Gift cards feature on top of the list for Gifting this holiday season. For brands promoting Gift Cards, here are some last-minute tips to personalize your Gift Card Strategy.
Link your offers to Gift cards for your most sought after and high value products.
Self-gifting is a trend this holiday season, linking your offers to products and customer experiences that are high on your customer’s priority for themselves during the holidays are likely to resonate better.
Feature Your Gift Card in Twitter moments.Promote any partnerships that you have for Gift Cards with Retailers as can be seen from Verizon’s and Samsung Pay Facebook Post.
Candy and Food is the second most important planned purchase category during the Holiday Season. According to a survey done by Prosper Insight, as high as 56 percent of consumers planned to take advantage of offers that are available by way of Price Discounts on non-gift items during the Holiday Season. All spenders spending during the Holiday Season anticipate spending USD 230 during the holiday season on Non-Gift items, with as high as 90 percent planning to buy Candy and Food. Food Retail Brands and Food Brands targeting the Holiday Shopper with Product Offers, Content Marketing and Social Media posts have engaged the Non-Gift Holiday Shopper on Social Media Channels with Content and Holiday Season Packs.
Here are Marketing Ideas For engaging the Non-Gift Holiday Shopper
Plan an Offer – Krispy Kreme’s Day Of The Dozens Offer
Krispy Kreme “Day of The Dozens Offer” is one of a kind offer that gives shoppers the ability to redeem an offer from a Facebook Post.
The offer can be redeemed online with an email sent directly to the shopper. Krispy Kreme’s Day Of The Dozens offer gives a dozen doughnuts free with the purchase of a dozen doughnuts. Titled the World’s Tastiest Coupon can be redeemed on Dec 12, 2015. The social media conversation for the offer can be followed on #DayOfTheDozens.
The offer is mailed to the user from Facebook Offers for customers who click on the CTA in Facebook post and can be claimed online and shared on Facebook.
Key Takeaway: Launch a limited time offer with a seamless shopping experience that is likely to best resonate with your audience, while they are out gift shopping.
Introduce New Packaging – KFC’s Holiday Packaging
Kentucky Fried Chicken introduced Seasonal Packaging to add holiday cheer for customers looking at adding festive spirit to their meals, complete with Christmas decorations and all that is required to get you in the holiday mood. KFC has introduced Door Delivery services with Door Dash on Demand. DoorDash will deliver from KFC restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Orange County, with delivery expanding to other cities in the coming months.
Kentucky Fried Chicken has earlier made a splash with Colonel’s Road Trip during Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Key Takeaway:Launch a limited time holiday season packaging that is likely to best resonate with your audience to evoke emotional connect within a context. Increasing social media engagement with planned events can remind audiences about the role of your products in your customer’s lives.
Extend Your Campaign – McDonald’s Extends All Day Breakfast Campaign and Introduces Holiday Pies
McDonald’s launched the next phase of All Day Breakfast Campaign with GIF Tweets that make All Day Breakfast appropriate for meals all day long, with the tagline Get Breakfast anytime. McDonald’s reintroduced Holiday Pies for a limited time, engaging audiences with a product that is likely to resonate during Holiday Season. As reported by AdWeek, Mc Donald’s has seen success with the launch of All Day Breakfast, successfully straddling the Lunch segment, with Breakfast menu items.
Key Takeaway: Extending your campaign at the time when audiences are exploring options helps your content get discovered and can be an appropriate moment to remind them about any new products that you have on offer.
Create Non-Gift Content – Hershey’s Kisses and Content Marketing
Hershey’s Kisses has created a series of engaging Social Media Tweets with DIY Content ideas, Recipes and GIfs that remind the social shopper anout the products in a holiday marketing context.
Key Takeaway: Promoting your content on social media channels can increase interactions for your brand while they are gift-shopping to convert new customers for your brand with engaging non-gift content.
Promote Your Loyalty Program – Starbucks Brings “Starbucks For Life” Back
Starbucks reintroduced “Starbucks for Life” offer on signing up for the Loyalty Program, “My Starbucks Rewards” . The program encourages sign up for the Loyalty Program at the time the audiences are most likely to be looking forward to offers for the socializing trend marking the shopping season.
Promote A Special Price Pack or Offer -Wendy’s 4 For $4 Meal
Wendy’s Social Media Posts remind audiences about the 4 for $4 meal which serves as a reminder for the shopper or the customer looking for non-gift shopping options, while they are out Gift-Shopping.
Launch a Contest – Dunkin’ Donuts Jet Blue Tickets Contest
Dunkin’ Donuts introduced JetBlue Tickets for the season with packaging that gets the users in Holiday mood with contest prizes that are targeted at engaging the non-gift spend from the Holiday Season Shopper.
For Targeting Last-Minute shoppers Facebook has rolled out an anonymous target group that lets you advertise on Facebook and Instagram. According to Marketing Land, ” The social network is rolling out a new ad-targeting segment to enable brands to zero in on people who are highly engaged with content related to holiday shopping. The segment, which will run from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, can be used on any ad format on either network. Facebook will pull together the audience by sniffing out holiday-related keywords in posts that people publish and posts they like, comment on and share. Like all Facebook targeting, the audience is aggregated and anonymized.” Use Social media posts to engage last-minute shoppers.
Optimize your search campaigns for the last-minute shopper. Google has introduced the possibility of announcing business hours for last-minute shoppers. The Structured Snippet allows you to target users with an automated messaging that can be customized for different occasions.
Structured Snippets are different from Call-outs. Use Call-outs for highlighting special announcements such as free shipping or extended business hours, while structured snippets are used for what you have on offer. You can also look at adding business hours for days where the store traffic is likely to be higher.
True View Shopping Campaign and Video Content Optimization
As shared by Google Insights, 26 percent Gift Shoppers say online videos are their go-to source for gift ideas, and 32 percent of shoppers say they plan to use online video more this year for holiday purchases. Additionally, people in the U.S. are spending nearly twice as much time watching fashion and apparel shopping videos this year over last. TrueView for Shopping ads allow merchants to show Shopping ads for their own products in their own videos. Related products are shown dynamically, pulled from advertisers’ Google Merchant Center product feeds, and are now available for advertisers.
Unboxing videos have become a growing phenomenon, as people turn to YouTube to inform their purchase decisions. In 2015 alone, people in the U.S. have watched 60M hours of unboxing videos on YouTube, totalling 1.1B views.
Optimizing your Brand Campaign and Video content for discovery requires marketers to look at the factors that impact the discovery of video including Title, Description, Channel experience and Meta Tags.
Retargeting
Retarget audiences who have visited your site for offers and deals earlier in the holiday season. Google offers Search advertising with RLSA and Bing’s Remarketing campaigns.
Include Keywords in your app’s title, for discovery during the holidays. Revise your description to include relevant text, or any special holiday features and promotions your app may offer. It’s important to list these “above the fold” or just before Apple and Google cut off the description with a link to “Read More.” Change your App’s screenshots to include visuals that bring Holiday Offers and Gift Shopping up-front. For example, make your callout “Holiday Savings” or the seasonal keywords and phrases you targeted. Any core features and special offers can be highlighted visually in text and as a screen capture.
To know more about optimizing your app, click here.
Target followed a Storytelling approach engaging audiences with a brand experience titled Adventure, where three kids and Bullseye set on a quest to light up a Giant tree, set in a magical forest. In another video, Target introduces Free shipping an returns with a story where the adventure is Set on the Whipped Cream Sea, with LEGO pirate ships carrying precious holiday cargo. Target has boosted the viewer engagement with Free Digital Storybook spot “The Holiday Odyssey” featuring the epic adventure. In the newest spot titled Undercover, the gang goes past the Stormtroopers, through a maze of giant presents as the quest to light the ridiculously giant tree continues. Target began the Holiday marketing effort, over a month ago, with first Chapter titled “The Journey Begins”.
Key Takeaway: Engaging experiences targeted at an audience with storytelling approach requires more than a single post or video for audiences to discover the content. Creating an experience that helps audiences discover about your offers and products with a video makes for more interactions, repeat visits and conversions.
Disney Stores Most Wished For Gifts campaign features a contest that requires customers to share a pic with #12GiftsContest to win a USD 1000 Disney Store Card.
Most-Wished-For Gift of the Day: Captain Phasma Mask! Fly back to Halloween mode and post a pic of you dressed up as a character from a galaxy far, far away. May the Force be with your pic! Tag #12GiftsContest & @Disneystore for your chance to win a $1,000 Shop Disney Store Card. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Contest ends 12/12/15.
Key Takeaway: Brand Contests that are run for a limited time with an offer can create a greater impact as Social Media helps create buzz for your offers with popular Giveaways.
With the holiday season advertising being all about miracles, wishlists and Stocking Stuffers, Febreze has created a humorous campaign that is likely to be noticed, much like the Ugly Sweaters for its unmarketing.
Febreze, a Proctor and Gamble brand has taken 12 Days of Christmas to the level of a parody by introducing 12 Stinks of Christmas. Lynch and Morrison will premier their music video during the Febreze #12Stinks of Christmas Party – ugly Christmas sweaters all – at LightBox. Attendees can expect to sing along to the kitschy tune and learn that they can be guest-ready all season long with Febreze through interactive product demos.
Febreze has reinvented the classic holiday tune, “The 12 Days of Christmas,” to showcase the stinks of the season and how to stay guest ready, with the debut of “The #12Stinks of Christmas” starring the hilarious duo, Jane Lynch and Matthew Morrison.
“Sure, it’s always great to see family; it’s great to walk into a kitchen and smell a pie in the oven,” said actress Jane Lynch. “But when the turkey’s burning and your bathroom is seeing a lot of foot traffic from party guests, it hits you: the holidays stink! And, Febreze is a great solution to eliminate odors and stay guest ready.”
Febreze boasts a line of products with freshness capabilities that range from ridding of pet odors and tackling sweat stink to decorating the home with scent and freshening on the go and has introduced a limited edition holiday line. Febreze continues to be one of the fastest growing brands in P&G’s portfolio of household brands and bring innovative products to market. Fresh air is an essential and basic human right, and that the air we breathe can give us “fresh starts.”
Key Takeaway:When you need your advertising to break through the clutter, unmarketing may get your brand noticed with a campaign that brings out the unusual.
Lowes Foods 30 Days Of Giving
Lowes Foods has newer ideas to inspire giving this holiday season. One of them is a handwritten letter that makes the gesture seem genuine and another idea is to have the family play a board-game.
Key Takeaway: A series of engaging social media posts over a prolonged time can get your offers, deals and campaigns noticed, as it builds anticipation with users looking forward to the next announcement or offer.
Macy’s Make-A-Wish
Macy’s Make-A-Wish Campaign weaves Christmas Magic with a Wish-writer pen that brings magic to unusual situations that makes Christmas look magical. “The star of the commercial is the magic pen, and we were trying to find another way to get engagement — this idea of gamification is the way to do it,” said Martine Reardon, CMO of Macy’s. “It’s our twist of bringing something traditional and nostalgic to the modern way the generations of today work, which is on mobile devices and through apps.”
Key Takeaway: Making Audiences nostalgic is a way of capturing audience interest and launching your campaign when audiences start looking for gift ideas can help you strike the right chord.
“We’re giving our customers more for less this holiday season with exceptional savings on a great selection of stocking stuffers and last-minute gifts,” said Peter J. Scala, executive vice president – merchandising, Staples. “At Staples, we know our customers are busy so we offer convenient solutions for their holiday shopping needs including a buy online and pick up in store option, Price Match Guarantee, and free shipping for our Staples Rewards members during the holidays and everyday.”
Staples more for less campaign is targeted at different buyer personas, From the Inner Geek to the Fashion-Forward co-worker, with great last-minute gifts and deals throughout the holidays.
Key Takeaway: Staples More for Less campaign is notable for targeted offering for customers value-shopping for different types of Gift recipients.
Hallmark Entertainment Channel’s Countdown To Christmas
Hallmark Entertainment Channel’s Countdown to Christmas features a movie premiere every Saturday night bringing new movies every Saturday night, with engaging posts for Christmas.
Key Takeaway: Hallmark Entertainment Channel’s Countdown to Christmas brings singularity of the brand value proposition of Family entertainment up-front, making it the channel of choice for the time when families are most likely to be looking for family entertainment options.
Walmart’s Retailtainment
Walmart has followed a retailtainment strategy introducing Musical scores for Christmas by Craig Robinson that features number of videos with gifts targeted at different audience segments.
Key Takeaway: As important as it is to have gifting ideas for a valued shopper, it is equally important to present the ideas in a context audiences find engaging and relatable.
Hallmark’s Keepsake It
Hallmark’s online video campaign has a humorous take on Christmas with three spots titled Family Potrait, Vegan Christmas and Perfectionist Mom. The video has funny takes on situations that are characterized by quirky characters, playing on uniqueness of every family, and how Hallmark makes holidays memorable despite odd situations.
Key Takeaway: Hallmark’s Keepsake campaign infuses realism with humor where quirky characters are used in the creative for better ad recall. With an interactive digital experience it makes for one-of-a-kind user engagement.
Oreo’s Wonderfilled Christmas
Oreo takes a Wonderfilled spin on some storied Christmas traditions, taking a look into all the things that make the holidays feel like the holidays.
Key Takeaway: Oreo’s Wonderfilled theme campaign extends the Wonderfilled campaign to feature the Christmas traditions while weaving in the brand’s proposition of cream filled cookies in the video creative.
Kohl’s All Together Now
Kohl’s All Together Now campaign features gifts that are right for the whole family, with exclusive deals featured on Social Media Channels.
Key Takeaway: Kohl’s All Together Now Campaign sets the tone for entertaining during Holiday Season where the positioning of “Everything for Entertaining Everyone” makes holiday season gift shopping and entertaining seem stress-free. Kohl’s has successfully used All Together Now to position the discounts it has on offer for the season.
Apple’s Someday At Christmas
Singer Andra Day joins the legendary Stevie Wonder to sing his classic 1967 holiday song “Someday at Christmas.” Without a band, Wonder sets up his Apple computer to record both the piano he plays and the vocal track. As Day and Wonder sing together, their family plays games, makes crafts and spends time together. To bring the song to a close, the youngest member adds her voice to the mix and then the rest of the family joins in.
Key Takeaway: Apple’s Video brings out the creative power of the products in an engaging way while showing how technology can help you free your time for family. Using musicians and a music score associated with the season, Apple has ushered the Christmas spirit bringing out the holiday moments that matter.
