3 Tips to Optimize Holiday Revenues

Holiday decorations have already been on display at retail stores for weeks, spreading the holiday cheer over longer than just November and December. Accounting for approximately 20 percent to 40 percent of retailers’ annual sales, it's no wonder they're making an effort to extend the holiday revenue spirit.

In the run-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, retailers have few options to increase sales volume and revenue without conducting a major overhaul of their digital marketing strategy. They must think strategically about leveraging assets they already have, as well as after the festivities are over.

1. Leverage your assets. Applying customer data should be a year-round strategy, but it's particularly important during the holiday buying frenzy. Your email list, which was likely opted into by customers who made purchases or visitors who were just interested in receiving deals and updates, is chock-full of data. Using an email address, you know how long they've been a customer, what they purchased, when they purchased, where they're located and if they used a discount code.

Armed with this information, you've got everything you need to send targeted messaging to each individual customer. Send email with subject lines and narrative that are most likely to entice them to open your email, click through to your website and make a purchase. Rather than segmenting on generic demographic buckets, retailers should use their data to offer individually personalized messages via email, social and SMS text.

2. Offer personalized product recommendations. Experian recently found that 70 percent of brands aren't personalizing emails based on collected data, even though those messages are found to drive six times more transactions and revenue per email than nonpersonalized messages.

For the holidays, it's important to use data to offer highly personalized messaging and, just as important, targeted product recommendations. This can be discovered through email clickthrough behaviors as well as educated suggestions (i.e., predictive analytics) based on various segment data. For example, a person with a similar electronic footprint purchased this widget, you might also be interested in seeing details about it. Offering these types of suggestions, in combination with special holiday deals, throughout the month enables consumers to spread their holiday shopping over an extended time period and decreases holiday spending stress.

3. Use data to re-engage customers. Finally, using the increased volume of data points from holiday transactions, marketers are equipped with information that enables them to re-engage with customers after the holidays are over and throughout 2014.

With every additional purchase or online behavior, the increased data enables retailers to create more enticing marketing, including subject lines with calls to action or deals, customized product recommendations, and individualized email receipt times.

These features are imperative to creating loyal customers. In a study conducted last year, we found that the majority of people check email all day, but only click through during one "magic hour," which proves the importance of making each customer feel special during the purchase and forever after.

Using data enables retailers to offer real-time, relevant deals to each of their customers through the holidays as well as after. Whether you're interested in targeting other year-round events or earning more sales throughout November and December, data technology allows you to target each customer with the deal they'll like best, at the time they're likely to buy, with content and product recommendations that they're most likely to enjoy (and purchase).

It's time to think about ways to leverage your current assets to entice your customers who might be on the fence, earning your piece of the $61 billion in e-commerce spending that will take place over the coming weeks.

Erik Severinghaus is the founder and CEO of SimpleRelevance, a digital marketing personalization provider.