6 tips for holiday season mobile marketing

Holiday season mobile marketing 

The holiday season presents an abundance of opportunity for mobile marketers. And that’s truer now than ever. The pandemic has greatly accelerated digital shopping: Statista’s study shows that in 2020, online shopping increased more than 25%, hitting 4,2 tn dollars worldwide. With the majority of cyber week sales made from a smartphone – 55% compared to 41% on desktop – the lesson is clear: smart marketers should follow the money and connect with customers where they’re already present – on their smartphones. 

So how can you reach the full potential of the holiday season and enjoy all the benefits that mobile marketing has to offer?

Holiday marketing ideas for a stellar mobile marketing campaign

An effective messenger marketing strategy can improve the customer experience by offering a truly personalised, engaging and convenient customer service during the peak season.

• Create hyper personalized messages for your loyal customers

It’s a fact: personalizing the customer experience to each specific customer makes them more likely to buy. In fact, it results in a higher likelihood of purchase in 80% of cases. It’s easy to see why, as it’s much more convenient for consumers, and data supports it – 4 in 10 holiday shoppers are looking for retailers to remember personal details, like past sizes and items they’ve purchased. By integrating their CRM system with Viber Business Messages, brands can store customer interaction history and analyze their behavior in order to send useful and relevant personalized messages, at scale. 

Here are a few holiday marketing ideas for your inspiration: 

• Offer gift messaging and alerts that let your audience know when specific gift items they have shown an interest in have gone on sale or have been restocked.
• Create a digital gift guide with ideas for parents, significant others, friends, kids, and anyone else. Segment your audience and send the most relevant guides to your customers.
• Reward your mobile customers with exclusive coupons for the products they were interested in.
• Invite customers to take part in Sweepstakes, Instant Win Giveaways, and Challenges over the items they showed interest in.

• Automate your customer service

In the always-on digital world, brands need to be available around the clock. Customers expect it: 71% of consumers expect brands to communicate with them in real time, whether it’s day or night. But it’s costly – and wasteful – to man the phones 24/7. Instead chatbots can take on the bulk of the work and help to manage your holiday season mobile marketing. 

Not only is it more cost-effective for brands, shoppers are also more likely to trust and to spend more money with retailers that support both digital and in-store experiences with messaging and virtual assistants.

Viber Chatbots are available around the clock and answer customer questions instantly. They reduce personnel costs and automate routine processes, reduce user frustration with quick, timely replies, and generate analytical information about customers, which allows you to create an accurate portrait of the target audience and understand its needs (64% of customers are in favour of this). Plus they let you send relevant messages based on the customer journey to the product, communicating with users in their language, using interactive elements and gamification to engage customers during the holiday season – it is a direct path to "love for years."

• Use live agents to assist your customers 

While chatbots can help respond to many questions,  you still need real agents to take on more taxing customer queries. 86% of users expect chatbots to always be able to transfer to a live agent – this is even more important during the holiday season, when customers need gift-finding assistance from retail consultants online. Viber Business Messages’ two-way conversation feature lets real assistants guide shoppers’ gift choices, consult on size or product characteristics, and help in gift assemblance or installation.

Live agents can also take on board customer feedback to provide better customer service, and turn new leads from the holiday season into loyal clients.

• Use complex mobile marketing campaigns 

Advanced strategy of holiday season mobile marketing can help you stand out among the array of businesses running online.

For example, Coca-Cola devised an animated game to engage users in a fun way around Easter time. Easter Egg Fighter within Viber messenger plays on the time-honored Eastern Europe tradition of a coloured Easter Egg fight. The aim? To destroy your opponent’s egg, but playing online through a mobile game instead of in the real world. That way, users can play against anyone, regardless of where they are in the world.

Coca-Cola’s mobile marketing campaign included creative Viber Sticker pack with free downloads that let new users subscribe to the chatbot, a promotion within the Coca-Cola Community on Viber, and personalised messages to bring chatbot subscribers into the game.

The results were staggering: in Bulgaria alone, it achieved 350,000 user interactions, an average user play time of over five-and-a-half minutes, and a total played minutes of over 188,000. The number of chatbot subscribers increased by 30%, and sticker pack downloads totalled over 63,000.

Coca-Cola Easter campaign in Bulgaria on Viber

• Reduce cart abandonment

Consumers abandon their carts in anywhere between 70% and 90% of cases and reducing these numbers might become a real struggle for business during the peak season of holiday shopping. 

Messaging apps can help businesses reduce cart abandonment during the holiday season by sending personalized, proactive reminders, greetings and discounts. In the case of Viber for Business solutions this can be done via Viber Business Messages or Viber Chatbots.

For example Comfy, a leading Ukrainian retailer, used Viber Business Messages to enhance its communication channels, reducing the number of customers abandoning shopping carts. By combining an immediate reach, rich media and compelling CTAs – all linking to their website or targeted actions – they achieved a 10% higher turnover and 30% higher conversion rate than SMS.

• Update customers on their shipping details

Customers want to know where their orders are and to have an opportunity to control delivery time, especially when waiting for the presents to arrive on time for the holidays. In one study, 41% of consumers ranked fast and reliable delivery as one of their top considerations when shopping online. With business messages on messaging apps, you can alert customers when their order is ready and set a suitable time for the parcel to arrive, reducing customer frustration. A priceless holiday marketing idea for a busy shopping time.

Just ask D Express, a technically forward-thinking express courier service based in Serbia. It enlisted Viber to improve its mobile marketing strategy and enhance its communication with its customers by letting them track their deliveries. Customers receive an automated and personalized message updating them on their delivery. They can then reply whenever it's convenient to a Viber business account directly for more information or redirect the shipment.

Because there is no waiting for a call operator to answer, customer response times are vastly improved. Customers enter a PIN code for delivery validation, and in case of an unsuccessful delivery attempt they will receive a notification summarising their options.

The results speak for themselves: 85% of D Express’ 300,000 monthly Business Messages were delivered first time – that’s 15% more compared to before they started using Viber. This helped D Express improve its service, boosting the customer experience and engendering trust and loyalty within its customer base.

With the holiday season approaching, businesses should include mobile digital platforms in their marketing strategies to reach the peak of holiday revenue. By leveraging mobile marketing businesses can become closer to their customers through a more intimate communication channel and put customers only one click away from the purchase. Viber for Business solutions can help businesses simplify customer support and interactions, benefit customer experience and allow businesses to provide better services during the most intense shopping season. 

If you would like to learn more about Viber marketing throughout the year, do not hesitate to contact us.