A Killer Cyber Sales Week

Online shopping for the month of November has hit $15 billion, a 15% increase compared to last year, comScore says.

Discounting efforts by some online retailers, including Amazon.com and Apple, in the hopes of bringing some of the mall’s Black Friday magic to the Web appear to have paid off.

With a 26% jump over last year, the day after Thanksgiving saw the highest increase in spending compared to 2010 than any other period in November, according to comScore. However, online spending on Cyber Monday still outpaced Black Friday by a healthy margin, the research says.

This year, the Monday after Thanksgiving became the biggest shopping day in the history of the Internet, with an estimated $1.25 billion spent online. Monday was the highest-grossing online shopping day in U.S. history, with spending reaching $1.25 billion, That’s up 22% from the previous record, which was last year’s Cyber Monday. (from CNN.com/Comscore)

How did your online marketing programs compare to these benchmarks?

Here’s a sampling of ShoppeSimple client results from Cyber Week November 23rd through the 30th.

Client One: added $29,000 from their ShoppeSimple Program during Cyber Week on  256 visitors to their ShoppeSimple landing pages. This client is in our lifestyle vertical and has a mostly male audience. They received $113 dollars per visitor and paid an ad spend of 2.8% through monthly subscription fees.

Client Two: added $91,000 from their ShoppeSimple Program during Cyber Week. They saw 6,699 visits to their landing pages through the program. The client is in our gift vertical and has a mostly female audience. They received $13.54 dollars per visitor and paid an ad spend of .5% through monthly subscription fees.

Client Three: added $46,000 from their ShoppeSimple Program during Cyber Week. They saw 3,003 visits to their landing pages through the program. The client is in our gift vertical and has a 50/50 male/female audience. They received $15.31 dollars per visitor and paid an ad spend of 2.4% through monthly subscription fees.

Client Four: A new client launched 10 days prior to Thanksgiving and did $8,500 in the ShoppeSimple Program during Cyber Week with 7,481 visits. The client is a multi-channel marketer with general merchandise stores and has mostly a female audience. They received $1.13 dollars per visitor and paid an ad spend of 2.0% through monthly subscription fees. This client is 50% ahead of a comparable client launched at the same time last year who has had over $1.4 Million in ShoppeSimple annual program revenue in one year’s time at a 2.4% ad spend.

But what did Cyber Week teach us about Mobile Commerce?

Could Mobile Commerce help you close the gap in your sales?

Morgan Stanley says Global smartphone usage in 2011 is around 835 Million subscribers’ vs 5.6 Billion Phone Subscribers. Just imagine the quantum change coming at all of our businesses as it’s obvious that there’s tremendous headroom for Smartphone and Tablet growth still ahead of us.

Let’s take a moment and also look through our rear view mirror. . .

You know that iPods changed the media/music landscape.  iPhones ramped even faster. Now, according to Morgan Stanley, iPads will leave their “i-siblings” in the dust.   And don’t forget about Google as Android phones are scaling even faster than the iPhone*.

The mobile marketing opportunity grows even more challenging when you look at eMarketer’s Reasons for In-store/Online Abandonment from Smartphone Users (a 7/2011report)

They state that a consumer ‘mobile abandoned’ because they:

  1. Found it online through mobile search at a better price
  2. Found it at another store through mobile search at a better price

Morgan Stanley also reports that your consumer’s Mobile Search is already four times greater than it was in 2010! *

So, when you look at what’s coming from Mobile Search and the potential affects this could have on your existing business as Marketers in shopping abandonment, how will you defend your business? Should you just wait and watch or should you go on the mobile offensive?

ShoppeSimple clients already see high Mobile Visitor counts

For Cyber Week, between 10.0% and 23.5% of all visitors generated from all ShoppeSimple client programs visited client-landing pages on a Mobile or Tablet platform. We expect this to continue to scale quickly in 2012.

Catch The Mobile Wave in 2012!

We recommend that you start by determining . . .

  • Your Mobile visitor rate by Smartphone device.  This will help you align your initial mobile investments with the devices your consumers are using today.
  • Your Mobile revenue level.  Just because you may not see mobile dollars being called out as material in your analytic yet, can be sure that there are not consumers already shopping your site from their mobile device or tablet?

Knowing your current mobile playing field, however insignificant you believe it to be will provide clearer direction as you build your go-forward mobile strategy. And no, a mobile program doesn’t always require a huge investment of resources.

ShoppeSimple Answers To Your Mobile Marketing Challenge

Without requiring any resources from your IT team, ShoppeSimple can help your business bridge the gap to Mobile. We can help your business quickly set sail (or should I say, ‘get sales’) on the Mobile Wave so you can generate mobile sales soon… not months from now.

You receive the following through our ‘Get Daily Offers’ mobile platform:

  • Our patent-pending ShoppeFetch engine that enables you to easily create and distribute relevant and personalized product offers daily to your consumers on their Mobile phones which they can also share on  Facebook and Twitter. And as always, the consumer is driven back to your website for conversion.
  • A robust set of ShoppeSimple Mobile analytics to help you develop a cost effective mobile strategy and identify which Mobile platforms to pursue and when.
  • Mobile enabled landing pages (branded micro-sites) built on-the-fly for you for all Smartphone devices and Tablet platforms.
  • The ability for you to build an opt-in database of mobile phone numbers that you can market to immediately because you own this data under pure permission with your consumer.
  • The ability for you to take advantage of all the unique “wherever you are” benefits of Mobile marketing like leveraging your stores through barcode marketing and driving additional business through QR codes on your catalog.

You simply won’t believe how easy it is to accomplish all of the above!  And once again, we do it all without requiring any assistance from your internal IT, time or resources.

If you’re looking for an easy to implement, cost effective way to introduce Mobile marketing into your business in 2012, I’d welcome your call at 612-349-2740 or email me at jeff@shoppesimplenetwork.com.

Best,

Jeffery

Founder/CEO

 

 

 

 

*From the Internet Trends Conference Web 2.0 Summit (Mary Meeker – Morgan Stanley)