“Home Depot says it sold out of an early drop of Halloween decor almost immediately,” declares a headline on CNBC from earlier in August and goes on to claim that “Companies such as Walmart and Target are hoping to benefit from similar trends this holiday season.”
According to the report, it started when the brand offered site visitors an early look at Halloween items – and sold out “almost immediately.”
“That’s a very strong indication that people are still going to engage in decorating,” management told analysts during a conference call.
But here on PostFunnel, we say: we don’t really care if people will be decorating or not. And this is not what WE are reading into this. For us, it’s a much more exciting indicator – and it has everything to do with CRM Marketing and the holidays.
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You see, Holiday Season is traditionally the best time of year to acquire new customers. But, what’s also very traditional is that these cohorts – of “holiday season new customers” – are significantly less valuable than your “regular new customers.”
The numbers couldn’t be more definite – these customers buy less when they come in, don’t come back at the same rates, and generally churn in higher rates, and their customer lifetime value is lower compared to those “normal times’ new customers.”
The reasons are also obvious, at least to the CRM Marketing experts who work here. It’s got everything to do with:
- The sentiment/incentive that brought them in
- The treatment/attention they receive from the brand, with an emphasis on Customer Relationships
About #1, they come in because they’re usually on a shopping spree that time of year, and they are less brand-sensitive and more opportunity-sensitive when they do as opposed to normal “new customers” that usually come in the first place thanks to things that are more related to your brand and ongoing marketing efforts.
About #2, it’s got a lot to do with marketing teams’ focus. While almost 70% of respondents told CommerceNext that they will increase focus on Retention/Loyalty Marketing (more than any other marketing initiative) for the second half of 2021, less than 50% said they will focus on Retention/Loyalty during the holidays (ranked 4th), as they again focus on acquisition and ecommerce site experience more than anything else.
In other words, the marketers who responded to the CommerceNext survey from June 2021 knew how TO SAY the right things regarding retention and loyalty (two staples of CRM Marketing). But when push comes to shove and the opportunity to gain loads of new customers around the holidays shows up again, they revert to their old habit.
Even in the face of what the numbers tell them about these cohorts. If those numbers could really speak, maybe they would say something like “easy comes, easy goes.”
One thing smart marketing teams should seriously look into is how they can start alluring these “holiday shoppers” earlier – then use the leeway to treat them with the best, most personalized, effective, and scalable Customer Relationship messaging and campaigns they can. So that when the holidays do come around, these early-bird cohorts would be worth more, instead of less.
What Home Depot did with its Halloween collection in mid-August may not have been a deliberate attempt to catch these holiday shoppers early (so that it could treat them better and earn their loyalty before the holidays come around). But this is exactly what it should mean.
That, and that people missed decorating stuff. Sure.