Ecommerce Blog

Last January we held a webinar called 12 Things Retailers Must Learn from Christmas 2007. It’s basically a webinar on event marketing year-round, not just Christmas so check it out as Valentine’s Day is just around the corner…

I will add one thing we can learn from Christmas 2008 courtesy of Google Trends. Looking back at trends for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and what we call here in Canada “Boxing Day” (December 26) we find some interesting searches that savvy retailers can plan to bid on for next year in PPC.

Christmas Eve

The keyword “stores open on Christmas eve” is perfect to geo-target local brick-and-mortar stores or promote your online store open 24/7 with overnight delivery, especially considering search volume peaked at 4pm PST!

Christmas Day

“Stores open on Christmas Day” peaked at 9am PST and was even hotter than the Christmas Eve search. This NowPublic article was the top news result so do remember to reach out to your journalists and bloggers locally and nationally if your physical locations are open next year.

After-Christmas-sale and even December-26-sale keywords also were popular on Christmas day, so consider broad or phrase matching the following (of course you can expand this list, but you get the idea):

“after christmas sale”
“after christmas sales”
“after christmas sale 2009″
“after christmas sales 2009″
“after christmas clearance”
“after christmas deals”
“after christmas discounts”
“after christmas bargains”
“after christmas markdowns”
“2008 after christmas sale”
“december 26 sale”
“post-christmas sale”
“post christmas deals”
“after xmas sale”
“after xmas sales”
“after x mas sale”
“after x mas sales”

You can let these keywords run right into January, although trend data suggests these searches die at the beginning of the New Year.

Next Free Ecommerce Webinar…

Selecting the Right Ecommerce Software in Six Weeks or Less

When: January 21st, 2009 @ 9am PT/12pm ET
Panelists:
Bill Mirabito, Founder and Principal Analyst, B2C Partners
Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend…

You may also like these similar posts:

• Last-Minute Holiday Marketing Tactics for Online Retailers
• Free Keyword Trend Data With Google Keyword Tool
• Hack Week Part 2 - Using Google Trends for International Search Marketing
• The Best of Get Elastic: 2008
• Leap Year Marketing - Inspiration From Online Retailers

Original post by Linda Bustos

A

Original post by Robert Scoble

The holiday shopping season is now in full swing, and while there’s still plenty of time for online shoppers to receive their orders by Christmas (or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa), not receiving an order on time is a concern for consumers. Great online stores ease the fears by providing holiday shipping cutoff dates and making this information easy to find on home pages and product pages. Let’s take a look at some examples:

Bed Bath and Beyond

Tagline: “Holiday Shipping Cutoff Dates”

Bed Bath and Beyond dedicates some central home page real estate to its holiday shipping information:

And it’s not limited to just Christmas, either:

(more…)

Is Your Affiliate Program Your Top Sales Generator? If Not…
Free webinar: Tuesday, December 11th, 9am PT / 12pm ET:
Affiliate Marketing: What Every Retailer Ought to Know
Guest Panelist: Shawn Collins, Author, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants

Original post by Linda Bustos

Gift cards are the perfect solution to many shopping problems — your giftee is tough to shop for, lives miles away or it’s 11pm Christmas Eve and the only store still open is the Safeway (with a nice variety of gift cards hanging in the checkout aisle). Whatever the reason, $26.3 Billion worth of gift cards will be given this holiday. Between 56% and 69% of shoppers will give at least one (NRF Gift Card Survey, Consumer Reports and Deloitte), with an average of 5 gift cards per consumer and 16% giving 10 or more (Deloitte).

Not only do people love giving gift cards, they love getting them. Gift cards top the wish lists of consumers polled by BIGResearch and the National Retail Foundation with 53.8% of adults 18 and older indicating they would like to receive them for Christmas this year (62% of women and 45% of men).

But 27% won’t end up using their gift cards according to the NRF survey (up from 19% last year). The most common reasons reported by respondents were “not enough time to shop” or “couldn’t find anything.” Other reasons include forgetting about them, losing them or not using them in time. This equates to around $8 Billion in unredeemed cards based on last years’ sales of $24.8 Billion.

(more…)

Is Your Affiliate Program Your Top Sales Generator? If Not…
Free webinar: Thursday, December 6th, 9am PT / 12pm ET:
Affiliate Marketing: What Every Retailer Ought to Know
Guest Panelist: Shawn Collins, Author, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants

Original post by Linda Bustos