their fancy, make them excited, and nudge them to pre-order their favorites. Sending a teaser to existing customers or loyalty reward members will make customers feel special and definitely will strengthen your relationship. You can send a link to a lookbook of the summer collection your customers can expect to hit.
Apart from promoting your deals, you will also win back inactive subscribers.
5.2 Special offer email campaign
Another marketing tactic to welcome the summer and increase the number of orders is to send a special offer with discounted products or a limited-time offer. Emphasizing limited availability can also contribute to a sense of urgency and encourage more people to browse your featured items.
- Send a special offer to your loyal customers.
- Create urgency with count-down timers or last-minute offers.
5.3 Thank you emails
Thank-you emails have a significant impact on your customers’ loyalty. Such a small gesture leaves a long-lasting positive impression on someone. It makes customers who just completed their orders feel more comfortable since every online transaction comes with a little bit of anxiety.
Thank-you emails allow you to engage your customers with a genuine personalized warm message that shows your appreciation. So, with this tactic, you can create more value for your brand. The long-term success of your business depends on your customer retention.
5.4 Keep on personalizing your emails
- Create eye-catching email subject lines to inspire your subscribers and increase email open rate.
- Splash into Summer with our new collection!
- Sizzling Summer Savings!
- Summer Sale! Deals to get excited about!
- Enjoy your summer! Hot, hotter, the hottest summer offers!
- Here Comes the Sun ☀ Save Now!
- Use emojis in your subject line.
- Personalize the email subject line with the customer's first name.
- Create a buzz with a targeted messaging and colourful template.
- Match a body copy to your subject line.
- Segment your email database.
#6 Sizzling Online Ads
Heat up your advertising - Facebook, Instagram or Google!
We all love good deals so put your advert right in front of those who are searching for hot summer deals. To attract summer sales with your ads, it helps to speak to your audience’s “summer chill” state of mind. This season is all about carefree amusement. Online advertising is one of the most effective ways to reach out to more potential customers and drive sales. Start with creating a dedicated summer season campaign in Google and social media.
6.1 Google Ads
Google Ads, whether Search, Display, or Shopping, is one of the best ways to reach customers when they leisurely spend time online browsing across the internet. With extensions, you can add more value to your ads by highlighting your summer deals that catch the eye of your potential customers and takes them directly to the landing page with your offer.
To increase sales activity during the summer season remarketing should be a must-have strategic component of your advertising. Remarketing will help you with well-timed targeting. Not only that you can show your summer promotion to customers who’ve previously interacted with your business, but you can also reach them when they are somewhere else actively looking for summer season offers. With such focused advertising and showing ads to the most relevant people, your chances to increase sales conversion rates are high.
6.2 Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are essential for every eCommerce business. Summer is the right season for utilizing Facebook ads in your marketing promotion. People spend more time on social media especially when they take their days off to enjoy summer vibes. So, your target audience is there posting their photos and stories and checking in places they visit. Therefore, a strong, sales-generating Facebook marketing strategy should match the mindset of your target audience on Facebook. For profitable marketing campaigns, each ad campaign should be very specific to your segmented audience and objective.
6.3 Instagram Ads
The importance of Instagram for online retailers has significantly increased over the last few years. Not only do shoppers turn to Instagram for product discovery, but they also buy products in-app. The app has the greatest sales potential for eCommerce brands since 83% of shoppers run to Instagram to discover new products and services. The same study shows that 81% of people use the platform to research brands.
Running Instagram Stories ads would be a good choice for your summer promotion. You can reach out to influencers to take photos of your products. For instance, using lifestyle photography helps to sell a solution rather than a product that encourages impulse buying.
Dynamic video ads hooks and keeps the attention of your target audience as the popularity of video content is on the rise. Overlaying text on video ads helps users to better understand your summer season offer.
Also, including the information about the prices helps to improve customer experience and make the purchase decision faster.
#7 Create excitement and spread good vibes on Social Media
An essential step to consider when embarking on a path towards online summer promotion is utilization of social media. It’s not only that they are an important part of your marketing strategy, but they are a critical aspect of your business growth.
For seasonal promotions, social networks have one of the biggest influences. People admit that they turn to social media for help with a buying decision and buy something after seeing it on social media.
Social networks are giving you an opportunity to connect, boost engagement, and inspire your customers. While users in summer leisure browse their newsfeeds on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, or Snapchat, it is an opportunity to prompt your summer season deal right in front of them. You’ll need a tailor-made content strategy to support all your sales efforts. Create the content for hot summer days and encourage your customers to take action. You need to prioritize what you’ll be focusing on in the beginning based on the target audience you’ve identified and which channels can support your content archetypes and your goals.
7.1. Gamify your summer offer to entertain your audience
Applying gaming mechanics in a non-gaming context offers users an engaging way to interact with your brand and motivates users to come back for more. Making your social media promotion playable will allow you to collect identity data through integrated entry forms.
7.2 Conduct social media contests
Many brands will use summer-themed events to promote special offerings, celebrate summer holidays, or even add seasonal discounts to existing baskets. Contests run during the summer season can focus on many different things. What’s behind everything is an opportunity for online retailers to collect user-generated content as well as identity data. With Facebook contests, merchants can attract more visitors and engage better with their loyal customers.
7.3 A Tag to Win Giveaway
A tag-a-friend contest is a great way to expose your brand and promote your summer sales offer to your followers, and your customers, and people who may not have heard of your business. The concept can be very simple: ask users to tag their friends in the comments of your post for a chance to win a prize. By creating a post that encourages customers to tag their friends for a chance to win a giveaway, you create the perfect call to action. This increases engagement to social media pages and promotes your brend.
#8 Seasonal on-site campaigns
An actionable way to convert elusive website visitors into long-time customers is by giving them the reason to stick around. To make any on-site campaign effective, you need to have a clear and targeted message that will drive your customers directly to checkout. Popups are one of the most effective tactics to do so. Well-designed popups that reflect the atmosphere of the season and showcase your special offer have the power to persuade your website visitors and empower their decision-making process.
8.1 Early access onsite campaign - ideal to grow your email list
8.2 Seasonal promotions - promote your deals and new arrivals
8.3 Count-down timer pop-up - create urgency and drive more sales
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