In the National Retail Federation data, the direct correlation between the age of a consumer and his or her likelihood to plan to go shopping over Thanksgiving weekend is striking: almost half of shoppers between 18 and 34 say they definitely plan to hit the stores. If you can segment your customers by age group, perhaps use one email message to push younger customers into your stores, while separately targeting “older” shoppers (um, 35 and older) with messages about how much your online store will help them avoid the crowds and find great gift ideas and specials – all backed by your guarantee to get those shipments there in plenty of time.
Finally, don’t forget to use other online vehicles to promote your brick and mortar stores – fewer than half of retailers surveyed planned to leverage their home page to get out the word about in-store specials and events for Black Friday, and just one third planned to use search marketing for this purpose – either a reflection of lingering channel conflict issues, or just an odd (unfortunate?) oversight of two prime online promotion vehicles.