12 personalization tactics for the most successful holiday ever

The last two years of Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) were unlike any other. Going into this year, there is still uncertainty in what to expect. Although consumers may not necessarily spend less this holiday season, their shopping behaviors have definitely shifted.

In light rising inflation, consumers are potentially less loyal and more price-sensitive. They’re also doing their holiday shopping a lot earlier. To make the most out of every engaged shopper on your site, you need to help your customer cut through all the product choices and focus them on a highly targeted, personalized shopping experience.

Data-driven personalized shopping suggestions used to be limited to only the biggest eCommerce sites. Now, LimeSpot helps anyone achieve the same effect across hundreds or even thousands of customers, without you having to lift a finger.

With LimeSpot, you can:

Upsell and promote trending items: We can promote specific Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals to the right customers by upselling as they purchase other items or show them trending items as they browse.

A/B test personalization setups: You’ll be able to reliably test different personalization techniques and recommendation widgets to identify the best-converting setup for your webstore. These analytics can be gathered in real-time so that you are always working with the most up-to-date information on customer preferences.

Reach customers at the right time. Your customers will see suggestions when they’re ready to make a purchasing decision, whether it’s on your homepage, product detail pages, or cart.

You’ll see how you can implement those strategies with the following tactics. The first set covers examples of what you can do to make your homepage more impactful. The second set covers how you can extend personalization beyond your site and into your holiday email campaigns.

Personalization tactics for your homepage

Preparing your site for the holiday season is key to driving those conversions and gift sales (as well as wish list wants!) - and it all starts with the home page.

If you're looking for some easy solutions to tailor your home page for gift-giving, look no further. All of these tactics take minimal time, effort, or development resources.

1. Highlight your bestsellers: The holidays are the peak season for people to visit your site that have possibly never been there before - likely because they're shopping for someone on their list. If they know someone on their list is a fan of your brand or store, make sure your homepage highlights your bestsellers to give shoppers unfamiliar with your brand a jumping off point to learn more.

2. Show product they recently viewed: The likelihood of someone visiting your site, finding a gift they want to buy, and immediately purchasing it are pretty low. Customers tend to leave the site to think things over, search for coupon codes, compare prices, or research other items before deciding your item is 'the one'. Save shoppers the hassle of trying to remember a product name by simply displaying what they looked at most recently.

3. Create a featured collection: The great thing about featured collections is they give your customers an immediate chance to preview what gift ideas you've got in store from the homepage, rather than having to find a gift guide that they think 'might' have what they're looking for. And since customers can add products to their cart right from your recommendation boxes, this can also speed up your time to checkout.
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4. Promote region-specific offers and policies: Whether you ship locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally, chances are you have different fulfillment options for different geolocations. LimeSpot allows you to serve up different content and recommendations based on a customer's location. You could use this to promote BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store) availability when a shopper is near a retail location, free in-store pickup, discounted local delivery, and more.

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5. ‍Spotlight different gift guides to different audiencesChances are you've got more than one gift guide this holiday season, likely based on budget, gender, age, interests, or some other factor. The challenge becomes how do you spotlight them all without overwhelming your shoppers? With LimeSpot, you can change any HTML element on your site based on your customer's browsing or purchasing behavior to promote a specific gift guide.

6. A/B/n test your personalization strategy: It's all too easy to get wrapped up in an idea you love, but putting all your merchandizing and personalization eggs in one basket is a risky proposition.A/B/n testing often and early in your holiday campaign is essential to ensure you've got the ideal promotion, message, and imagery served up to your customers when the apex of peak shopping season hits.

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Personalized recommendations for your holiday email campaigns

Your website is just one piece of the puzzle. For the best customer experience, email promotions should carry over the personalized experience your customers got on your website.

These email promotions can be timed well in advance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday so that customers have plenty of time to learn about the great deals they’re going to get. Because of personalized recommendations, these emails are far more likely to convert than a monster email containing every promo in your website.

Here are some ways to personalize your 2023 holiday email campaigns:

7. Include 1:1 personalized recommendations in your holiday emails: Serve up a more tailored experience by including recommendations tailored to that customer’s buying habits or previous purchases. It’s as simple as adding LimeSpot recommendation boxes and letting our smart algorithms do the work. Your customers will be more motivated to click through your emails when they see products that align with what they've already shown interest in.

8. Tailor the headline, hero image, and CTA in your holiday emails: Customize any HTML element in your emails, including images, CTAs, and text, based on a customer's browsing or buying behavior. For example, customers that have repeatedly bought from one collection (like 'Men's Running Shoes') may see a hero image and headline that promotes new arrivals in that collection, while others might see a totally different image and copy based on their interests (such as shopping 'Women's Leggings'). The possibilities for segmentation are limitless.

9. Keep customers clicking even if they can't checkout (yet): An out of stock item can mean your customer journey grinds to a halt. However, getting your customers to sign up for restock notifications is a great way to capture emails without much friction. LimeSpot can help you turn this dead end into a conversion and turn a brick wall into a potential purchase.

10. Boost the effectiveness of your abandoned cart emails: One way to get even more action on your abandoned cart emails? Highlight things the customer may have missed with 1:1 personalized cross-sell recommendations based on what the customer left in their cart or their browsing behavior before they left your store.

This tactic works for two reasons. For one thing, it reminds customers of what they were already interested in. If they weren't quite moved to buy just one or a couple of items, highlighting other things they might love is a surefire way to boost their interest.

11. Line up your next sales by making the most of post-purchase emails: It's really easy to forget about the sales potential of your post-purchase transactional emails, including order confirmations, shipping notifications, and review requests. But you can insert LimeSpot recommendation boxes into all of these emails, serving up tailored product recommendations based on the product a customer has just purchased. Open rates on transactional emails tend to be as high as 80-85%, while most marketing emails average somewhere around 20-25%, making this an unsung spot to tee up your next sale.

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12. Create holiday FOMO for your trending items (on autopilot!): Let customers know which products are selling like hotcakes to inspire social proof and purchase urgency by inserting Trending recommendations into an email. LimeSpot's Trending boxes highlight which products are going viral on your store, based on the number of page views, purchases, and other activities from your most recent traffic. The more traffic you have, the more frequently your Trending boxes will update - anywhere from 3 hours to 24 hours.

Personalized recommendations = results. It's really that simple. Luckily, so is LimeSpot. If you're interested in taking your website and email strategy to the next level, install LimeSpot Personalizer today or contact your LimeSpot rep to get started.