By Allie Naughton, Client Strategy Manager, Listrak
While for many retailers, the holiday season is just getting started, for big box retail marketers, the race to the holidays has been well underway.
“It’s barely the start of fall and yet, by some measures, the holiday season is in full swing,” reported CNBC back in early September, noting holiday seasonal décor items were already on display at a local Costco at that time, with some items even starting to sell out.
As price continues to matter most, and supply chain shifts drive uncertainty around stock availability, consumers began shopping for the holiday season as early as the summer.
For big box retailers looking ahead at the holiday season, a focus on e-commerce can help drive success.
In discussing its quarterly earnings, Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon, said Walmart expected to have a strong holiday season, noting positive back-to-school shopping trends. A big driver of Walmart’s momentum? Its e-commerce growth. Walmart US reported a 26% increase in e-commerce, marking a two-year growth of 48%.
For big box retailers, e-commerce continues to be a growth lever, rising when total sales are flat.
Here are three ways for big box retail marketers to leverage e-commerce to drive growth:
Focus on High-Value Carts
Today’s consumers are increasingly comfortable with buying big-ticket items online, digging deeper into online reviews, and feeling confident to buy based on knowing how the item worked for other people, rather than having to go into the store and see it first before buying.
For marketers, it is crucial to tailor abandonment strategies for these carts. Trigger extending abandonment journeys with higher-value incentives once a cart crosses a certain threshold. Also consider adding reviews inside an email to demonstrate how consumers have trusted to buy big-ticket items online versus in store.
Memberships and Subscriptions Help Revenue Growth
Membership and subscriptions are driving margin while discretionary spending dips.
Target, Walmart, Lowe’s and other leading retailers all have loyalty programs and promote annual subscription. Target indicated their non-merchandise growth was +14.2% in Q2, while Walmart noted their membership revenue was up 15.3% year-over-year.
Marketers can seek to leverage recurring campaigns to try to convert users with purchase behavior into members/loyalists, highlighting the value and benefits of joining, as well as highlighting existing membership/loyalty benefits for those already in the program to keep shopping.
Leverage AI Recommendations & Dynamic Content in Traditional Marketing Sends
Broadcast email sends jumped in the category this year, and SMS, closely tied to the in-store experience, saw CTR increase 20.9% Q2 YoY, with sends and revenue rising dramatically year-over-year,proving more Big Box retailers are adopting and winning in the SMS channel.
For broadcast email, since big box retailers offer a wide range of SKUs, using dynamic content and personalized recommendations to highlight the most relevant category for each shopper is tablestakes. This can be within time-sensitive content such as weekly ads, that can pull out the products/assortments that matter most to the end consumer. Truly personalize the entire content of the email from header to footer, instead of just relying on dynamic production recommendations is the current trend.
Similarly for SMS, tailor outreach by category, using keyword campaigns to drive SMS opt-ins for specific content/categories the big box retailer offers. Leverage in-store traffic to promote sign-ups, deploying QR codes that trigger SMS keywords, and location-specific popups or barcodes for in-store use. With the time sensitive nature and smaller character count in SMS, being personalized helps convert & drive in-store traffic.
The bottom line
By strategically leveraging their e-commerce platforms, big box retailers can win the holiday season – and power growth throughout the year.
About the Author
Allie Naughton is Client Strategy Manager at Listrak, which recently issued its Big Box Retail Playbook.
