How Reviews Can Level Up Your Holiday Gifting Strategy This Year
Holiday shopping can be stressful for shoppers - make it easier for them by incorporating reviews in your holiday campaigns and marketing efforts
93% of shoppers read reviews before they make a purchase. That’s almost every single consumer, showing just how powerful reviews and social proof really are. During the holiday season, shoppers are predominantly looking for gifts for friends and family. This can be trickier than buying for themselves because there’s more at stake — reviews can help reassure shoppers they’re making the right gift choice by acting as a second opinion.?
?You’re probably right in the middle of planning or publishing your holiday gifting strategy, but don’t forget to incorporate reviews. They can:?
?Sometimes it’s harder buying a product for someone else than it is for ourselves, which is why reviews can be so useful in gift guides and other holiday gift strategies.?
Here’s how you can leverage them for best results.?
Reviews in Gift Guides
Gift guides are an integral part of holiday shopping. They spark shopper inspiration and act as a catalog for consumers to browse through. When creating this year’s gift guides, use reviews to populate the entries. This will help shoppers determine whether it’s the right gift for the person they’re shopping for and will increase the chances of them purchasing the product from you over a competitor.
You can take this one step further and use reviews to identify which products to include in your gift guides. Choose products that have a large number of reviews or the most positive ratings to create the best chance of future purchases.?
Create Gift Guides for Different Attributes
Gift guides come in many shapes and sizes, but they’re often geared towards specific market segments, like gift guides “for her” or gift guides “for kids”.?
You can really tap into this trend and hone in even further by using attributes from the reviews you’ve collected to determine what gift guides you should create. For example, if you sell food products, you can do a gift guide for vegans and one for vegetarians, or if you sell hair products, you can produce one gift guide for people with curly hair and another for those with straight hair. This will help you improve customer experience and reap the benefits of brand loyalty by ensuring you’re creating a specialist gift guide for each audience segment. It can also help in building an online community of like-minded shoppers.?
Natural Hair Products has created a list of 39 products for people with curly hair that act as gift inspiration for holiday shoppers.
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?Incorporate User Generated Content in Holiday Campaigns?
The holiday season is the perfect time to get your products in front of new shoppers who will hopefully go on to become long-term customers.?
?Use ads and other marketing strategies like social media marketing and high-quality blog content to attract new shoppers, and incorporate user-generated content (UGC) to make sure your holiday campaigns build trust and stand out from the competition. User-generated content examples include reviews, testimonials, customer-created photos, and other media generated by shoppers.
Add Reviews to Abandoned Cart Emails
Abandoned cart rates are notoriously high (currently sitting at around 69.82% ), but this percentage often increases during the holiday season as shoppers try and find the right gifts for their friends and family. To attract potential customers back to their cart and remind them of the goods they have in there, send abandoned cart emails that include reviews. The added social proof will encourage shoppers to make it all the way through to checkout.
Nimble Activewear does exactly this. Their abandoned cart emails include a star rating for the product in question and the number of reviews that shoppers can browse through.?
Level Up Your Holiday Gifting Strategy With Reviews
Holiday shopping can be a stressful time for shoppers since they are often in a panic to buy lots of gifts in a short space of time. You can make it easier for them by providing social proof and reassurance through customer reviews. Once you’ve collected reviews using customer review software, you can sprinkle them through your holiday gifting campaigns, whether it's in a gift guide, a social media marketing campaign, or an ad.?
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About Okendo
Okendo is THE customer review platform for fast growing Shopify brands. An Official Google Reviews partner and trusted by 4,000+ high-growth consumer brands such Netflix, SKIMS and Bite, Okendo has all the tools brands need to capture and showcase high-impact social proof through the online buying journey. Learn more about our unique review capture process, blazing fast display widgets and extensive Klaviyo integration at www.okendo.io .
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