Pumpkin-spice lattes are back on the menu and the only new movies out are horror flicks. Halloween must be close! As you prepare your digital campaigns for the holiday season, you’re likely considering new ways to dress up your ads with spooky filters and scary-good offers. After all, the National Retail Federation reports that more Americans will splurge on costumes, candy and pumpkins than ever before, for a record 9.1 billion in Halloween spending this year. To help you scare up new customers, we’re sharing four digital strategies to boo-st seasonal sales this Halloween:
Forecasting a Bountiful Campaign with Weather-Based Signals
Signal-based strategies are perfect for building ads with small variations across disparate DMAs. For example, a national coffee shop might use weather signals — it’s chilly, raining and after sunset — to send an ad for hot cocoa to consumers in those areas. Whereas, a nearly identical ad promoting the new “monster” slushie could be served to customers in warmer locales. Savvy marketers will take the ad one step further with a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency to try out seasonal products before they are gone.
Echo Remarketing Is Practically Magic
Do you ever get the feeling that a product is stalking you online? This Halloween, those specialty cupcakes just might be. Standard pixels are great for retargeting general or brand awareness ads to users. But with new echo remarketing tactics, advertisers can personalize their creative even further based on a user’s actions on their site. When echo remarketing is activated, the pixel collects things like when a user customizes a cupcake flavor, icing color or decoration. Then it remembers those selections to retarget the user with an ad featuring that exact cupcake. Scary cool, huh?
Goblins, Ghouls and Geos … Oh My!
Trick-or-treating on an empty stomach? Now that’s scary! With advanced geotargeting, you can set up a geofence to target parents browsing on their phones within a few blocks of your store. Then, use an address-based map takeover to entice them to stop in to your nearest location for a healthier snack and save the candy for later.
There’s No Hiding from People-Based Marketing
New people-based marketing techniques mean advertisers can match their first-party customer data, like who added that Frankenstein costume to their wish list, to specific customers’ phones and tablets. When you know who your on-the-go customers are, you can retarget them with more relevant mobile offers featuring deals they’re most interested in, like easy one-click ordering. Also, remember to use exclusion segments to ensure customers who already bought don’t see ads that they don’t need. There is a lot of potential to boost seasonal sales this Halloween, or apply these strategies to other holiday campaigns throughout the year. Reach out to us to learn more. *This post was originally published on 10/26/16 but has been revised and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.