As a marketing manager, are you planning marketing campaigns for your e-commerce by 2018? If so, you are interested in reading this article.

As always, from DigitalMakers we try to approach each topic in an eminently practical way. What we want is to help our clients achieve their business objectives.

We will begin by defining the most basic aspects to, finally, explain how to carry out each concrete action.

What is a marketing campaign for an e-commerce?

In DigitalMakers we understand as a marketing campaign for an e-commerce that set of actions related to each other, with the same objective and designed for a specific period of time.

 

To start up any marketing campaign for the e-commerce of our company, we must first answer the following questions:

• What is the title of the campaign?
• On what date does the campaign start and end?
• What objective do we pursue?
• What metrics will serve us later to know if the campaign has been successful?
• To whom?
• What actions does this campaign consist of?

As an example, we can have a campaign defined as follows:

• Title of the campaign: Blackfriday promotion
• On what date the campaign starts and ends:
  • The actions begin on Thursday 11/22/2018 at 4:00 p.m., and generate expectation until 23:59 h.
  • The validity period of the discounts starts on Thursday 11/22/2018 at 23:59 and ends on Friday 11/23/2018 at 23:59.
• Objective:
  • Release residual stocs
  • Increase sales by 20% compared to the average of usual Fridays.
• Definition of metrics:
  • Absolute volume of average billing on Friday of the year.
• To whom it is addressed: To all potential potential customers. Therefore we will make use of all the existing databases. Specifically: MailChimp subscribers; everyone who has ever bought in our e-commerce; followers of social networks (twitter, facebook and instagram).
• Actions of this campaign:
  • Agree article references and discounts. The discounts will only be valid 24 hours on 11/23/2018. Those actions that we do outside of this period will be to generate excitement.
  • Banner on the homepage of our e-commerce, to ensure that the first impact of any visitor is to see the promotion.
    • The banner must be displayed during the entire period of the promotion.
  • Newsletter:
    • It will be sent on 11/22/2018 at 4:00 p.m. and we will inform you that at 23:59 the big discounts will begin.
  • Twitter. Define a post for each hour.
  • Faceboook. Define two tables for each day.
  • Instagram. Define one post per day.
    

Why carry out a marketing campaign for an e-commerce?

When we carry out periodic marketing campaigns, we achieve two main effects:

1. We impact on the possible interested clients. Remember that to get a sale, at least we have to get hit 10 times.
2. We take concrete actions to achieve specific objectives of the campaign.

What criteria should a good marketing campaign follow?

From DigitalMakers, we recommend that your marketing campaign be true to your brand positioning. That is, if your brand is distinguished by offering low prices, the campaign should really offer prices that are groundbreaking compared to the competition. Otherwise, we could cause a rejection effect.

What should we expect from a marketing campaign?

Nothing more or nothing less than what we have defined within the initial basic parameters. For example, it is not correct to communicate to the team that the goal is to increase sales by 20%, and then complain because despite having achieved it, we have only obtained 3 new clients.

If we achieve the goal set initially, we should always consider it a success. For future campaigns, we can focus on working other objectives (increase average ticket, get new customers, get more recurrence of those who are already customers, etc).

Should we manage campaigns in the same way for all sectors? B2C or B2B?

Absolutely not.

Each sector, each client, each brand and, therefore, each e-commerce have their own personality and we have to adapt the parameters to each specific case.

How to plan marketing campaigns with your team? How long in advance should the calendar be prepared?

The DigitalMakers team always recommend working on 12-month annual projects that can be extended (it is a good measure to identify trends and even results).

We advise to follow this approach:

• A meeting to plan the next 12 months in broad strokes, identifying the campaigns that will be carried out (for example, one per month).
• A meeting prior to the start of the campaign, to gather the team involved and define the basic parameters. Ideally, this meeting is held one month before the start of the campaign.
• A subsequent meeting, to measure the results and identify points of improvement for the next campaign. Ideally this meeting is held the same week immediately after the end of the campaign.

E-commerce calendar Spain – 2018

Next, we present a base calendar for the Spanish market. But first, as a marketing manager, you should sit down with your team and discuss these two points:

1. Choose which campaigns you will launch.
2. Once you have the chosen campaigns:
   1. Make a first approximation to the period in which they will be executed.
   2. Put the dates in the meetings (before and after).

We recommend being 100% realistic. It can be very discouraging to plan 12 campaigns and finally just execute 4. Let’s start being conservative, we will always be in time to expand the campaigns.

The 2018 e-commerce calendar for the Spanish market to review is:

• January 1: New Year
• January 5: Wise men night
• January 6: Wise men
• January 7: Start sales
• February 14: Valentine’s Day
• February 26: Carnival
• February 28: Last day winter sales
• March 19: Father’s Day
• March 21: Start of Spring
• April 9: Palm Sunday (Holy Week)
• April 16: Easter Sunday
• April 23: Catalonia Day / Sant Jordi / Day of the book and lovers in Catalonia
• May 7: Mother’s Day
• June 21: Verbena San Juan / Beginning of summer
• July 1: Start of summer sales
• August 31: Last day of summer sales
• September 1: Back to school
• November 23: BlackFriday
• November 26: Cybermonday
• December 21: Start of winter
• December 24-25: Christmas
• December 26: San Esteban
• December 31: End of the year

So far our recommendations to plan the marketing campaigns of your e-commerce for 2018. As you have seen, it is essential to have a calendar to carry out each specific action.

If after reading our article you have any questions, you can write us or leave us a comment.