This article is a recap of “Growth Decoded” a show that investigates the relationship between the customer experience and business growth — one topic at a time. Register here and conquer the customer experience!

Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Small Business Saturday. Giving Tuesday. Green Monday.

‘Tis the season once again. The holidays are right around the corner, and businesses are launching convincing campaigns chock-full of deals, discounts, and deductions designed to create customers.

The holidays also mark the end of the calendar year. The end of the year is a great time to take stock of your business’s performance over the last 12 months, compare it to last year, and plan for the new year.

It’s also a chance to give your customers an incredible buying experience that makes them come back again and again, and tell their friends about it.

But — as you know, the world looks and behaves differently than it has in the past.

2020 brought a whole new holiday season experience, with new predictions based on the changing landscape and a completely new way of shopping —

In 2021, you have a year of pandemic-holiday season experience under your belts, and many trends from 2020 remain true as you move into this year’s season.

What hasn’t changed?

There are still quite a few unknowns for every country or state. There are labor shortages, and shipping/production delays — this year even more so when it comes to the supply chain.

However… you know these things exist. You know the importance of getting ahead of the holiday season, and this can help you better prepare so your business can finish 2021 strong.

Let’s take a look at this year’s landscape in context:

According to eMarketer, total retail spending in 2020 was up 6.5% overall, while eCommerce jumped a whopping 32.5%.

Predictions for 2021 are forecasting another 11.3% increase in eCommerce growth.

According to Retail Me Not, consumers say they’ll do 51% of their shopping online and 49% of their shopping in stores this holiday season.

What does this mean for you, as a business?

First of all, it has to be easy to buy from you. That means as close to a frictionless customer experience as possible, whether your customers are in-person or online.

Make sure you’re set up to gather customer information, automate processes, and follow up with all your customers—no matter if you sold to them at a pop-up shop, your brick-and-mortar location, over the phone, on Instagram, or through your online store.

But this isn’t just about ecommerce businesses. The holidays are big for all kinds of businesses.

With half of all holiday shopping done online, you now have to compete for attention, for traffic, for conversions in a new arena — online

1 out of every 2 purchases for the holidays will be done via online shopping. If you’ve relied on in-store shopping in the past — you need to adapt.

If you’re a smaller business looking to make a splash — you have an opportunity and a huge market of consumers.

If you’re a non-ecommerce or retail business — that doesn’t mean you can’t participate. More people will be online than ever, and digital or non-physical products (or services) are just as marketable as something that ships in the mail.

The holidays are the finale to the end of the calendar year. And no matter what kind of business you are, you’ll want to wrap up the year so that you can hit the ground running in the new year.

If you’re looking to create a campaign this holiday season, or looking for ideas on how to put on a bow on this year and position yourself to hit the ground running next year, you might want to know:

  • When you should start planning
  • Things you can do now
  • Things to consider for this year
  • Best practices
  • Common mistakes
  • What to do after the holidays and end-of year

On our recent episode of Growth Decoded, we covered all this and more. We wanted to break down the end of year holiday campaigns, and the best ways to close out the year.

To do this, we sat down with Milena and Jovana Vujnic from BumperLeads, a marketing agency out of Australia, and Brandon Kirkland from EpicShops
— a digital marketing agency out of Southern Oregon in the United States.

Here’s what we learned:

Start planning now. Your holiday and end-of-year campaigns aren’t so much a one-off initiative, but rather the culmination of all the things you’ve been doing all year long!

Build trust with your contacts and customers. Listen to them. And work to give them quality content and value throughout the year.

You don’t have to be an ecommerce business to run a holiday campaign — in fact, some of the most successful holiday or end of year campaigns are from businesses you wouldn’t expect.

Your holiday campaign doesn’t have to be a sale. It could be a digital event. It could be a way to go above and beyond for your customers. It could be an internal audit of the last year and a jumpstart on the big moves you’re going to make next year.

Here’s what good holiday campaigns and end of year plans have in common:

They take into account the variations across your audience. The future of ecommerce, of marketing, is in the personalized customer experience.

Ask yourself:

  • How can you improve your audience segmentation?
  • What things are you doing now that feel more like “one-size-fits-all” or grouping all of your contacts into 1 bucket?
  • How well do you know your customers?
  • How much better COULD you know them?
  • What doors would that open for you if you did know them that much better?

This article is a recap of “Growth Decoded” a show that investigates the relationship between the customer experience and business growth — one topic at a time. Register here and conquer the customer experience!