People love free stuff, and that includes free shipping. Shouldn’t you use this powerful incentive to pump up the performance of your holiday emails? When preparing your holiday promotions, you’ll want to make it a staple of your strategy. Here’s how to incorporate free shipping into your email marketing strategy this holiday season.
As you scramble to finalize your plans and offers for the 2019 holiday season, there’s no better time to take a closer look at your mobile app and mobile commerce strategy. Here are ways to help you boost app performance, deliver the CX shoppers expect and increase app downloads prior to Cyber Weekend.
The U.S. Postal Service is projecting it will handle 800 million packages between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, a drop from both 2018 and 2017. Sunday delivery will be expanded beginning Nov. 24 to high-volume urban locations, with projections of over 8 million package deliveries on Sundays in December.
UPS is projecting a 26% increase on “national returns day” on Jan. 2, when 1.9 million inbound packages are expected to hit its network as Q4 ecommerce continues to balloon. Another somewhat smaller returns peak of 1.6 million packages/day will hit the week of Dec. 16; the daily average that month will be 1 million, UPS said.
Children are making their holiday toy lists, and this year it goes beyond the traditional buying experience. Major retailers like Target, Walmart and Disney are reimagining ways to showcase popular toys and provide a more interactive experience than stores of the past, and Toys R Us is looking for an experiential comeback.
Best Buy is getting into the holiday spirit early and pushing back on major competitors, offering free next-day delivery on thousands of items from Thanksgiving through Christmas, and free standard shipping in the few areas where next day isn’t available. The company says it’s available in 42 U.S. markets, covering 99% of its customers.
UPS will not add a residential delivery surcharge this holiday peak season, unlike the past two years, but will add surcharges for larger packages and those requiring additional handling. The company expects to exceed record volume of 800 million packages set last year, with 75% of it handled by automated sortation systems.
By now you should have your peak holiday season planning for this year well underway. If you’re behind schedule, there’s still time to implement improvements but you need to be prudent and not over commit. To help you be prepared, here are 13 critical considerations for improving peak holiday season operations and fulfillment processes this year:
Retailers lowered the bar for Christmas season fulfillment, then easily cleared it, according to Kurt Salmon. Ninety-three percent of retailers tracked were able to process and deliver customer orders by the last guaranteed delivery date. But 33% of them ditched their last order promise date as Christmas approached.
Whatever the reason, the season, or the screen, let’s take a look at how online shoppers kicked off this holiday season. How did Gray November play out from a consumer spending standpoint? On which devices did consumers shop? What were some high volume email send times? Here are a few key highlights.