5 Ways to Maintain Brand Engagement on Mobile After the Holiday Rush Here are a few pointers on how to beat the holiday burnout and keep customers wanting more.
By Adam Foroughi Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
During the holidays, everyone ramps up their advertising efforts. And as mobile continues to become a larger part of the consumer experience, brands are focusing on increasing mobile advertising to meet new shoppers on devices. While sales skyrocket during this time, numbers usually slump after the holidays are over.
But your sales don't have to slow to a halt just because the festive time is done. Instead, you can focus on keeping these new customers engaged and ready to purchase again.
If marketing before the holidays is all about growing your customer base, then marketing after the holidays should be all about re-engaging those new customers.
Here is a few bits of advice on how to implement this strategy.
Related: 6 Tricks to Fight Post-Holiday Fatigue
1. Run a re-engagement ad campaign targeting your new users.
During the holidays, you acquire lots of new users simply due to the rush of holiday spend. Instead of watching your sales slowdown after the holiday hustle, look at the post-holiday season as an opportunity to re-engage these new customers. You already know they are interested in spending money with you and chances are they are your target demographic (or part of a new emerging target demographic). Use information on their buying and browsing behaviors and target them with smart, relevant re-engagement ads.
2. Make sure your email marketing is mobile-first.
You will grow your customer base and capture contact information like new emails during the holiday season. Create a strong email marketing strategy to re-engage with your new customers.
Your emails will be read on desktop and mobile, so make sure your campaigns are optimized for multiple channels. Indeed, a report from MovableInk found that 62 percent of all emails were opened on a mobile device during the second quarter of 2014. It's best if the emails are designed with mobile in mind every step of the way, so consider fonts, layout and even hyper-text as many mobile devices have images turned off. If your email doesn't look good on mobile, it's less likely to get noticed.
Related: Know Your Shopper to Boost Post-Holiday Sales
3. Leverage push notifications.
Push notifications on the iPhone and iPad are now interactive, which makes them an even more powerful marketing tool. When used wisely, these notifications are a great way to keep new customers coming back to your app.
To get customers back, consider creative ways to leverage push notifications. Use push notifications for timely interaction (when users are more likely to engage) and even send a notification with a relevant discount for a product you know your new customer will want.
You can get even more sophisticated by using interactive notifications. Now that the customer can swipe and have options such as "Yes," "No" or "Remind Me Later" appear, you can create a campaign to generate data on your customers interaction with the push notifications. Use this data to provide further insight into what's working and serve more meaningful notifications. Lastly, make sure to take your user directly from the notification (if they swipe "yes') to the product page or offer.
4. Deep link for a better experience.
Whether you're running a re-engagement ad campaign, marketing with email promotions or sending push notifications, make sure you're deep linking directly to the product you are promoting. This means that when one of your existing customers responds to a marketing message, the customer is taken straight to the advertised or marketed product page within the app.
5. Use promotions to encourage engagement.
You should create content such as targeted post-holiday offers to encourage continued engagement. Now is the time for flash sales, limited-time discounts and deeply discounted items. Once you get the customer to make a purchase after the holidays, they will no longer think of you as "just a holiday" purchase. This post-holiday purchase greatly increases your chances of seeing more repeat purchases from this customer.
When you're coming off a holiday high, it's easy to get frustrated with slowed sales -- and fall into a slump yourself. However, the post-holiday season is a great time to re-engage with your new users and convert them into customers who shop with you year round. With these tactics, you can beat the holiday burnout and have a stronger business all year round.
Related: The Holidays Are Coming: 4 Ways Startups Can Meet Shoppers on Mobile
