With the ongoing panic and evolving landscape that COVID has placed on our everyday lives, consumers along with fashion brands are scrambling to adjust. Being ahead in both consumer purchasing trends and potential internal inventory issues is critical to ensuring your brand is prepared during these uncertain times.
As social distancing and isolation measures expand, opportunities to see increased transactions from changes in consumer behavior and bottom-of-funnel acquisition is critical!
What You Should Be Doing
- Maximize the bottom of the funnel – now is a great time to introduce SMS and build out cart abandonment sequences.
- Re-launch Branded paid search campaigns – do not lose market share to your wholesalers. With many retail stores closed, consumers must now go online.
- Inform your customers of store closures, changes in business hours and how they still place an order online. Update GoogleMyBusiness accordingly.
- Augment In-Store staff to online live chat and customer service agents.
- Offer financing. We have seen a significant increase in consumers using Affirm and AfterPay.
- Offer expedited shipping. We have seen a surge in demand for 1-day and 2-day shipping.
- Promote items that have a lower return rate and include a friendly reminder with all orders that customers should wash their hands with soap or hand sanitizer before handling product.
- Reframe marketing messaging around “Stay at Home” – promote items that are soft, cozy, comfortable or warm.
- Run a campaign around donating a percent or fixed dollar amount of each sale to the Red Cross or World Health Organization.
- Test the desktop and mobile versions of your website to confirm everything is working properly.
- Reduce risk – Businesses cannot afford either the emotional or financial loss of sales due to development bugs or outages. Focus development on site speed enhancements rather than starting a new site redesign project.
- Ask us about our proprietary tactics to recapture clients that may have been shopping for your brand in physical retail environments like Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue. Learn how to bring that audience into your ecommerce ecosystem now, through proven digital strategy tactics developed by our team.
What You Should Avoid Doing
- Do not run a campaign with a discount code like COVID19 for 19% off sitewide.
- Do not intentionally build collections or campaigns focused on COVID-19.
- Avoid making claims that could open up your business to legal liability. Claims like “None of our employees have COVID-19” or “We guarantee safe delivery”.
2019 brought unprecedented growth in ecom as consumers continued expanding the gap between retail and online sales. Those who were hesitant or downright against placing orders for apparel online are now being forced to pivot their shopping habits. The long-term impact of utilizing e-commerce and mobile devices leads to consumers continuing these behaviors in the future.
During the SARS pandemic of 2002-2004, Alibaba morphed from a small ecommerce company to being the premier retail establishment in Asia. It is not always comfortable finding ways to grow and profit while watching others falter. Those who have been through the most recent economic crises understand that there is light at the end of the tunnel for those that are prepared. Our goal is to extract more value from consumers and improve customer loyalty in the process. Investing in your largest growth segment is critical to increasing your revenue stream. Knowing which channels have the lowest customer acquisition cost (CAC) will allow you to increase marketing spend in the correct areas.
If you are a brand that has come to realize the importance of maximizing your ecommerce sales during these unprecedented times, please reach out to us via our contact page. You will be sent times to speak with our CEO directly and have an honest and transparent conversation about your digital needs. SkyDiamond looks forward to partnering with you in increasing your revenue and brand growth!
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