Halloween Ecommerce
Over the next two months, there is an expected growth in ecommerce sales. In what seemed like an opening salvo to begin this surge in online spending, companies like Walmart and Amazon launched Halloween themed marketing campaigns to drive sales for consumer items like candy and costumes.
But what about digital goods manufacturers and online service providers? How can they use Halloween to increase awareness of their brand and make some money too?
It seems that even if a company does not sell consumer packaged goods directly related to a seasonal event, they can still use the popularity of that event to their own business related advantage.
Typically, Halloween themed marketing campaigns for digital goods sellers focus less on generating revenue from transactions and more on engaging customers to create brand loyalty and facilitate micro conversions like registrations or downloads for content marketing.
One channel to focus on during these busy times is email marketing.
“US retail ecommerce sales are expected to reach $262.3 billion in 2013. Nearly a quarter of that spending will happen in the last two months of the year.” – via eMarketer, Retail Roundup
Email Traffic
Emails are a very important source for returning holiday season traffic. You’ll be competing against lots of other companies at this time so make sure to create and implement unique value propositions in your email content.
While they don’t sell candy corn or witch costumes, conversion rate optimization experts SiteTuners offer Halloween themed content marketing in the form of webinars in order to generate more leads for their business.
As this email came from the authors of the landing page optimization book, it was good to see that the corresponding landing page adhered to our principles of landing page optimization:
- It didn’t use the home page as the landing page
- It didn’t give me, the customer, too many choices
- It didn’t hide the call-to-action (CTA)
- It collected user data
Subject line glyphs and email render tests
As always, when you are sending emails the goal is to inform your subscriber of something great that they are missing. But if your subject line is not compelling or if your emails do not render correctly on your subscriber’s screen, your message is hopelessly lost.
Therefore, try to boost open rates by placing glyphs in your email’s subject line and improve click rates by making sure your emails display correctly on all browsers and screen sizes.
Social Media
Another compelling channel for driving traffic are your social networks. For example, Malwarebytes, an anti-malware software company, used LinkedIn to promote a Halloween themed contest to win a lifetime license of their software program.
Alternatively, GetResponse, an email marketing service, used a Halloween themed Tweet and landing page to promote new features of their service.
Avira, makers of an anti-virus software program, used a Halloween themed Facebook post to engage users and focus on them on their value proposition as a provider of PC security.
Do you have any success stories of creating unique marketing promotions for special days? Leave a comment below to share.
