Yesterday at the end of the day, I wrote my blog on Corporate Gifts, as scheduled on my social media calendar. I wrote the draft, let is simmer and percolate overnight, like I usually do. But then as I was getting ready for bed, inspiration hit. What I REALLY want to write about this week is business, and in particular what Cyber Monday has taught me.
CYBER MONDAY.
Now that we are officially an eCommerce company, no more showroom, it's time to do cyberspace marketing, no? Well Cyber Monday wasn't even on my radar. But one day I was browsing the Awards and Personalization Association forum (that's our trophy trade group), and I read a thread about Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A competitor, also an eCommerce awards company, shared how his sales spiked last year on Cyber Monday. It got my wheels turning that we should try a Cyber Monday promotion this year. I shared the idea with my business partner Tom and we decided to go for it.
I put together a quickly crafted email campaign for my customers, just letting them know about our sale. I sent the emails out of Sunday and then the next day on Cyber Monday.
The Results? Pretty good. It was a busy day, we had 25% more sales than the same day the previous year. Our Google conversion rate was up over 6%. Pages per visit were also up, people hung around the site longer than usual. However, because of the discount, the average order amount was slightly lower than the previous year.
My Take Aways
- 1. People like good deals and they will convert if you have a promotion.
- 2. Customers also convert when a promotion is short-term and they know it will go away.
- 3. Its nice to get on the bandwagon with a nation-wide promotion, this saves marketing dollars since everyone already knows about it.
- 4. Some marketing ideas are flops, but once an awhile they are good. Its fun when they work out well and make money. It's always a gamble but it's good to try new things because they could pay off.
In a nutshell, those are my business lessons from Cyber Monday. Thank you to all the customers who ordered from Trophies2Go. And a special shout out to my developers Ben and Duncan who speedily made my website promotional banner on the fly Sunday night.
Did your business try a holiday promotion? How did it work out for you? Share it in the comments!
Cheers!
Jessica