The Cyber Five (Thanksgiving – Cyber Monday) this year broke all kinds of records and was an interesting departure from years past in several ways.  In this episode I welcome back to the podcast my business partner, Chris Brewer. We look at this holiday shopping season from a few different perspectives.  We talk in general terms about how our clients who are mostly in the $5 to $50 Million per year in sales did during the Cyber 5 and after. We also looked at trends and data from the largest ecomm companies.  

By the numbers….a Look at the Industry as a Whole.  

Here are just a few of the highlights we look at in this episode.

• Thanksgiving weekend was up 23% – total spend was $24.2 billion.  Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.
• Mobile spend was $10 billion of that (approaching half) and that’s up 44% from last year.  So doubling the growth rate of the holiday trend as a whole.
• Main Drivers of online sales
• Email at 26% – up 2% YoY
• Paid Search at 22% – up 6% YoY
• Social – minimal impact 1.3% of sales….(remember this stat is from the big guys, not mid-sized companies).

Surprises from our clients:

• Black Friday was our clients biggest day by a long shot with Cyber Monday finishing 2nd.
• Social continues to be a big investment for our clients but getting the same results as last year has been difficult mainly due to rising ad costs.
• YouTube big as well – one of the top 3 channels for several of our clients.

Winning Formula:

We talk about what our most successful clients did well so you can properly plan for next year.  We look at several winning tactics including:

• Email – build, cultivate and prime your email list for Cyber 5.  Multiple email reminders – often 3 per day.
• Start early – Wednesday even.  We found our most successful clients started sales or at least started promoting sales early. Consumers have finite dollars to spend, get their attention early and you’ll have a better chance to grab your share of wallet.
• Build your retargeting audiences early – our clients who had the most success had large lists of people who’ve visited their site in the past or viewed a YouTube video who we could then retarget.  

Mentioned in this Episode:

Wendell August Forge
Askinosie Chocolate
Holiday E-Commerce 2018 Data Analysis in 10 Charts
Dynamic Checkout Buttons
Ezra Firestone Official – Smart Marketer
2-Minute Crash Course on YouTube & TrueView Ads, with Brett Curry – Smart Marketer
How to Use YouTube to Scale eCommerce Ads – Smart Marketer

Connect with Guest:

Chris Brewer – Digital & eCommerce Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of OMG Commerce

via Linkedin
via Facebook
via Twitter
via Instagram

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