It's not too late to give Christmas commerce a new kick. Online advertising service provider Criteo presents its "Festive Season Commerce Report 2021" in time for the start of the "fifth season" with data and advertising strategies to target new seasonal shoppers.
Criteo is known to store operators primarily through its retargeting offer and therefore knows shopper behavior first-hand. Customers who only browsed during their first visit to the store and then perhaps didn't buy anything after all can be encouraged to make a purchase via Criteo's personalized banner ads on external websites and similar measures.
Black Friday 2021
Black Friday, the festival of big and small bargains, is scheduled for November 26 this year. Its appeal has been waning somewhat for years, even though the daily sales bought with still reasonably attractive discounts continue to be above average.
According to the Criteo report, German consumers don't just go bargain hunting on Black Friday, but already in these early days of November and browse through the stores and offers.
Early purchases more important
Continuous commerce encourages early shopping: Consumers are constantly thinking about their next purchase. Criteo data shows that people start researching their purchases at least two weeks before Black Friday and add items to shopping carts on a trial basis.
Email-Reminder
With the additional plugin "Email Reminder", Smartstore-Shop operators then have the unique opportunity to convert prospects with store registration and an open shopping cart into an order. Email Reminder is already available out-of-the-box for many store operators, for example for all stores with Smartstore Premium Flat, but is unfortunately often too rarely used in practice. Tip: switch it on now!
http://community.smartstore.com/index.php?/files/file/166-email-reminder/ (99 Euro)
https://smartstore.com/en/smartstore-premium-flat
Personalized Product Recommendations
Also, useful: the "Personalized Product Recommendations" plugin for Smartstore-Shops. This plugin offers customers personalized product recommendations based on real-time shopping behavior and clicks in the store. The "homepage products" selected uniformly by the store operator for all customers are automatically and seamlessly replaced by products recommended individually for individual customers.
Recommend and remind
In addition, "Email Reminder" (see above) can be used to individually and automatically send mails with these individual recommendations to prospective customers. "Personalized Product Recommendations" is also included in the flat, including full telephone support for example for plugin setup and configuration. The plugin is also available to any Smartstore shop-owner without a flat in the Marketplace for 299 euros.
http://community.smartstore.com/index.php?/files/file/184-personalized-product-recommendations/
Search engines play a big role in product discovery. But so, do local offers: Criteo's revenue data shows that consumers are returning to brick-and-mortar retailers, and spending is rising quickly once lockdowns are lifted and stores open.
Customers for the store
Tip: For Smartstore shop operators with a retail store, the MapAds plugin is an interesting way of directing searching consumers to their local offer.
https://smartstore.com/en/mapads-plugin-fuer-smartstore
Video
Video will become even more important this holiday season, Criteo writes: Half of shoppers will buy products they've seen in moving images in a commercial.
Tip 1: Simple video advertising. With MapAds (see above) and the appropriate budget, advertising videos are created automatically on YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The basis is the already existing Smartstore store images, item texts and prices. The intelligent planning and video design is completely handled by the MapAds AI.
Tip 2: Using video in your own store. Since version 4.1.1, Smartstore shopoperators have been able to stream videos directly in the product image gallery without additional software and hosting. In addition, as of version 4.0, they can manage, upload, update and SEO-optimize all shop videos at a glance in the Smartstore "Media Manager". A real relief in the hectic pre-Christmas season. Read more: