EP087 Election-Year Ecommerce Playbook: Winning 2024's High-Stakes Holiday Season
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[00:00:06] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, good day and welcome to another episode of Commerce Today. My name is Darin Newbold, and as always, our host with the most is Joshua Warren. And we're going to be talking about election year e commerce playbook winning in the 2024 high stakes holiday season.

[00:00:20] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So Darin, I figured what the internet really needs right now is two guys sitting around talking about politics in the election.

[00:00:27] DARIN NEWBOLD: Outstanding. Just

[00:00:28] JOSHUA WARREN: not enough of that, right? No. Um, I want to take a very e commerce specific, uh, look at this. And a lot of that is because, um, I'm realizing that the 2024 holiday shopping season is a really unique one. Um, so we have a lot of early shopping trends. We have inflation. Um, we also have the shortest possible.

[00:00:48] JOSHUA WARREN: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yeah. Um, 16 percent of consumers actually started shopping in June, so we're behind. and so, and of course, e commerce is expected to [00:01:00] grow almost 10 percent year over year this year. So it's going to be a good season. But it is going to be challenging, especially because the presidential election, um, obviously is the first week in November, and that's going to have some interesting implications on your ad strategies.

[00:01:15] DARIN NEWBOLD: I'm sure it will. I thought, uh, I thought I saw some, uh, holiday, uh, decorations and stuff already in the stores by June. but anyway. You mentioned the election. We know that that's going to be a significant challenge and, and what that looks like. But first and foremost, the big thing that really caught my eye was, this is the shortest holiday season.

[00:01:37] DARIN NEWBOLD: And I didn't even, I didn't realize this. So you have educated me, Josh, on, on what you're going to talk about here.

[00:01:43] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. And you probably didn't even notice last year. Last year was one of the longest possible. So basically the time from Thanksgiving to Christmas can be anything from 27 to 33 days. Last year we had 32 days. This year we only have 27 and that like, you know, like, Oh, what's, what's the big deal.

[00:01:58] JOSHUA WARREN: But the way I look at it [00:02:00] is Consumers are going to be busy because they're not just shopping. They're not just buying from you. They're going to holiday parties. They're planning their Christmas traditions. They're making their Christmas meals. They're sending Christmas cards. And last year they had 32 days to do that.

[00:02:14] JOSHUA WARREN: This year they have 27 and that is going to really compress schedules. Um, and I think that that's going to show up in some really interesting ways. We're going to talk about later in the, uh, the episode, but I think the way it's already shown up is that That's 16 percent of consumers that started back in June and now over 60 percent say that they're going to start their Christmas shopping well before Thanksgiving.

[00:02:36] DARIN NEWBOLD: I can only imagine. So what does this, what does this mean? The implications for the, for e commerce overall, I mean, are we going to have a, is this going to be a blowout black Friday and cyber Monday?

[00:02:47] JOSHUA WARREN: You know, I think in previous years that's what would've happened, but with everyone, when you look at even last year, the long holiday season, when you look at the numbers, people started early last year too, and people want deals, they want discounts.

[00:02:59] JOSHUA WARREN: [00:03:00] Retailers are responding and they're offering deals and discounts even well before Black Friday. So I think if anything, black Friday and Cyber Monday may be less of a peak than they have been in past years. And I think we may see more shopping in earlier in November. Um, which does get dicey when you realize that's when the election is as Well, so 

[00:03:20] DARIN NEWBOLD: let's talk about before we get to the election, we got to talk about the economy. So there's going to be economic factors that, that play in for sure. Kind of this ranges from sales projections and as well as overall spending patterns.

[00:03:33] DARIN NEWBOLD: So what are you seeing, Josh? Yeah.

[00:03:35] JOSHUA WARREN: so, uh, the holiday sales are expected to reach 271 billion dollars.

[00:03:40] JOSHUA WARREN: And we will, as always, have links to all the sources and all the numbers in the show notes. Um, that's a 9. 5 percent increase from last year. and the, what's really interesting with that is, you know, we're still hearing all the talk of inflation. You know, hopefully it's cooling. Hopefully the Fed is going to do something with interest rates.

[00:03:56] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, we won't know for sure for another week or two, but it [00:04:00] seems that way, but consumers, um, 72 percent of them still say that inflation or the threat of inflation is influencing their spending decisions. And they've gotten so used to the discounts. We have spoiled consumers. And so not only does everyone expect discounts, um, I blame Amazon and Prime Day for the fact that flash sales are out.

[00:04:21] JOSHUA WARREN: Consumers do not trust flash sales anymore. They don't trust one day sales events. They don't trust all these, you know, kind of trickier discounts that some brands like to do. 60 percent of shoppers surveyed said that They just want a clear, simple percentage off sale, and that really, if that discount isn't at least 30%, they're not reacting to it.

[00:04:44] JOSHUA WARREN: If you do a 10%, 20%, 25% off, consumers just aren't reacting to that the way they used to. And again, I think that's because everything's always on sale. On Amazon, there's always at least a five or 10% discount and consumers have caught on.

[00:04:58] DARIN NEWBOLD: Interesting. That's, I [00:05:00] wanted to maybe dig into that just a hair more of just, they don't like the flash sales. I thought that was the thing that was driving much of, much of the traffic was these prime days and, and, Hey, we're going to make a big deal about this certain day to really drive traffic.

[00:05:14] JOSHUA WARREN: So it's definitely helping Amazon. I mean, their, their sales on Prime Day are doing pretty good, but they're also spending so much time and money promoting those days. So when you, look at the actual profitability. It's not that much greater. Um, and I think you can get away with that when you're Amazon, but when you're a mid market, mid sized e commerce brand where they're already kind of trying to decide how much do I trust you, um, it's just harder to get away with.

[00:05:38] JOSHUA WARREN: The, the way to drive, if you want to do a, Quick short term thing to drive more traffic and sales doing like limited edition drops is working a lot better than doing like a sudden flash sale of we're going to give you 50 percent off this hour only so

[00:05:53] DARIN NEWBOLD: Interesting. No, that's, that's great. Great to know. Well, all right.

[00:05:58] DARIN NEWBOLD: Next up, we got to [00:06:00] talk about it. This crazy election that's coming up. It's going to be going to be interesting for sure. We'll probably stay out of the, uh, the red and the blue and, uh, all the green in between. So I guess first up. What's the ad landscape? Because you mentioned that you teased that right at the beginning, the ad landscape was going to be interesting going into the election.

[00:06:17] JOSHUA WARREN: So there have been, um, studies. People went back four years, looked at the last presidential election and saw that there actually is an increase in the ad spend and the ad costs on the major advertising platforms. So, um, obviously Meta, Google, um, places like that.

[00:06:33] JOSHUA WARREN: There's some debate as to how much increase there's going to be in ad spend.

[00:06:37] JOSHUA WARREN: Politics aside, I saw a report just yesterday that, um, the Trump campaign is actually ramping back their spending on meta and the other mainstream social media networks. They're putting their money elsewhere. The Harris campaign is still ramping up. Putting a lot of money into those, but if one side kind of pulled back from the advertising, maybe the cost won't go up as much.

[00:06:58] JOSHUA WARREN: But the [00:07:00] really interesting thing for me, and this is where I, I geek out on this stuff is, it's going to take longer to get ads approved because the closer we get to the election, the candidates themselves, but then all the, the packs and the super packs in there. Everybody else that has something to say about the election, you know, daily, hourly, we're going to see new ads being submitted onto the platforms for new things that are coming out.

[00:07:24] JOSHUA WARREN: You know, everyone wants that November surprise that'll put their candidate over the top. And what happens is at approval times, we'll get backed up because they're going to be paying pretty close attention to those political ads. There's going to be more of them. It's going to be harder to get, you know, your, your average e commerce brands ad approved in a reasonable amount of time.

[00:07:43] JOSHUA WARREN: So, um, I've seen some marketing directors are actually already prepping their ads for the first couple of weeks of November. They're submitting them to the platforms now for approval so that when they're ready to make them go live, they just. Activate those campaigns. And I think that is no matter where [00:08:00] you lean on the political spectrum.

[00:08:01] JOSHUA WARREN: I think that is just really good planning to go ahead and do

[00:08:04] DARIN NEWBOLD: Yeah, I was going to say, I see your, your notes here and kind of the focus is build that ad plan and the campaigns early, get it submitted. So it's already approved or tweaked in whatever way it needs to be so that you're ready to roll.

[00:08:18] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, let's kind of go into overall strategies for the e commerce success around this whole, this whole timeframe.

[00:08:25] JOSHUA WARREN: Oh, I know you don't want to talk about politics more, but I got a little bit more on that. Um, so I do just want to call out that the good news is, um, 20 percent of people are saying that the election is impacting their holiday budget.

[00:08:39] JOSHUA WARREN: It's not anything more than 20%.

[00:08:41] JOSHUA WARREN: But there are 43 percent of consumers that are basically saying they're kind of waiting to see about what they're going to spend, how much they're going to spend. They're probably going to spend the same amount, um, but they may wait and see what happens with the election.

[00:08:54] JOSHUA WARREN: So I think overall, analyzing this year's holiday sales is going to be really [00:09:00] interesting and a little bit challenging. Um, the other thing I wanted to make sure I mentioned, in addition to submitting your creatives early, One way to, um, work against and hopefully not get hit as hard by that price increase and the customer acquisition cost increase in November is if you start doing more campaigns in September and October to build a retargeting audience.

[00:09:21] JOSHUA WARREN: Because instead of advertising to every American like the political candidates are going to be doing, you can advertise just to your retargeting audience and lots of times that is going to. Um, if not drive a lower customer acquisition cost, it's at least going to keep your customer acquisition costs from going up as much as it would otherwise.

[00:09:40] DARIN NEWBOLD: Perfect. Great ideas. Well, as we, as we close out that let's do get into our, uh, the strategies for e commerce success and, and kind of obviously early and extended promotions, I think is first up on your, on your ideas. What else?

[00:09:55] JOSHUA WARREN: and with the early and extended promotions, um, [00:10:00] Honestly, you know, in the notes and in my analysis, I've said, start your discount campaigns in mid September.

[00:10:05] JOSHUA WARREN: I'd start them now. And I think we're going to see a lot of brands basically doing sales and campaigns from Labor Day straight on through to Christmas. And I think that's smart with consumers shopping earlier, looking for discounts, um, definitely maintain a consistent level of deals and discounts. You know, you don't have to say all our products are 30 percent off the whole season.

[00:10:26] JOSHUA WARREN: But I would, you know, maybe highlight one line a week or every two weeks that's 30 percent off and things like that. Because again, consumers are getting a little wary and they're catching on to that whole, Oh, we're going to do, you know, one big sale this one day only. And, you know, sales that aren't actually sales and different things like that.

[00:10:44] JOSHUA WARREN: So just keeping your campaigns very authentic and consistent is going to be important. and again, I mentioned already, you know, In all the surveys, 30 percent is the tipping point between a consumer really caring about a discount or not, so use that, you know, obviously test [00:11:00] to see if your customers are any different, but use that as a good rule of thumb.

[00:11:04] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, guys, one more education point for me today, uh, I guess I need to hold out for the 30 percent discount because I usually am pretty excited if I hit the five or 10 percent because usually it's not there, but maybe that's just the stuff I'm buying.

[00:11:16] DARIN NEWBOLD: Anyway, moving on. Another strategy that I know, uh, I know you always like to talk about is, is mobile as well as the optimization of mobile. What are you seeing there?

[00:11:26] DARIN NEWBOLD: Yeah, so 

[00:11:26] JOSHUA WARREN: 81 percent of consumers plan to shop on mobile this holiday season. Um, that's another record. I am kind of surprised it's not 90%. It seems like everybody does this, but 81%. And then when you look at the numbers and the revenue growth expected, um, 28 percent of the revenue growth expected for this holiday season is going to come from mobile.

[00:11:45] JOSHUA WARREN: So if your site is not passing Core Web Vitals, if it's not performing the way it should, it's not providing the mobile experience it should, um, you're going to suffer this holiday season. And it just makes sense because shorter holiday season, people are having to [00:12:00] multitask, they are going to be doing A whole lot more with a whole lot less time.

[00:12:05] JOSHUA WARREN: Um, so you got to provide that solid mobile experience.

[00:12:08] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, and you got to grab their attention because the political candidates are going to be doing their best to grab your attention on everything else. So, well in grabbing their attention, how do we target, uh, the, the generational marketing that, uh, that you're talking about?

[00:12:22] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah, so there are some big differences between the generations. Um, even going Gen X to Millennials, you know, we'll leave the boomer jokes and boomers aside. Uh, going from Gen X to Millennials, I actually learned a new term, even though I am a, what they call, geriatric millennial. Um That Gen Z and Millennials are significant self gifters, which is a really interesting euphemism for buying something for yourself.

[00:12:53] JOSHUA WARREN: 39 percent of Gen Z and Millennials are planning on buying themselves gifts for Christmas. [00:13:00] When you look at Gen Z specifically, that percentage goes up even higher. And so I think in the past, a lot of marketing campaigns, especially in the e com world would be about, you know, buy something for your significant other, buy something for your family.

[00:13:11] JOSHUA WARREN: This makes a wonderful gift for someone else. Putting a little self care, self gifting spin, um, especially if you're going after a younger audience, um, is really going to work well this holiday season.

[00:13:23] DARIN NEWBOLD: Interesting. Well, Sad to say, folks, we're going to have to mention it for another episode. As always, we can't get by without it. And it's so important, definitely through this holiday season, whether there's an election or not, how do we leverage AI and the personalization that it can bring?

[00:13:41] JOSHUA WARREN: bring. So yeah, AI powered recommendations and personalization and even just something as simple as chatbots. Those are becoming table stakes so fast. Consumers just expect those. But again, in a compressed holiday shopping season when you're competing against all the political candidates for your consumer's attention, you need to [00:14:00] shorten the path to purchase.

[00:14:01] JOSHUA WARREN: You need to make it so much easier for them to buy. And personalizing your site using AI is a great way to do that, providing a chatbot experience. I was actually on a, um, a security cameras, uh, company's website the other day. They have an amazing chatbot, which kind of a random, uh, product to have a great chatbot, but literally I could go in and just ask it whatever I needed to.

[00:14:23] JOSHUA WARREN: And it had been trained on all the product data. And so very quickly I was able to narrow down to, Hey, this actually would be a good product for what I was looking for.

[00:14:31] DARIN NEWBOLD: Hmm. That's great. Great to have. Well, Last but not least, we got all this shopping. We're doing all this prep. We're bringing in our marketing early. We're using AI to get everybody's, the right people to the attention. Now we've got to get the products there. So how do we plan for that, Josh?

[00:14:49] JOSHUA WARREN: the good news is, um, supply chain disruptions from the pandemic seem, knock on wood here, seem to have finally, um, calmed down. [00:15:00] Most brands have said that their supply chain is in pretty good shape.

[00:15:03] JOSHUA WARREN: They don't expect any major issues. Their inventory levels are right where they want it to be. Um, I would still recommend anticipating potential disruptions again with a shorter shopping season, if that product's out of stock, when they go to your store or go to your website. They're not going to wait for you to get it back in stock.

[00:15:20] JOSHUA WARREN: They're going to go somewhere else. So definitely monitor your inventory closely. And this is where I always every year plug, um, buy online, pick up in store and curbside pickup. Those are always huge. And that is what, um, people want, especially the last few days before Christmas. The interesting kind of counterpoint to that.

[00:15:39] JOSHUA WARREN: So sustainability has become even bigger this year. So last year. 61 percent of consumers said that sustainability influenced where they would buy, whether it was online or in store. This year, almost 80 percent are considering sustainability.

[00:15:54] DARIN NEWBOLD: Interesting.

[00:15:55] JOSHUA WARREN: So, before, um, a lot of brands I work with would run, especially big gifting [00:16:00] brands, they would run Either free or reduced cost express shipping the couple of days before Christmas, because that was the only way to compete against the local stores is by saying, Hey, you can still get it in time.

[00:16:10] JOSHUA WARREN: Well, now more and more consumers are thinking, wait, that express package, it's going to go on a jet. It's going to have carbon emissions. If I just drive to my local store, This might actually be a better purchase for the environment. And so more and more brands are looking at offering carbon offsetting on their express shipping and even making that part of their marketing campaign kind of the week, week of Christmas of saying, Hey, we're doing discounted express shipping and we're going to pay for the carbon offset on it.

[00:16:39] DARIN NEWBOLD: Interesting. Not something I would have, not something I would have thought of for sure. Well, As we kind of wrap all this up, we've got the election coming up. That's going to be crazy. Shopping has already started. And if it hasn't, by gosh, started as soon as you hear this, because it's on. So Josh, what would be maybe your two or three kind of key [00:17:00] takeaways that you want to make sure people remember?

[00:17:02] JOSHUA WARREN: I think the biggest thing, and I am already tired of saying this, hopefully you're not tired of hearing it, is get your core web vitals in check. Those are those performance metrics. We talked about them a few weeks ago on the show. That is how Google is measuring the user experience on your site. If that is showing up as failed, which there's a free test that Google has online that you can go to that showing up as failed, you got to get that fixed fast because mobile is such a big part of this year, and that's going to influence not only your mobile conversion rate, but your search engine rankings that will.

[00:17:36] JOSHUA WARREN: influence a lot. beyond that, just know that, and I feel like we've been saying this for a few years now, post pandemic, but know that this year isn't going to be like last year, just because it's a shorter season and there's an election. So if your projections are just based on take last year and add nine percent to each day, you might want to go revisit those.

[00:17:56] DARIN NEWBOLD: So let me ask you one last question to close this out. [00:18:00] where do you think there could be a loss or, or things that might go really sideways for an e commerce brand over this, uh, holiday based on the short timeframe and the, and the election?

[00:18:12] JOSHUA WARREN: I think the biggest risk would be if you've covered Corwood Vitals, you've covered all that, um, either getting your inventory wrong or getting your discounting wrong and just not having The right product in stock at the right discount level because if you, and again, it's like that 30 percent mark.

[00:18:30] JOSHUA WARREN: If your consumers want 30 percent and you offer 25 percent and then nobody buys, you're going to miss your projections.

[00:18:38] DARIN NEWBOLD: right. You heard it here first. Well, as always, so much. We encourage you to subscribe. Definitely check out Joshua Warren on LinkedIn. You can get all of the great information and even, uh, even some time and, uh, answers from him. So with that, we thank you as always and wish you the best.

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