Dotmailer (Skip Fidura)

Editor's Notes

1. This is mission control in Houston in 1969…
2. …and this is the same room today. The explosion in screens is a great example of these changes. So, not only do consumers have a lot more choice in when and where they interact with your marketing, their expectations have completely changed.
3. Email is Dead!! Very Wrong…. Its alive & well In fact email is Mobile! It’s the number one used app on your phone. It’s easily to use when doing multichannel It acquires & enhances your data It also enhances your social media campaigns
4. Email is alive & well. It’s the preferred mode of marketing for consumers. The key stat for me here is the Millennials… I keep hearing that they will not use email. However the stats prove otherwise…  They are in fact the most prolific users of email on their smartphones.
5. In fact in my opinion Email is the digital key to all marketing! Email is the number 1 marketing tool for retailers
6. Before we start off, I would like to apologise. As an American I am ashamed to be part of the culture that brought you Hannah Montana, Trump and Starbucks. More than that however, I am ashamed of Black Friday.
7. Black Friday was never meant to be exported. It is like American rules football – something that other cultures can appreciate and enjoy but really never understand. Black Friday doesn’t even make sense out side of the US where it is the day after the national holiday Thanksgiving and marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. Here it is just a random Friday where everybody seemingly goes crazy. At some point in the future, anthropologists will look back on this time and conclude that Black Friday was some kind of ritualistic cull of the weak …
8. … but it doesn’t have to be that way. Even in the US a backlash to has been developing. Last year REI who is a large retailer specialising on out door activities like hiking, camping and cycling decided that not only were they going to skip the Black Friday discounting, they were going to skip Black Friday all together.
9. Don’t misunderstand. This was not some sort of Scrooge approach to the holidays or the holiday shopping season, nor was REI specifically trying to ruin Christmas for all other retailers …
10. … they just recognised that for many parts of the US, this is the last weekend to enjoy the outdoors before the long winter sets in and why would anybody want to send the day in a crowded mall? While both this message and the sentiment perfectly fit with the REI brand, they like every other retailer depend on holidays sales to make their numbers for the year. How on earth could they afford to pass on the biggest retail day of the year? Was this just hubris? No, they had a plan. If they were able to engage their customer base, then they could get in just as many sales AND skip the day all together. Even better however, would be if they could not only move all of the Black Friday revenue to other days but the PR they would get with this strategy would attract loads more people to check them out, so actually they would smash it. The hastag #OptOutside garnered 6.7 BILLION (that’s with a ‘B’) media impressions 1.2 BILLION (again with a ‘B’) social impressions Inspired 1.4 million people to spend their day outdoors They were joined by over 150 business both large and small including ASDA But as we all know, impressions are great but in the words of Jerry McGuire – “Show me the MONEY!” They had to have a plan.
11. In order to keep the buzz going, retail marketers are creating new “events” and marketers from other sectors are jumping on the proverbial slay.
12. So, Black Friday kicked it off and while it has always been a big if the biggest day bon the retail calendar it is only relatively recently that stores would open at midnight and have deep discounts across the board. I suspect this more than anything else is what causes more than 70% of black Friday shoppers to also buy for themselves.
13. Cyber Monday is a result of the confluence of two things. First ecommerce marketers did not want to be left out but probably more than that this came out of the observation in 2005 that 77% of US retailers saw their online sales “increase substantially” on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
14. Last year the charity sector decided to get on the game by making us feel guilty for our largesse over the weekend and give something back to them.
15. Not to be outdone high street retailers got in on the act as well but while we are supposed to patronise small locally owned shops on the Saturday immediately after Black Friday, “Small Business Saturday” is a trademark of the American Express corporation.
16. Traditionally the first Monday in December, this is the day that if you are like me true panic sets in. You have gone through the Black Friday and Cyber Monday you have also had another week and weekend to think about what to buy and try to source it, but this is the day where UK shoppers look at their December diary and realise there is not enough time to go to all of the drinks functions, lunches with friends and Christmas parties as well as do all of the Christmas shopping that you need to get done.
17. I guess after all of this shopping, it is not surprising that we end up with “out of stock Saturday.” This is the day when retailers will be sufficiently out of stock that it starts to impact business. Obviously as a retailer, one of your goals through this whole of the lead-up to Christmas should be avoiding this day for your business.
18. Then we get to Christmas Eve, which should be spent with pub or in the pub but you know there will be the last minute shoppers out there. Not to mention Dad’s like me who will be enjoying a glass of wine and “some assembly required.”
19. Historically Boxing Day was the biggest day of the year, which has been usurped by the earlier days. That doesn’t’ however make this day less important but as we will discuss later this like Christmas Eve may be better placed for service messages.
20. Then we have barely cleaned up from New Years before we need to focus on sales again.
21. You should not look at this period as a series of discrete events it is a journey. The journey is different for each audience but the “mode of travel” and “destination” are the same.