Retailers are hopeful that the shopping season will start early this year, with predictions that it could come as early as October 10.
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Data from Zenreach, the walkthrough marketing company, shows that nationwide, in store foot traffic has been hovering around the 50% normal level for the past three months, rising from a low point of 20% when Covid-19 hit. Knowing that half of consumers are still shopping in stores is a testament to the power of the back-and-mortar experience.
How Retailers Can Thrive This Holiday Shopping Season
It doesn’t have to spell doom and gloom, and with the potential for an earlier/longer shopping season, Zenreach, the walk-through marketing company, would like to provide 3 critical tips to help retailers pivot and thrive this holiday shopping season:
1. Show Your Customers That Safety is Important To You:
It is critical that merchants take safety precautions to alleviate consumer concerns—doing things such as sanitizing areas, maintaining social distancing, implementing mask policies, etc. But simply taking these precautions is not enough. It is imperative that merchants let their consumers know about these actions.
2. Connect With Your Most Valuable Consumer:
If you have limited capacity in your store, you want to make sure that you bring in your loyal, high-value consumers, and not the low-ticket, one-and-done consumers. By utilizing our walk-through data, for example, we’ve been able to determine the most frequent and high-value consumers, and have aided our merchants in bringing those consumers back.
3. Leverage Online Advertising:
More people are spending more time online, and ironically, because many advertisers have pared back their online spend, the cost of online inventory is comparatively low. This combination of record-high online engagement along with lower internet advertising costs has meant amazing performance numbers for retailers. In fact, we have seen campaigns with click-through rates as high as 2-3%, which is roughly 20-30x higher than pre-COVID averages.
