Now that the busy holiday months are over, the perfect time has come to develop and concretize the marketing plans for the new year. A big part of this is the marketing calendar and the associated action moments. Logically, national holidays are used by many e-commerce players to launch a major campaign. However, in recent years, we have also seen more and more major players initiating their own e-commerce parties. In this blog, we discuss Yellowgrape's marketing calendar and provide tips on how to respond to the various well-known and lesser-known events throughout the year from a marketing perspective.
First of all, a marketing calendar is of course essential to provide insight into important moments throughout the year and to be able to prepare them in time. In addition, it provides an overview and makes it a lot easier for yourself to plan campaigns ahead.
In line with Yellowgrape's overall strategy, a marketing calendar also contributes to how we build our weekly marketing cycles and the accuracy with which we plan customer growth. We plan growth in a traffic forecast, where we determine KPIs for traffic, conversion, average order value, turnover and associated marketing costs at the monthly level. We are convinced that the strength lies in a combination of “always on” and actionable campaigns. When you find a balance between the two, include the right moments in your marketing calendar, and take into account actionable campaigns in the traffic plan, you can make better growth forecasts.
The marketing calendar that we use for our customers naturally includes all traditional holidays and important e-commerce events that can be catered to. In recent years, however, we have seen that more and more prominent retailers are setting up their own “holidays”. Take Amazon's Prime Days, for example. To give you an idea of the size, Amazon is making more sales during these days than on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. The Prime Days are brought to the attention of consumers well in advance via various offline and online channels. The result is that a lot of volume is being created in the market. You can easily take advantage of this — even if it is not targeted at the niche of your webshop. In 2019, we and our customer Tegeldepot responded to this for the first time. — and with great success. That's why we recently decided to set up our own promotions with several customers at the same time as the Prime Days, resulting in an increase in sales of 50% to 200%. In short: a very smart move to respond to the consumer's increased buying intent, which is stimulated by another party.
To reduce dependence on competition and large e-commerce parties, it is wise to take a good look at what time you can set up your own action moments. In the spring and autumn, we still see a number of unused commercial opportunities in the calendar. For that reason, we introduce two additional sales opportunities to our customers per year and fill the commercial gaps: the 5-Day Spring Deal and 5-Day Fall Deal. These weeks filled with actionable campaigns, we are pushing widely about our customer portfolio — and, of course, other parties can also join in. This allows retailers to boost their sales even more and keep the reins (or in this case, slings) in their own hands.
Want to get started with the Yellowgrape Marketing Calendar yourself? Download it below and start preparing your 2021 marketing plans today!
